The ETC09 Visualization and Interaction Challenge

This contest is sponsored by Mechdyne Corporation.

Description:

What can you do with 100 million stereoscopic pixels in the world’s most advanced virtual reality room, the C6? What can you do with head-mounted displays (HMDs), Augmented Reality systems, Wiimotes, or tracking systems? Will you create real-time, interactive photorealistic graphics? Will you develop unique interaction methods? Will you build applications that can broaden the use of these technologies? We would like to see.

Mechdyne is sponsoring the ETC 09 visualization and interaction challenge to test your creative and spatial skills. We are looking for the most creative visual and/or interactive applications.

Categories:

Applications can be created in one of three categories:

  1. Incredible Graphics – show us how advanced and visually realistic computer graphics can be. With advanced graphics and physics engines, highly realistic rendering for water, wind, or other scenarios can be developed. Contestants can design and create new pixel shaders, rendering routines, bump mapping effects, or any other thing you can think of that exploits the latest in computer graphics. We are especially interested in applications for the C6.

  2. Amazing Interaction – how can an interaction device and/or head tracking be used in unique ways to engage the viewer? Contestants are encouraged to innovatively use surfaces and devices for unique interaction. Device examples are: Nintendo DS, iPhone, Data glove, phantom, and wand. Be creative and find ways to engage the user in your application.

  3. Educational Applications – how can visualization and interaction be used as an instrument for teaching? Contestants can create applications in any subject matter using any method they can dream up. We are looking for innovative methods to teach topics to any education level.

 

Prizes:

Eachcategory will have a first and second prize as follows:

  • $1,250 first prize
  • $750 second prize

Acknowledgement of the creator(s) in any subsequent demonstrations will always be given.

Contest Rules:

  • You must be a current student of Iowa state university.

  • Your project can be done individually or as a team.

  • Only one registration per person/team. You can’t register as an individual and as part of a team

  • All content must be original.

  • Projects submitted without credits will be disqualified.

  • Projects created for this contest become the property of the sponsors and cannot be sold or used in a commercial context by the developers. The sponsors, including Iowa State University, will demonstrate the content publicly and for commercial use (with credit given to the developers).

  • As organizers of this contest, the sponsors cannot be held responsible in any way for the submitted projects.

You are free to use any software you want as long as it is properly licensed. Full licenses or trial editions of software are allowed. Trial versions of Mechdyne’s vGeo and CAVELib can be downloaded for this contest but do not have to be used. Requests for these two versions must be requested from Mechdyne by contacting info@mechdyne.com.

Registration:

All teams or contestants must register to participate. To register, please send email to Pam Shill, pshill@iastate.edu with the following information:

  1. Your name or all names of team

  2. Contact email

  3. Contact phone

  4. Brief description of submission (1-2 paragraphs)

  5. Special system/software requirements you may need

Registration must be sent in by Friday, March 13th

 




ETC2009 is sponsored by Iowa State University's Virtual Reality Applications Center,
the Human Computer Interaction graduate program, and Mechdyne Corporation.