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Past Meetings

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2005 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2004 Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2003 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2002 Sep Oct Nov Dec

Past Screenings and Special Events

2006 Jan Feb Mar Apr May
2005 Nov
2004 Apr Aug Dec
2003 Sep

May 2003 Meeting

Our May 2003 meeting was held at:

7 PM on Tuesday the 27th of May 2003
7 Fairway
Crawley
(opposite the University of Western Australia, directions below)

Thomas P. Caudell, one of the creators of the Flatland VR project from the University of New Mexico spoke first. He gave a general introduction to graphs and neural networks then described his eLoom project works and how important Flatland is for visualising the complex structures inherent in the networks they work with. Instructions on how to download the open source Flatland code can be found at the link above.

Mark Billinghurst, director of HITLabNZ (Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand) and the developer of the Magic Book augmented reality system gave an introduction to Augmented Reality (AR) and followed by a demonstration of some applications developed using his ARToolkit software. At the end of his talk attendees were able to try augmented reality applications running on Mark's laptop. The open source ARToolkit software is available for download from the HITLabNZ link above.

Random historical note: Mark remarked that Tom is credited with having coined the term "Augmented Reality". Tom mentioned that in his recollection a former colleague at Boeing used the term first, but that the coworker in question was just as certain it was Tom's idea.

This was the second in our series of three immersive, virtual reality and augmented reality talks. The first was a presentation on stereo imagery by Eric Pickstone from Continuum Resources. The third will be a tour of the Australian Resources Research Centre's Wedge, which is an immersive stereo VR facility, like a CAVE but with two walls.

As usual, after the meeting, a few of us adjourned to a restaurant for socialising. This time it was Ti Amo's, where we enjoyed very large helpings of Italian cuisine.

Many buses, including the Circle route (98, 99) stop near the University of Western Australia (UWA). Route 97 (Subiaco Station to Crawley) terminates right next to the Motorola building on Fairway. Bicycle parking is available next to the UWA Computer Science Building, opposite the Motorola building on Fairway.

Credits

Many thanks to our speakers Tom Caudell and Mark Billinghurst, to Karen Haines and IVEC for organising the symposium on Distributed Interactive Virtual Environments (DIVEs) which Tom and Mark are here for and to Motorola for allowing the use of their flash new facilities. Thanks to the Department of Computing at Curtin University of Technology for hosting our web site.