SIGGRAPH 2002

by Jason Della Rocca

This year's SIGGRAPH was hot! After recently being announced the US's sweatiest city, the nice city of San Antonio did not disappoint..

Actual temperature aside, SIGGRAPH 2002 was an enjoyable and informative event. While overall attendance was down (expectedly so, given its non-West Coast location), the quality of the sessions and overall activities were certainly on par with what is expected. My event got underway in a particularly humorous fashion when the badge printing system displayed interesting shortcomings..

As always, events like the Electronic Theatre and Art Gallery are always enjoyable. The panels, courses, papers and such are too numerous to mention here, but of special note were the two behind the magic style sessions hosted by ILM (on the making of Yoda and other Star Wars Ep2 sfx) and Sony Pictures Imageworks (making of Spider Man).

The IGDA hosted two very successful sessions. The first was an "educators forum" hosted by our Education Committee to go over our curriculum framework. This session was attended by about 200 academics/etc and was so popular they actually had to close the doors and refuse people due to a packed room! The second session was one of SIGGRAPH's "special sessions" and was a panel entitled "The Fate of Play: Game Industry Revolutionaries Speak Out". There were about 1000 attendees in the massive ballroom and we had a great discussion among the panelists and audience.

Well, that pretty much sums up my trip to SIGGRAPH 2002. Enjoy the pics below and see you next year!

Jason

Here are some shots taken during SIGGRAPH 2002 (all names are from left to right):

Badge of Honor: Registration system field size limitations made for amusing introductions.. Hehehe, still makes me laugh :-)

Doug Church (Ion Storm Austin) up late with the Education Committee crew putting together presentation slides.

Eric Zimmerman (gameLab) commands the mic during the feedback portion of the Education Committee's curriculum framework session.

A sitting Warren Spector (Ion Storm Austin) fields academic questions..

Warren Spector, Chris Carollo (Ion Storm Austin), Eric Zimmerman, Robin Hunicke (Northwestern University) and Zach Simpson (digital artist) all quickly chow down before heading to the Electronic Theatre.

The High Voltage crew (Kerry Ganofsky, ?, Jesse Helton, Eric Nofsigner) enjoy drinks during the Opening Reception.

Funky VR input devices are always popular at SIGGRAPH...

...as are funky VR output devices.

An attendee tries to figure out the mechanics of gameLab's "Fluid" project - one of the few game-like entries in the Art Gallery.

Game Revolutionaries Get Booked: Warren Spector (Ion Storm Austin), Will Wright (Maxis), Lorne Lanning (Oddworld Inhabitants), Raph Koster (Sony Online Entertainment) and Scott Miller (3D Realms) all prepping for their "special session" game panel.

Behind the Magic: ...fine, the previous shot was a poor attempt at bluescreen trickery.

Keynote speaker Esther Dyson drones on about ICANN and the Internet.

Vincent Scheib (University of North Carolina) kicks off the demoscene panel session with an awesome montage of demos.

Eric Haines (Autodesk), Saku Lehtinen (Remedy), Theo Engell-Nielsen (hybris/NEMESIS) and Phil Taylor (Microsoft) discuss and dissect demos and the scene.

Demoscene Gathering: Everyone's interested in the "scene" - from Will Wright, to the crew from Remedy and a Japanese cable show!

EA UK techies, Alberto and Ian Shaw, go for the beef during the closing Technical Reception.

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