Being there

I just finished with the Q&A session of our Siggraph 2021 course. The conference this year, not surprisingly, is being held entirely on-line.

There is still something very weird about doing a “live” session on-line, even after a year and a half of this craziness. There is simply not the same level of personal bonding that you get when people are all gathered in a physical room.

I wonder when, if ever, we will get the point where on-line gatherings have that feeling we cherish, when we are all in the same room, of “being there”.

One thought on “Being there”

  1. And one of the most annoying things is, you cannot really be “out of office” when attending these virtual conferences and misc work staff greatly impeded the conference experience – and people don’t share the same time zone.

    Past year’s VR theatre has enabled co-presence viewing, IEEE VR has enabled avatar-based virtual presence in a 1990s MMO settings, Eurographics has used 2D navigation + zoom, but we are still missing the feeling of “co-presence”. What’s the silver bullet?

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