Some of our members, attendees, and exhibitors have expressed concern about ACM’s signing of this letter to the U.S. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as a response to a new directive that OSTP is preparing to issue. That directive would eliminate the current 12-month embargo period for providing open access to U.S. federally funded research publications.

ACM has expanded on their position here.

ACM SIGGRAPH participates in the ACM Open TOC program which means that all content from our sponsored conferences (SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, and a dozen specialized conferences) is freely available starting two weeks before the conference and continuing in perpetuity from this site.

By participating in this program, ACM SIGGRAPH is already following the proposed guidelines from OSTP and has been since 2015.  We have no plans to change this open access for future conferences.

Nominate your colleagues for the ACM SIGGRAPH awards for researchers, practitioners, artists, and educators. Nominations/submissions for each award category must be finalized by the deadline date (coming soon) to be considered for 2020.

The nine SIGGRAPH awards are: the Steven Anson Coons Award, the Computer Graphics Achievement Award, Significant New Researcher Award, Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, Outstanding Service Award, Distinguished Artist Award, Practitioner Award, ACM SIGGRAPH Academy, and the Distinguished Educator Award.

Please visit the awards page to learn about each award and its nomination process.

Call for Journal Papers

IEEE VR 2020: the 27th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces

March 22-26, 2020, Atlanta, USA

Important Dates

Journal Track

• September 3, 2019: Abstracts due (REQUIRED)
• September 10, 2019: Submissions due
• November 9, 2019: Notification of first review cycle results
• January 6, 2020: Revised paper submissions due to second review cycle
• January 22, 2020: Final notifications
• January 31, 2020: Camera-ready material due from authors of accepted papers

Conference Track

• November 16: Conference paper abstracts due (REQUIRED)
• November 23: Conference paper submissions due
• January 26: Conference paper notifications of results returned to authors
• February 9: Camera-ready material due from authors of accepted conference papers

Overview

IEEE VR 2020 seeks original, high-quality papers in all areas related to virtual reality (VR), including augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and 3D user interfaces (3DUIs).

Inquiries contact: program2020 [at] ieeevr.org

Submission Guidelines

Paper abstracts and complete papers must be submitted electronically through the online submission system: https://new.precisionconference.com/~vr

Each research paper should provide a validated contribution covering one or more of the following categories: methodological, technology, applications, and systems.

• Methodological papers should describe advances in theories and methods of AR/VR/MR and 3DUI, such as ethical issues, theories on presence, or human factors.
• Technology papers should describe advancements in algorithms or devices critical to AR/VR/MR and 3DUI development such as input, display, user interaction, or tracking.
• Application papers provide an important insight to the community by explaining how the authors built upon existing ideas and applied them to solve an interesting problem in a novel way. Each paper should include an evaluation of the success of the use of AR/VR/MR and/or 3DUI in the given application domain.
• System papers should indicate how the developers integrated techniques and technologies to produce an effective system, and convey any lessons learned in the process.

Each paper should include an evaluation of its contributions, such as user studies, benchmarking and/or comparison with existing systems/techniques/methods.

Further Details Regarding Submissions. We welcome paper submissions not exceeding 9 pages, excluding references. References may not exceed two additional pages. Continuing our cooperation with the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), all accepted paper submissions will automatically be published in a special issue of IEEE TVCG. To meet TVCG standards, papers recommended for inclusion to TVCG will undergo a two-stage review process (see SUBMISSION DEADLINES below). Authors of papers that are determined to be acceptable to the journal subject to minor revisions during the first review cycle will be invited to submit a revised version for a second review cycle. Only papers that are accepted in this second cycle will appear in the journal issue. Papers that fail to pass the second round of reviews may proceed through further revisions to appear in a future regular issue of TVCG.

Ethics and Responsibility. All submissions describing research experiments with human participants should follow the appropriate ethical guidelines and authors are encouraged to secure and report their pre-approval by the relevant ethics commission. An approval by any institutional review board should be indicated via the submission system. While this is not a mandatory requirement at this time, with the broad dissemination of VR, AR, and MR technology, our community should be aware of this responsibility.

Conference Presentation. All accepted papers must be orally presented at the conference. There is also the possibility for authors of relevant previously published TVCG papers (accepted within the last year) to present their work at IEEE VR 2020. Interested authors should contact the program chairs for more details.

Abstract Submission. Note that a paper abstract must be uploaded a week prior to the actual paper submission deadline. This facilitates the process of assigning reviewers, as the review process operates on a very tight schedule.

Topics

IEEE VR 2020 seeks contributions in VR/AR/MR and 3DUI including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• 3D and volumetric display and projection technology
• 3D authoring
• 3D user interaction
• 3DUI metaphors
• Audio interfaces, sound rendering, spatialized audio, auditory perception and psychoacoustics
• Collaborative interactions
• Computer graphics techniques
• Crowd simulation
• Embodied agents, virtual humans and (self-)avatars
• Ethical issues
• Haptic and tactile interfaces, wearable haptics, passive haptics, pseudo haptics, other touch-based UI
• Human factors and ergonomics
• Immersive / 360° video
• Immersive analytics and visualization
• Input devices
• Locomotion and navigation
• Mediated and diminished reality
• Mobile, desktop or hybrid 3DUIs
• Modeling and simulation
• Multi-user and distributed systems
• Multimodal capturing and reconstruction
• Multimodal input and output
• Multimodal/cross-modal Interaction and perception
• Multisensory rendering, registration, and synchronization
• Non-fatiguing 3DUIs
• Non-visual interfaces (such as olfactory)
• Perception and cognition
• Presence, body ownership, and agency
• Scene description and management issues
• Software architectures, toolkits, and engineering
• Storytelling
• Teleoperation and telepresence
• Therapy and rehabilitation
• Touch, tangible and gesture interfaces
• Tracking and sensing
• Usage research, evaluation methods and empirical studies

Additional Submission Guidelines

All paper submissions must be in English.

Paper submissions must not have been previously published. A manuscript is considered to have been previously published if it has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, magazine, book, or meeting proceedings that is reliably and permanently available afterward in print or electronic form to non-attendees, regardless of the language of that publication. A paper identical or substantially similar in content (in its entirety or in part) to one submitted to VR should not be simultaneously under consideration for another conference or journal during any part of the VR review process, from the submission deadline until notifications of decisions are emailed to authors.

IEEE VR uses a DOUBLE-BLIND review process. Thismeans that both the authors and the reviewers should remain anonymous to each other. Submissions ( including citations and optional videos ) should not contain information that identifies the authors, their institutions, funding sources, funding sources, or their places of work. Relevant previous work by the authors should be cited in the third person to preserve anonymity. Authors should work diligently to ensure that their submissions do not expose their identities either through carelessness or intentionally. Authors that have questions/issues around double-blind submission policy should contact the program chairs.

Failure to make reasonable attempts to adhere to the double-blind policy will result in desk rejection.

In order to fully explain the relationship between the submitted paper and relevant previous work by the authors, authors may additionally upload previous papers as well as a non-anonymous letter of explanation; these materials will only be seen by the primary reviewer.

Authors are encouraged to submit videos to aid the program committee in reviewing their submissions. Videos must be submitted according to the instructions at the submission website. Videos submitted with papers will automatically be considered for possible inclusion in the video proceedings (video submissions may also be made independently, as described in the separate Call for Videos). When submitted as supporting material, videos must be free of any identifying information prior to reviewing as per the double-blind submission policy. If accepted for the video proceedings, a revised version of the materials of the materials will be requested.

Submission Deadlines

Each deadline is 23:59:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth) == GMT/UTC-12:00 on the stated day, no matter where the submitter is located. A convenient tool to see when AoE is for your local time is setting your location at 1 and Baker Island (which uses AoE) for: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

** The submission deadlines will be strictly enforced. Requests for extensions will not be honored **

• September 3, 2019 : Abstracts due (REQUIRED)
• September 10, 2019 : Submissions due
• November 9, 2019 : Notification of first review cycle of first review cycle results
• January 6, 2020 : Revised paper submission due for second review cycle
• January 22, 2020 : Final notification for second review cycle
• January 31, 2020 : Camera-ready material due from authors

Paper abstracts and complete papers must be submitted electronically through the online submission system: https://new.precisionconference.com/~vr

All VR Journal Papers submissions should be formatted using the IEEE Computer Society TVCG journal format described at http://junctionpublishing.org/vgtc/Tasks/camera_tvcg.html. Including a teaser image on page 1 is encouraged but not required.

Contacts

Journal Papers Chairs:

• Joseph Gabbard, Virginia Tech, USA
• Joaquim Jorge, INESC-ID / Técnico Lisboa, POR
• Torsten Wolfgang Kuhlen, RWTH Aachen University, GER
• Maud Marchal, Univ. Rennes, INSA/IRISA, FRA
• Anthony Steed, University College London, UK

journalpapers2020 [at] ieeevr.org
program2020 [at] ieeevr.org

Conference Papers Chairs:

• Ferran Argelaguet, INRIA, France
• Gerd Bruder, University of Central Florida, USA
• Regis Kopper, Duke University, USA
• Marc Erich Latoschik, University of Würzburg, Germany
• Tabitha Peck, Davidson College, USA
• Christian Sandor, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR
• Xubo Yang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

conferencepapers2020 [at] ieeevr.org
program2020 [at] ieeevr.org

ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual Reality Continuum and Its Applications In Industry (VRCAI 2019) (co-located with ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2019) 
Venue: Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia Date: 14-16th November 2019 Website:http://vrcai.acm.org
================================================================== 
On 14-16th November 2019 the 17th ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry (VRCAI 2019), will take place just before SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 (17-20th, Dec) in Brisbane, Australia. We welcome submissions on the following main themes: 
VRC Fundamental and Related Technology in Computer Graphics, VRC Systems, Interactions, Virtual Storytelling, Virtual Production and Industry Applications in the VRC. 
Topics of interests include (but are not limited to): 
FUNDAMENTALS · Ubiquitous VR/AR/MR · Intelligent VR/AR/MR · Distributed and Collaborative VR/AR/MR · Machine Learning for VR/AR/MR · Robotics and Tele-Presence · Aural, Haptic and Olfactory Augmentation · Geometrically, Physically and Image Based Modeling · Real-time Visual Tracking and Registration · 3D Modeling, Interpretation and Reconstruction · Multi-resolution and Multi-scale Methods · Level of Detail, Model Compression and Simplification · Networking, Streaming, Cloud, Latency and Bandwidth Methods · Real-time Rendering, Image-based Rendering, and 3D Auditory · Rendering and Visualization of Large-scale Models · Procedural, Physically-based or Data-driven Animation · Avatars and Virtual Community · Metaverse · Immersive Virtual Environments 
INTERACTIONS AND INTERFACES · Collaborative and Interactive Virtual Environment/VR · Multimodal Interface · Visual Interface · Speech Interface · Haptic/Tactile Interface · Natural Interface · 3D Enabled Devices · Interaction Design · Sketch-based interfaces · Social and Interactive Computing and Media · Interactive Graphic Design · Interactive Sound Design · Human Factors and Ergonomics 
SYSTEMS · Clustered VR · High Performance VRC Computing · Large-scale Simulation · Immersive and Semi-immersive Systems · Projection and Display Systems · Active and Passive Stereo Systems · 3D Scanner, Digital Mock-up and Reverse Engineering 
APPLICATIONS · Aerospace · Architecture, Construction and Building · Arts and Film · Education, Virtual Classroom and Learning, and Training · Engineering and Design · E-Commerce · Video Games/Entertainment/Location Based Entertainment . Virtual Storytelling and Virtual Production · Visualization · Geology, Geography and GIS · Life Science, Medicine and Healthcare · Manufacturing · Transportation and Logistics · Fashion 
We invite original and unpublished submissions of full Papers (8 pages) or short Papers (4 pages). All accepted papers will be published in the VRCAI 2019 Conference Proceedings and included in the ACM digital library (EI-indexed). All accepted papers will be presented at the VRCAI 2019 Conference. 
Selected papers will be recommended for submitting an extended version in special section of the following journals:
Computers and Graphics (Elsevier, SCI-indexed). Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds (John Wiley, SCI-indexed). 
IMPORTANT DATES Paper Abstract Due (Optional): 3rd September 2019 Paper Submission: 18th September 2019 Posters/Demos Submission: 25th SeptemberPaper Acceptance Notification: 1st October 2019 Camera-ready Paper: 8th October 2019 Conference: 14-16th November 2019 
Industry Track:
Non ACM Digital Library publication industry program information can be found here, https://vrcai.siggraph.org/program/industry/

Program Chairs
Kenny Mitchell (Disney Research and Edinburgh Napier University)
Takuji Narumi (University of Tokyo)
Mashhuda Glencross (University of Queensland)

Industry Chairs
Ken Anjyo (University of Wellington)
Eugene Ch’ng (University of Nottingham, China)
Ayumi Kimura (University of Wellington)

Demos Chairs
Tim Marsh (Griffith University)
Sandy Ressler (NIST)

Posters Chairs
Jenny Vuong (University of New South Wales)
Ulrich Engelke (Data 61, CSIRO)

Conference Chairs
Joaquim Jorge (INESC / ID & Univ Lisboa)
June Kim (University of New South Wales)
Herman Van Eyken (Griffith University)

VES Announces Special 2019 Honorees

The VES announces the 2019 inductees into the VES Hall of Fame, the newest Lifetime and Honorary members and this year’s recipient of the VES Founders Award. The names of this year’s VES Fellows will be announced later. The honorees and Hall of Fame inductees will be recognized at a special reception in October.  

“Our VES honorees represent a group of exceptional artists, innovators and professionals who have had a profound impact on the field of visual effects,” said Mike Chambers, VES Board Chair. “We are proud to recognize those who helped shape our shared legacy and continue to inspire future generations of VFX practitioners.”

VES Hall of Fame

This distinction is bestowed upon a select group of professionals and pioneers who have played a significant role in advancing the field of visual effects by invention, science, contribution or avocation of the art, science, technology and/or communications.

Walt Disney (1901-1966)

Walter Elias Disney was an American entrepreneur, animator, voice actor, TV and film producer. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced a score of innovations in the field of animation.  As a film producer, Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards earned by an individual, having won 26 Oscars.  His creative vision gave rise to the groundbreaking theme park Disneyland and Disney Brothers Cartoon Studios, the origin of Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)

Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in cinematic history. His filmography includes SPARTACUS, LOLITA, DR. STRANGELOVE, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (Academy Award winner for Best Special Visual Effects), A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE SHINING.  All of Stanley Kubrick’s films from PATHS OF GLORY until the end of his career, except for THE SHINING, were nominated for Academy Awards or Golden Globe Awards.

Stan Lee (1922-2018)

Stan Lee was an American comic book writer, editor, publisher and producer.  He became Marvel Comics’ primary creative leader for two decades, leading its expansion from a small division of a publishing house to a multimedia corporation that dominated the comics industry. In collaboration with others at Marvel, he co-created numerous popular fictional characters, including superheroes SPIDER-MAN, THE X-MEN, IRON MAN, THOR, THE HULK, THE FANTASTIC FOUR, BLACK PANTHER, DAREDEVIL, DOCTOR STRANGE, SCARLET WITCH and ANT-MAN. Lee was an inductee into the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, and a recipient of NEA’s National Medal of Arts as well as the VES Lifetime Achievement Award.

Founders Award Recipient

Awarded to any individual member of the VES who has significantly contributed to the success of the VES.

Susan Thurmond O’Neal

Susan Thurmond O’Neal joined the VES in the late 1990s and has served as a member of its global Board of Directors and the Executive Committee. For many years, she served as the Chair for the global Education Committee and currently chairs the Membership Committee – and she has been instrumental in the work to grow the Society by leading the bi-annual membership review and approval process. 

O’Neal is currently a recruiter for BLT Recruiting, Inc and has worked as an Operations Manager at The Mill, Operations Director at Escape Studios in Los Angeles and as an Account Manager at Side Effects Software, Inc.  She started her career in visual effects at Digital Domain in 1993, where she worked in finance and operations before turning to production.  O’Neal’s credits include T2: 3D – BATTLE ACROSS TIME, TITANIC, THE ITALIAN JOB, WEST WING, DEUCE BIGALOW 2: EUROPEAN GIGOLO as well as a host of music videos, commercials and other works.

Lifetime Member

Awarded for meritorious service to the Society, the industry and for furthering the interests and values of visual effects artists around the world.

Michael Fink, VES

Michael Fink began working in film on THE CHINA SYNDROME.  He was hooked, and worked on films such as STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE and BLADE RUNNER before becoming a Visual Effects Supervisor on WAR GAMES (BAFTA Nomination).  He has since worked on THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION, BATMAN RETURNS (Academy Award and BAFTA nominations), BRAVEHEART, MARS ATTACKS!, X-MEN, X-MEN 2, THE GOLDEN COMPASS (VES Award nomination, BAFTA and Academy Award winner), AVATAR, TRON: LEGACY, TREE OF LIFE and LIFE OF PI.

Fink directed the first Coca-Cola Polar Bear spot in 1993, which was one of the earliest widely seen examples of 3D fur on a CG creature. Fink is a founding member of the Visual Effects Society and a former VES Board Member.  He is a member of the Visual Effects Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and has served on the Executive Committee.  He is currently a Professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and Chair of the Division of Film and Television Production.  He holds the Georges Méliès Endowed Chair in Visual Effects at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. 

Honorary Member

Awarded for exemplary contributions to the entertainment industry at large, and for furthering the interests and values of visual effects practitioners around the world.

Mike Brodersen

Mike Brodersen is one of the owners of FotoKem, currently serving as its Chief Strategy Officer. Thanks to Brodersen, FotoKem has been a valuable longtime partner with the VES, including serving as the Los Angeles site for the VES Awards nomination events for many years. 

In his 25-year tenure at the company, Brodersen has helped incubate services including film scanning and recording, digital intermediate, digital restoration, software development and file-based dailies. Established in 1963 and one of the last remaining full service film laboratories in the world, FotoKem provides color grading, digital imaging, VFX, graphics, audio, and a variety of other post-production services from dailies through finishing.  In recent years, the company has been able to provide post-production, imaging and VFX support services on titles like ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, AQUAMAN, STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, DUNKIRK, VICE, GREEN BOOK, KONG: SKULL ISLAND, BETTER CALL SAUL and HOMELAND.