CHICAGO—SIGGRAPH 2021 reveals the lineup of 14 projects chosen for its Emerging Technologies program, which offers virtual participants a first look at compelling new experiences and their enabling technologies.
Along with video presentations, selected projects for 2021 will also have short technical papers available to conference participants — offering even more ways to explore.The live event will run 9–13 August, with content available online and on-demand from 2 August through 29 October.
“SIGGRAPH 2021 Emerging Technologies shows that despite the pandemic, significant advances were made in interactive techniques and computer graphics,” shared SIGGRAPH 2021 Emerging Technologies Chair Paul Dietz. “In fact, a number of the projects selected for the virtual conference were inspired by the desire to connect people who could not be physically together during this past year.”
The SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies program has a long history of providing a glimpse into the future of computer graphics and interactive techniques. That tradition continues in 2021 with an outstanding program that features virtual exhibits from universities and corporations — such as Nvidia and Princeton University, among others — and covers a broad range of topics. What is it like to play games against an intelligent swarm of drones? Can you really alter the taste of wine by changing how heavy it feels? How do you operate a touch screen during a pandemic when you are afraid to touch it?
In addition to answering these questions, the 2021 program highlights include:
Behind the Game: Implicit Spatio-temporal Intervention in Inter-personal Remote Physical Interactions on Playing Air Hockey
On-demand: 2–13 August; Live Q&A: Wednesday, 11 August, 5 pm PDT
This study, from The University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Laboratories, explores how well-balanced, inter-personal, physical games can be achieved between a remote player and a local player using air hockey as a testbed. The team proposes an approach that assists remote player actions without compromising the sense of agency by leveraging context-aware computation. Click here for more details.
Reverse Pass-Through VR
On-demand: 2–13 August; Live Q&A: Friday, 13 August, 3 pm PDT
Facebook Reality Labs’ reverse pass-through VR headset captures a 3D image of the wearer's eyes and displays them to outside viewers with a perspective-correct light field display, allowing gaze cues to support social copresence interactions. Click here for more details.
Augmented Reality Representation of Virtual User Avatars Moving in a Virtual Representation of the Real World at Their Respective Real World Locations
On-demand: 2–13 August; Live Q&A: Tuesday, 10 August, 10 am PDT
From Nakamir and Alpinschule Innsbruck, this application allows a user with an augmented reality display (smartphone or Hololens 2) to watch another player, flying an airplane in the Microsoft Flight Simulator, at their respective location in the real world, provided that the player is flying close to the AR user’s location. Click here for more details.
Demonstrating Touch&Fold: A Foldable Haptic Actuator for Rendering Touch in Mixed Reality
On-demand: 2–13 August; Live Q&A: Monday, 9 August, 5 pm PDT
Touch&Fold — from researchers at University of Chicago — is a finger-worn device that lets users feel both real and virtual objects by quickly moving an actuator on to the finger pad only when needed. Click here for more details.
Emerging Technologies is open to the Ultimate and Enhanced registration levels. Learn more and register for SIGGRAPH 2021, the 48th international conference and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques, ats2021.SIGGRAPH.org/register