I took a trip down memory lane this week, attending SIGGRAPH in LA. 17 years ago this was my first computer trade show after venturing into computer graphics and I nearly fled the show floor in Las Vegas in terror. In those days, VR meant a computer the size of a room.

Now the show is mainly for the entertainment and game industry, but there are new toys to whet the appetite of presenters. My jaw dropped at Barco Simulation (which shows its projectors at InfoComm). It had two of them set up simultaneously in a virtual 3D display (yes, with the 3D glasses!) but you could enter the environment and walk around. Barco calls it a VR Workroom, and it costs a bundle. But imagine if you’re trying to sell an airplane, a building or a drug regimen, and you can take your prospects of a tour inside what you’re showing (not in the hokey QuickTime VR way, but much more photorealistically) and what if there were tools that enabled you to influence and manipulate the environment.

So I was interested in the software, and found myself in the nearby booth of Virtools. Virtools calls itself the “Behavior Company” which is pretty audacious until you look at the software. This is a work environment into which you can drop conventional 3D models and enable a user to interact with them. As a game platform development tool it can be exported to Xbox, but it also has a Web Player (plug-in). I saw a fully 3D race car that could be turned around, and then actually driven through a landscape in a web page. What about simulating a heart , an operating room or a brain?

A single license of Virtools costs about three times what it costs for 3D Studio Max. So it’s not for the casual presenter. But if you are playing for high stakes, investing in such a tool and the time to use it effectively might well give you a leg up in medical, architectural and other high end markets.

Another interesting tool, for a lot less (about $995) is Antics Pre-Viz. This is ostensibly a previsualization software for the entertainment business but it is cool for creating role playing scenarios and exploring different types of venues for training purposes (like training a staff for a trade show booth). It’s kind of like VOX Proxy on steroids because behaviors are dropped on animated characters but they’re not limited to a PowerPoint slide or your screen — you also create a complete environment in whcih they can interact. “Characters intelligently navigate around their environment, avoiding props, opening doors, and getting in cars just by clicking the mouse”.

Truthfully I didn’t stay at SIGGRAPH long. You can only watch so much 3D animation. However, I really think that these sorts of immersive tools, when they become more cost effective and user friendly, will be a key to the future of presentations.

Posted by Tom Bunzel in Inspiration, PowerPoint, Techniques, Technology