What does a Graphic Fellow at Microsoft look like?
That's exactly what I pictured.
Jim Blinn's home page at Microsoft Research has some interesting papers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Seems like a brilliant guy.
Visualization is good. Visualization is valuable. Let's have more visualization.
Back in 1979 he was looking at Realism in Computer Graphics. What was one major application of CG in 1979?
One major application area of shaded computer graphics is in real time flight simulation systems. Such systems are designed to train aircraft pilots by allowing them to fly a simulated airplane complete with a view out the window of the surrounding terrain. In such systems, a new image must be constructed some thirty times per second in synchronism with a television based display device. It is the job of the system designer to provide the best possible picture consistent with these time constraints. This severely limits the sophistication and thus the accuracy of the models used in the simulation. Even so, it requires approximately a million dollars worth of special purpose hardware to construct images at the correct rate.
I picked up FSX & my new PC for under $1000. How times change...
He's the "second" MS Graphic fellow. Who's the first?
Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, cofounder of Pixar.
Jim & Alvy worked together in 1979. Small world.
Dr. Smith seems to have an interest in genealogy based on the papers being published on his site. Perhaps we're related? My great-grandmother was a Smith.
I wonder if he had a hand in Microsoft Family.Show?
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