Summer 1995

Well, another summer come and gone. Either the Department is frantically busy, or it's silent. Here's what happened.

Soon after graduation, we decided to do a little remodeling. The dividing wall between the old research lab and the storage closet was removed. The wall facing Barb's desk (where the doors to said lab and closet used to be) was also removed. A new door was cut into the wall where the (former) storage room backed onto the hallway. After all the construction (and lost electrician), Barb now has a big window in front of her desk where she can watch the antics of the Great South Texas Free-Ranging Computer Student in the new Virtual Reality Laboratory. We now have an entire lab devoted to research equipment. Three Hewlett-Packards are in there, along with several 486s, the Pentium, and the two SGI machines. We've got head-mounted displays, 3-D goggles, 6-directional joysticks,

3-D speakers, an immersion-system chair called the Thunderseat, and enough processor power to take over the world (or at least a small Third World country), all in one room.

At SIGGRAPH, the world's largest simulation conference, Paradigm Simulation (a graphics and simulation company in Plano, Texas) announced a gift to the Department's Virtual Reality Laboratory of $18,000 worth of graphics software. Much thanks to Mr. Ron Toupal, a 1981 Trinity grad, and Paradigm. In addition, Dr. Pitts is negotiating with Paradigm for assistance. In the works are scholarships for Trinity students (rumored to be quite large) and an equipment grant (rumored to be even larger). More bulletins as events warrant.

The Second Annual Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates took place during June-July of 1995. Five Trinity students labored next to five students from other universities to produce the Virtual Reality Time Machine. Also, three high school students received scholarships to attend one class at Trinity this summer. All three students elected to be part of the REU team.

From Trinity:

Doug Conyers

Diana Doner

Markus Haas

Mark Lewis

Tyler Thompson

Other students:

Jeffrey Byrne - San Antonio College

Raquel Corpus - Tarleton State University

Dewayne Gibson - Mary Hardin Baylor University

Nancy Gotta - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Ernest Montoya - University of Texas at El Paso

High School Students:

David Brogan

Ben Miller

Michael Milligan

This summers' project was entitled the "Virtual Reality Time Machine" An artificial world, which the students developed using last summers' REU findings, evolves over time. Users view the world from a point in time of their choosing and watch the devlopment of the terrain and civilizations as time advances.

Dr. Pitts and the VR team outlined the goals for the Time Machine:

We must provide the capability to determine climate, terrain erosion, growing plant life, population changes and tailored sound. To speed up the process of moving through time, the model will generate a "timeline" at the creation of the world, that will contain the location and time of all major events: earthquakes, floods, fires and volcanoes. The timeline will also store information about erosion and climate changes. At the present time, it appears that a fractal method for terrain and plant-life generation is appropriate and the display of growth through the use of L-systems is possible, creating the sensation of residing in a world that appears to change through time.

Each civiliization should have unique, noticeable features and character, and should interact with their neighbors, environment and value system. It is hoped we can accomplish these goals through some method similar to neural networks and possibly an algorithmic approach to construction of buildings and character appearance. We hope that a civilization algorithm will provide a good complement to the natural time machine.

This program lasted eight weeks - from June 1 until July 27. Students organized into groups which focused on specific tasks in designing the world, then cooperated to form the structured world. Needless to say, eight weeks was not enough to accomplish all the goals the faculty had agreed the finished project would display. This summers' program modelled the world, created the timeline algorithm, and laid the foundation for the civilizations. Seniors and future REUs will complete the Time Machine. Even though most students knew that they would not see the completion of the Time Machine, many felt that they had just begun to tackle the real problems when the summer ended. Not to worry - the semester's almost begun and there will be plenty of work for everyone.

P.S. If any alumni stop by the department for a visit, Dr. Pitts is only too happy to show off the work the REU students completed this summer. The whole Department is proud of the accomplishments this talented group of people acheived.

"Cats are smarter than dogs. For example, you cannot get several cats to pull a sled through the snow." - author forgotten

Written and Produced by Ashley Smith :)

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Trinity University

Department of Computer Science

715 Stadium Drive

San Antonio, TX 78212