A few highlights from SIGGRAPH 2009

This past week has been pretty hot in the computer graphics research community. 2009's SIGGRAPH, the premier graphics research conference, just ended, so I thought I'd share some of the cool new video demonstrations that we have come across. We're always trying to keep our eyes open for new technologies that we may be able to incorporate into Overgrowth and our future games. We've noticed that a lot of times the academic graphics community (which dominates SIGGRAPH) and the game development community don't communicate much. But it seems like there are a lot of research ideas out there that could be really useful for game development. Hopefully, as a small company, we might be agile enough to act as a first mover on promising tech.

First, a quick preview of a bunch of the projects.

New human-computer interfaces could open up a lot of possibilities for more immersive gameplay. This project uses focused ultrasound make it so you can 'feel' holographic images.

Content capture improvements are making it easier and easier for amateurs to make professional looking creations. Here the researchers take video from a handheld camera and smooth it out so it looks like it was shot with a professional rigging.

Mesh physics are insane these days.

Of particular interest to me, lots of research is also being done on new editing techniques.

What do you guys think of these research projects? How might they affect future games? Feel free share other awesome graphics videos you have come across!