CFP: Special Issue of Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A)

Special Issue of IEEE CG&A, January/February 2009
Guest Editors Tiffany Barnes, L. Miguel Encarnação, and Chris Shaw
Submissions due: 30 July 2008
Author notification: 31 October 2008
Final versions due: 28 November 2008

Video games for entertainment have been pushing the boundaries of
graphics research and capabilities for the last 2 decades. More
recently, these technologies have been extended to include
interaction with and modification of data-driven, complex 3D
models, performed in real time on graphics processing units. As
this industry has become more mature, other applications of video
game technologies have become apparent for the purposes of
scientific simulation and visualization, industrial and military
training, medical and health training and education, geographic
information systems, as well as public awareness and policy
change. The models used in these serious game applications may
contain millions of 3D primitives from point sets to voxels, to
complex higher-dimensional data sets. The use of serious games for
education, decision-making, health, and training applications makes
the realistic, real-time representation of models and data through
geometry, appearance, illumination, visibility, and behavior
critically important.

Another significant set of problems concerns the representation and
animation of avatars and other life-like characters in a game, and
the interaction of the player with their own avatars as well as the
avatars of the other players. For training scenarios, a significant
challenge is the provision of artificially intelligent characters
for players to interact with. For persuasive applications, e.g. the
realism of the social behavior of the characters bears additional
importance. Characters must react to the player(s) in a way that
supports the application goals and is immediately and realistically
responsive.

Serious games require the real-time acquisition, processing, and
visualization of changing data sets at high bandwidth and low
latency, often with multiple simultaneous users. Rendering rates
and interaction in these games are ideally at or above 30-60 frames
per second. Advances that accelerate the management and
interaction of large data sets, including techniques based on
sample-based representation and rendering, polygon rasterization
and shader hardware, and ray tracing are important for serious
games, but the examination of the effects of these techniques on
fidelity for decision making and training is particularly salient.
Towards maximizing real-world training effects as well as making
game play a more ubiquitous aspect of everyday life, serious games
increasingly aim at bridging the real world behavior and the
virtual world performance of the player. The emergence of
sophisticated low-cost sensor technologies to monitor activities,
biometrics, geospatial location, proximity, and contextual
influences promises to greatly enhance players’ direct and indirect
interaction with games, and therefore has great potential to
improve their effectiveness. However, the richness of these new
modalities will also require a rethinking of the general
interaction paradigms commonly associated with video games in order
to draw maximum benefit from multimodal input capabilities.
This special issue seeks papers examining some of the latest
advances with respect to data representation, algorithms and data
structures, systems issues, and applications for serious games that
include real-time interaction with complex models. Topics of
interest include, but are not limited to:

· multi-player systems architectures,
· player-to-player coordination
· automated and semi-automated modeling techniques,
· compression and playback of simulation data,
· scripting and control of animated characters,
· training scenario planning & execution,
· human figure animation for training,
· intelligent characters,
· individual, group, and crowd behavior modeling and simulation,
· lighting, and relighting sampled models,
· representation and storage of large data sets,
· scalable parallel algorithms and architectures,
· rendering of complex and hybrid data sets,
· sampling and filtering for complex models,
· image- or sample-based representations,
· simplification and compression,
· visibility computations,
· data-driven procedural modeling,
· hardware for processing large data sets,
· data and resource management,
· configuration management and change control,
· delivery considerations (networking, system configuration),
· novel interaction techniques for massive data sets,
· sensor-based input and interaction technologies and
techniques, and
· systems and applications.

Articles should be no more than 10 magazine pages, where a page is
800 words and a quarter page image counts as 200 words. Cite only
the 12 most critical references, and consider providing technical
background in sidebars for nonexpert readers. Color images can be
interspersed through the article and should be limited to a total
of 10. Visit CG&A style and length guidelines online.
Please direct any correspondence prior to submission to one of the
guest editors:

Tiffany Barnes
Woodward 403E
Computer Science Department
UNC Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd.
Charlotte, NC 28223
tbarnes2 at uncc. edu

L. Miguel Encarnaçãcao
500 W Main St., HUM10
Innovation Center
Humana Inc.
lme at computer. org

Chris Shaw
13450 102 Ave.
Simon Fraser University Surrey
Surrey, BC, V3T 5X3
Canada
shaw at sfu. ca