________________________________________________________________________________ Virtual humans are waiting in the wings, poised to serve and entertain us, said participants at the Virtual Humans 2 conference, which brought together academia, the military, technologists, and entertainment types to share their progress toward the discipline's Holy Grail - an autonomous, computer-generated individual indistinguishable from a human being. We'll be able to brush up on social and emotional skills, such as disciplining a worker or chatting up a first date, by practicing first on virtual humans. "We can already capture human facial expression, and use that to animate a computer-generated character" said Linda Jacobson, VR evangelist at Silicon Graphics. "But those motions have yet to be simulated in an autonomous setting." Jacobson predicts the appearance of virtual surrogates within two-and-a-half to three years. // Plastic surgery, which was intelligently used in Hollywood history, has become increasingly artificial in style: Women's faces are being pulled too tight and turning generic and characterless, while breasts look more and more like blocks of frozen squash. Visuals have gotten homogenized among not just porn stars but soap opera ingenues and TV newswomen. // Advances in computer science would occur more rapidly if it weren't for one thing: people. "People are the single most limiting factor to the progress of computer science" said David Tennerhouse, chief scientist with Darpa in a speech at Mobicom, a mobile technology conference. "We need to get humans out of the computing loop" he said. // In a recent survey, CommCore and two other firms that specialize in high-tech communications counseling found that one in five office workers use e-mail as a way to avoid speaking to people in person -- even others in the same office. --71 percent of business callers would rather leave a voice mail that talk with the person they are calling. --65 percent would rather send an e-mail than leave a voicemail. // Not only does the PlayStation II boast incredible raw graphics power, it also has the power to simulate the physical properties of real world objects, including the behavior of animals and humans. Sony said its new "emotion synthesis" graphics processing system will simulate "not just how the images look, but how the characters and objects in a game think, act, and behave." The Sony PlayStation II system grew a virtual forest in which each leaf was individually rendered. The forest swayed in the digital wind created by calculating the force on each leaf in real-time >>>> >>>> >>>> what **** Command 'what' not recognized. >>>> >>>> >>>> why **** Command 'why' not recognized. >>>> >>>> ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 1999 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org