hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP (03/02/87)
Dale Luck was kind enough to provide a bunch of Amigas for the CONTACT conference this weekend. They were used by some very fine artists (Rick Sternbach, Joel Hagen, Keith Doyle, others) to create simulations of probe telemetry from an alien planet. The results were extraordinary and had great visual impact. The method used was to combine actual digitized NASA space photos with much Dpaint work and Keith's custom animation & sound software (sorry not yet released). The Amigas drew a great deal of attention, and there was a line 24 hours a day to use the few that were not used by the artists. The artists worked through the night, too. No exageration about the line. I went in at 3:30am to do some art and found two people waiting in line before me! I think that there will be a number of new Amiga owners shortly as a result of this hands on opportunity. Although I love Boing religious wars as much as the next guy, I must admit that I was very impressed with what Darrel Anderson did with the Atari ST he brought. He used CAD 3D (prerelease version 2) to create a *very* professional looking animation of the space probe spinning on its axis. Looked like NASA's animations. I didn't know you could do this kind of thing on the ST. The idea of CONTACT is to explore what contact with alien intelligence might be like. There was a series of workshops and talks, as well as The Bateson Project, which simulated a first contact by a visiting Earth starship. The computer work was used to add realism to the simulation. This was the fourth annual CONTACT. Among other celebrities attending were Poul Anderson, James Hogan, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle dropped by too. (Pournelle, incidentally, wants to know if Commodore has a death wish. Keep an eye on his columns). Watch for Jonathon Post's upcoming The Leisure of the Theory Class. It was a lot of fun, and I expect that Amigas will be used in even more sophisticated ways next year (did I mention the digitized alien voice simulation?). Watch for it. Thanks to whoever it was that posted the original notice about it; without that posting I would have missed this. Doug Merritt