webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) (08/21/87)
In article <3665@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>, tim@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay) writes: > In article <324@l5comp.UUCP> scotty@l5comp.UUCP (Scott Turner) writes: > >Not to detract from Pixar's demo but what good is it if very few people > >ever see it? I'd rate Leo's effort as more impressive because it could (if > >but for Pixar) impress more people. Sure Pixar may be doing impressive > >stuff, but like the old question of "If a tree falls with no around to hear > >it, does it make a sound?" If something is impressive but almost no one > >ever sees it to be impressed, is it impressive? > > Last year Pixar contributed "Luxo, Jr." to the SIGGRAPH '86 Film and Video > show. After its debut there, the film ran as a short before the feature > length films at some (one?) movie theatre in the L.A. area. It was then > nominated for an Academy Award in the short film category. It was also mentioned in one of the technical talks that there was a distributor who handled the retail end of ``Luxo, Jr.'' (format wasn't mentioned) and it was indicated that a similar arrangement was probable for Red's Dream. Also, Red's Dream was hardly a tree falling with no one around to hear it. Attendence at Siggraph'87 was the usual O(30,000). Showings of the film show occurred on three separate nights in a massive arena to handle the crowds and Red's Dream was reshown at many of the technical talks (guestimate thousands more saw it a second time this way -- I doubt if anyone attending the technical talks actually missed attending one of the film shows (certainly there couldn't be five such people)). So, I would figure that most of the highend graphics market has seen Red's Dream. It would be interesting to know how many people saw Leo's demo. While nearly everyone probably walked by the Amiga booth at one time or another, I know I didn't pay attention to it since I figured that this wasn't a place where Amiga would do anything that I couldn't see elsewhere (I certainly figured wrong there!). To put this in perspective, you should realize that the exhibit area at Siggraph reflects the response of companies to being told that this is one place where 30,000 people who are very very interested in graphics (and a large percentage of whom can afford to take off a week and fly to the convention) are going to be in one place at one time (companies included people selling fast disk drives, technical books, electronics design journals, monitors, workstations, array processors, supercomputers, microcomputers, integrated circuits, breadboards, computer furniture, organization memberships, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum). Also, while the exhibit area was open for three days, it was always just one of many other events going on. ------ BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)