| Interactive 3-D graphics is one of the most rapidly advancing technologies ever applied to entertainment. The clear trend of increasing entertainment richness and sophistication that started with the era of Pong shows no sign of slowing.
Over the next few years, the visual quality and realism of interactive 3-D graphics will grow to levels comparable to those in non-interactive visual media such as movies and TV. Combining high-quality graphics with interaction produces a rich expressive medium with the potential to actually surpass the expressive power and entertainment value of the linear media of today.
Hardware technology has always been a key component of the interactive medium. It has evolved from the arcade console and engineering workstation technologies of the early 80s into modern PC display accelerator technology that achieves better performance with far greater visual realism at orders of magnitude lower cost.
In addition to the intense innovation in hardware, software has played an increasingly important role. Although hardware is an integral part of the medium, software, as code, art content, and tools, forms the content of the medium itself. Traditionally, only software has had the flexibility to deliver the rich entertainment experience that customers crave. |
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 Digital Communications: From E-Mail to the Cyber Community (The Digital World)
Between September 2006 and May 2007, the online networking site Facebook doubled its number of visitors to 26 million. Today, it has more than 300 million active users worldwide. Though Facebook is just one tool people use to connect with each other, the myriad of other Web sites such as MySpace and the estimated 2 billion cellphones in use... | | Progress in Pattern Recognition, Image Analysis, Computer Vision, and Applications
Pattern recognition is a central topic in contemporary computer sciences, with continuously evolving topics, challenges, and methods, including machine learning, content-based image retrieval, and model- and knowledge-based approaches, just to name a few. The Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recognition (CIARP) has become established as a... | | |
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