COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Reports on Computer Graphics

2 /2007 Vol. 19

Reports of the INI-GraphicsNet

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Editorial Office:

COMPUTER GRAPHIC topicsFraunhoferstrasse 564283 DarmstadtGermany

Phone: +49 (0) 6151/155-146Fax: +49 (0) 6151/155-446E-mail: Bernad.Lukacin@inigraphics.net

Publisher: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. mult. Dr. E.h. Hon. Prof. mult. José L. Encarnação

Issue Editors:Dr. Ing. André StorkDr. Stefan GöbelEditor: Bernad Lukacin

Art Direction:Detlef Wehner, Ralph Klepper, Bernad Lukacin

Translation:Elfriede Fitschen

»COMPUTER GRAPHIC topics« is publishedsix times a year. All rights reserved. Notto be reprinted without approval of theeditor.

Technische Universität Darmstadt, Fachgebiet Graphisch-Interaktive Systeme (TUD-GRIS)Technische Universität Darmstadt, Interactive Graphics Systems Group

Zentrum für Graphische Datenverarbeitung e. V. (ZGDV)Computer Graphics Center

Fraunhofer-Institut für Graphische Datenverarbeitung (IGD)Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics

COMPUTER GRAPHIC 2/2007, Vol. 19

topics

Seminare, Kongresse, Workshops imZentrum für Graphische Datenverarbeitung

www.zgdv.deWindows 2003 Server Grundlagen03.-05.09.2007Installation, DNS, Active Directory (AD), Gruppenverwaltung, Sicherheit,Backup/Restore

Softwaretest in der Praxis04./05.09.2007Testplanung, Risiken, System- und Abnah-metest, Reviews, typische Probleme

Adobe InDesign - Grundlagen10./11.09.2007Benutzeroberfläche, Textbearbeitung, For-mate, Zeichenwerkzeuge, Tabellen, Ebenen

Workshop 3D Stadtmodelle: Anwen-dungen und Forschung12.09.2007Softwareübersicht, Geodatenbanken, Datenqualität, Visualisierung, WebServices, Datenaustausch

Web 2.0 Intensivseminar14.09.2007Blogs, Podcast, Social Software, Folksono-my, Web als Plattform, WEB 2.0, Ausblick WEB 3.0

Java 5 Tiger Grundlagen17.-19.09.2007Konzepte, Eclipse, Programmierung, Streams, Exceptionbehandlung, Java, Applets, Assertions, Team-Entwicklung

Barrierefreie PDF-Dateien erstellen und optimieren17.09.2007BITV und PDF, Grenzen, PDF oder HTML?, Workflow, Tagged PDF, Erstellung aus MS Office, bestehende PDF`s optimieren

Cisco PIX Firewall - Einführung24.-26.09.2007Cisco PIX Security Appliances Produktfami-lien, Firewalls Designs, PixOS, SSH, Telnet, HTTP, AAA, sichere DMZ, Q&A

Adobe Photoshop Grundlagen01./02.10.2007Paletten, Adobe Bridge, Bilder bearbeiten und optimieren, Arbeiten mit Pfaden und Ebenen, Text und Farben

Repräsentation von Geodaten mit der Geography Markup Language GML309.10.2007XML , Namespaces, Xlink, XML Schema, Zuschnitt von GML3 auf Applikationen, ISO 19107 und Umsetzung, AFIS/ALKIS®/ATKIS-Modell der AdV, CityBML

ALKIS® Einführung und Modellierung10.10.2007ALKIS®-Struktur der AdV, Migration, Grundlagen der NAS, GeoInfoDok

NAS Die neue Schnittstelle im Liegen-schaftskataster17.10.2007ATKIS®-ALKIS®-AFIS®-Referenzmodell, Abbildung von Geschäftsprozessen, Ablei-tung, Referenzdatenbestand, Analysen

Darmstädter Kongresse

Semantic Web undWissenstechnologien18. Oktober 2007 in Darmstadt

Im Rahmen der Darmstädter Kongresse in Planung:

• 6. Kongress XML und ALKIS®

• Mobiles GIS• 3. Kongress 3D Stadtmodelle

Anmeldung ZGDV Darmstadt Aus-, Weiter- und FortbildungHugo Kopanitsak, Alexandra OhlyPhone: ++49 (0) 6151/155-160+163E-Mail: awf@zgdv.de

http://www.zgdv.de/

SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics17./18.09.2007XML, SVG-Viewer, PlugIns und nativ, Text, Transformationen und Pfade, Elemente-Gruppen, Masken und Filtereffekte, Scrip-ting, Animationen, Webmapping

Moderne Softwareentwicklung24.-26.09.2007Sprachen; Prinzipien: Single-Responsibility, Package Coupling u.v.m.; Pattern: Ab-strakte Fabrik, Besucher, Kompositum...; Prozesse: Extreme Programming, MDA

Adobe Acrobat PDF24.09.2007Acrobat Distiller, Dateien bearbeiten, Formularfelder, Adobe Life Cycle Designer, PDF und HTML, Adobe Catalog, Preflight

LaTeX Professionelle Textverarbeitung01./02.10.2007Übersetzung, Gleitobjekte, Formelsatz, Ein-binden von Graphiken, Index und Glossar

Adobe InDesign04./05.10.2007Navigation, Musterseiten, Seitenlayout, Nummerieren, Verketten, Tabellenfunktion, Bibliothek, Farbauszüge, Im-/Export

Adobe Illustrator08.-10.10.2007Objekte erstellen und bearbeiten, Pfade, Flächen/Konturen, Verläufe, Stilpalette

Videoschnitt mit Adobe Premiere Pro15.10.2007Grundkonzepte, Digitalisierung, Schnitt, Farbkorrektur, Betitelung, Videoausgabe

Anmeldung ZGDV Rostock Aus-, Weiter- und FortbildungEva Mahnke, Ute WoitzelPhone: ++49 (0) 381/4024-159E-Mail: awf@rostock.zgdv.de

http://www.zgdv.de/

Computer GraphicsComputer graphics is thetechnology with which pic-tures, in the broadest senseof the word (syntheticgraphics as well as grayscaleand color images), are cap-tured or generated, present-ed, manipulated, digitallyprocessed in the appropriateform for the respective appli-cation and merged with oth-er, nongraphical applicationdata. Computer graphics alsoincludes the computer-sup-ported integration and manip-ulation of these pictures with

other kinds of data, such asaudio, speech and video (tocreate multimedia systems)as well as correspondingadvanced dialog and inter-active technologies. Con-cepts which characterize theimportant topics of computergraphics are, to name a few,visualizing information, visu-al data mining, visual com-puting, Virtual Reality (VR),Augmented Reality (AR),interactive Internet servicesand secure image transmissionand communication.

– 3D Interaction and Visualization

– Agent Technologies

– Animation

– Augmented Reality

– Computer Supported Cooperative

Work (CSCW)

– Database Services

– Geometric Modeling / CAD-Model

– Graphical Information Systems

(GIS), Facility Management

– GUI / Interaction Technology

– Image Analysis, Image Quality

– Imaging

– Internet- & Intranet-Solutions

– IT-based Learning and Training

– Medical Data / Image Processing

– Mobile Computing Technology

– Modeling and 3D-Reconstruction

– Multimedia and Hypermedia

– Multimedia User Interfaces

– Perceptual Computing

– Product Data Management

– Rendering

– Scientific Visualization

– Secure Image Communication

– Semantic Modeling

– System Integration

– Telecommunications

– Ubiquitous Computing

– Usability and Utility Engineering

Technologies & Methods

– Virtual Prototyping

– Virtual Reality

– eApplications

– eServices

– eBusiness

– Medical Information Technology

– IT Security and IT for the security

in our society

– Visualization and Interaction in

traffic technology and traffic

telematics

– Ambient Intelligence

– Games and Edutainment

– Usability and Utility Engineering

– Software for the product and

production development

CAD Systems Become Steadily More Important for Industrial Applications 5

Innovative Visualization Techniques Facilitate the Work with Complex Data 7

Virtual Reality Facilitates and Accelerates Product Development 10

Augmented Reality – A Mix of Real and Virtual World Supporting Maintenance and Training 13

Optimized Simulations Accelerate the Product Development Process 16

The New Main Research Areas of Fraunhofer IGD 18

20 Years of Computer Graphics – an Interview With Prof. Dr. José L. Encarnação and Prof. Dr. Dieter W. Fellner 20

Go Digital: Toss Pin Boards and Flip Charts 22

INSCAPE: Interactive Storytelling for Creative People 25

GameDays 2007 27

RUBRICS

News 29Events 36StudINI 45Graduations 46Study and Diploma Theses 48

ContentsINI-GraphicsNet

Join the new technologyComputer Graphics is one of the key technologies of a modern information

and knowledge society. The INI-GraphicsNet develops market-oriented, state

of the art technology to foster and to support the innovation process of

enterprises as well as the social development. Numerous businesses use our

know-how to implement sustainable products and services. We achieve this

with, for example:

Our expertise allows us to work on a multitude of industry-related topics

which include, amongst others:

CG topics 2/20074

When, in 1987, the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer GraphicsResearch IGD was founded theWorld Wide Web was still a vision ofsome scientists for the future, Virtualand Augmented Reality was betterknown from science fiction filmsthan from industry, the buildings andmachines were designed by drawingsonly interpretable by experts, andproduct developments had to betested again and again with real pro-totypes.

That all this has changed, is alsoowed to the scientists of FraunhoferIGD. For more than twenty years theyhave been working on transformingfigures and formulas into images,thus enabling many applications wenow take for granted. So, for exam-ple, Virtual Reality could only beestablished in the industry, becausethe scientists found technologicalsolutions to create complex three-dimensional worlds in real time. Alsomedical applications like the comput-er tomography and three- or four-dimensional ultrasound pictures wereunthinkable without the develop-ments of computer graphics.

From the very beginning, one ofthe core markets for developmentsof computer graphics was the indus-trial sector. Those companies werethe first to use comprehensively andarea-wide CAD systems in the con-struction process, to use the first Virtual Reality systems, and it is theindustry that will most benefit fromthe current developments aroundSimulated Reality. Especially verycompetitive industries like the auto-mobile sector but also the machinebuilding industry, so successful inGermany, experience increasinglyshorter product life cycles. New tech-nologies promising shorter productdevelopment times at lower costsand a higher quality will thereforeplay an increasing role.

How development, production,maintenance, and servicing processeshave changed within the last twodecades thanks to computer graphicsdevelopments shall be described inour special supplement pages of thistopics edition on the occasion of the20th anniversary. In five contributionswe will give you an overview on ourwork of the last twenty years. Wewill show you how all this began:with developments mainly dealingwith the CAD applications new atthat time. So Fraunhofer IGD hasconsiderably contributed to defineCAD standards, which, in the firstplace, allowed for the triumphantsuccess. Already in the first fewyears, the scientists also developednew visualization technologies andinteraction tools more in line withthe user habits than the programs.An important step to increase theacceptance of such systems. Thesedevelopments have persisted tilltoday. A new dimension of visualiza-tion was then offered by the VirtualReality which, from the beginning ofthe 1990s, has started its triumphalprocession from the research labora-tories to the industry, slowly first,then quicker and quicker. Mainly inthe automobile industry Virtual Reali-ty is nearly standardly used today, forinstance to carry out design reviews.The more the developments in thefield of Virtual Reality had advanced,the more obvious it became that alsofor documentation and instructionpurposes new solutions must beincluded. So, in the late 1990s, firsttests were executed with the so-called Augmented Reality. Also thistime, the automotive industry wasthe driving force of the develop-ments. In addition to the visualizationof complex models and the interac-tion with those objects the overlay ofvirtual models with real objects hasbeen in the focus of Fraunhofer

IGD’s scientists. Another step intothis direction has been done by thescientists with their work dealingwith Simulated Reality. Here applica-tions have come into being since2005 supporting the engineers in thecomplex search for the optimal prod-uct design.

So far the overview of our past andcurrent work. But you will also find alittle foretaste of our future topics.So our research work will increasinglydeal with semantics in the modelbuilding domain, with library ques-tions in the context of multi-dimen-sional objects, as well as with theconfluence of computer graphics andcomputer vision.

In addition to our special subject,the 2nd Computer Graphics topics2007 is as usually also giving aninsight into some current projects ofthe INI-GraphicsNet members. Fur-thermore, we are reporting on newsand events of the last months andpresenting our scientists who havereceived a PhD in the last months.We wish you an interesting reading.

Dieter W. Fellner

EDITORIAL

From the early days of Fraunhofer Institute for Computer GraphicsResearch IGD research on the simplifi-cation, qualitative improvement, andacceleration of industrial developmentand production processes was one ofthe main areas of the institute’s scientif-ic work. In 1987, the year of founda-tion, industrial enterprises and, aboveall, design and architecture firms werefar from a standard use of CAD sys-tems in their construction and develop-ment processes. A widespread use ofthe systems was barred by a lackingstandardization, by missing interfacesbetween the different systems, and bythe fact that CAD systems were scarce-ly adjustable to the needs of the users.

Since its foundation, Fraunhofer IGDhas worked on resolving these difficul-ties to clear the way for an area-wideuse of CAD systems in the industry.Among these activities were for exam-ple the following projects executed inthe first years of the institute:

Generation of a GKS-compatibleGraphics System with PHIGS FunctionalityIndependently from the research activi-ties in the field of CAD programs, stan-dards for computer graphics had to beestablished, in order to pave the wayfor a wide usage of those technologies.In the year 1987, the two 3D graphicssystems GKS-3D and PHIGS were nearstandardization. The portability ofgraphics applications between both sys-tems, however, was obstructed by amissing upward compatibility of GKS-3D to PHIGS. In April 1987, Fraunhofer IGD started to solve thisproblem and to push ahead the imple-mentation of PHI-GKS. The aim of theimplementation was to provide an envi-ronment allowing to run GKS and

GKS-3D, as well as PHIGS programs, toprovide more functionality in one sys-tem.

Integration of the ConstructiveEngineering Geometry into Geo-metric Modeling In the early days of Fraunhofer IGD theuser interfaces of many CAD systemswere oriented by their own problemsrather than the users’ workflows andrequirements. Computer and userworld diverged widely. The systemsforced their users, having poor or noinformatics knowledge at all, to changetheir work methods. So it was nearlyimpossible to achieve a high useracceptance, which was one of themajor problems impeding the generaluse of CAD systems.

To solve this problem, to allow theusers a more intuitive work with theCAD systems and so increase theacceptance of the systems researchersof Fraunhofer IGD developed a »front-end« modeling system. The construc-tive geometry methods were offeredwithin the dialog module and formedthe communication interface to theuser. To create a user interface as clear,solid, and simple as possible the devel-opers attached great importance to thefollowing: – Functions grouped according to

their semantics – Graphics-oriented dialog using sym-

bols– Auxiliary texts reporting the finished

or expected actions– Tests before any action of the user

as a protection against errors – Reduction of the work with key-

board – Sufficient information on the screen

about the system status– Use of a high-resolution screen

German Abstract

Bereits zu Beginn der Arbeiten desFraunhofer IGD bildeten For-schungsarbeiten zur Vereinfa-chung, qualitativen Verbesserungund Beschleunigung industriellerEntwicklungs- und Produktions-prozesse einen der Schwerpunkteder wissenschaftlichen Arbeitendes Instituts. Im Gründungsjahr1987 waren Industrieunterneh-men und vor allem Design- undArchitekturbüros noch weit davonentfernt, standardmäßig CAD-Sys-teme in ihren Konstruktions- undEntwicklungsprozessen einzuset-zen. Einem weitverbreiteten Ein-satz der Systeme standen vorallem die mangelnde Standardisie-rung, fehlende Schnittstellen zwi-schen den verschiedenen Syste-men sowie die kaum vorhandeneAnpassung der CAD-Systeme andie Anforderungen der Benutzerim Weg.Seit seiner Gründung arbeitete dasFraunhofer IGD daran, dieseSchwierigkeiten zu beseitigen undden Weg für einen flächendecken-den Einsatz von CAD-Systemen inder Industrie zu ebnen.

CAD Systems Become Steadily MoreImportant for Industrial Applications

Julia Mayer

CG topics 2/2007 5

19871987

CG topics 2/20076

Another step on this way to a betterusability of CAD systems was done byFraunhofer IGD from the year 1991 on,when they defined industrial design asa CAD application area. In this connec-tion the scientists dealt with generatingtools that allow users to draft ideaswith pen and paper as usual. It was theaim to allow the sketchy input of anygeometry elements by pen and tabletalso with 3D CAD systems. With theCyberStilo the institute succeeded indoing so some years later.

CAD Reference ModelAt the end of the eighties the situationof CAD systems was marked by a mul-titude of application technologies, arapid spread, and a considerable inno-vation speed. This resulted in incompat-ible systems, inconsistent and incompa-rable structures, and a different andambiguous terminology. So there was aneed for a reference model coveringacross the application areas all aspectsof the CAD technology and serving as asystem scheme and basis. A workgroup formed within the department 4of the Gesellschaft für Informatik GIe.V. (society for computer science)should give a first draft of the CAD ref-erence model. Fraunhofer IGD too wasactive in this project. The institute’s taskwas to further develop the intention inprojects. For this aim the scientists havespecified the architecture for the refer-ence model and prepared a studyabout possible formal specification lan-guages.

The joint project CAD ReferenceModel was funded by the former Fed-eral Ministry of Research and Technolo-gy (BMFT) after a start-up phase fromOctober 1991.

Presentation in STEP RespectivelyGraphic Information in the CADExchange FormatOne of the institutes key activities in thefirst few years was the contribution tothe development of the internationalstandard STEP. STEP stands for »stan-dardization of the external representa-tion of product definition data«. Thestandard which is still used today was agreat leap forward for the use of CADdata. The generated interface allowed

an exchange of product defining data,so-called CIM data, between CAD sys-tems as well as between CAD systemsand upstream or downstream CAislands like CAP, CAM, or FEM. Theobjective was to exchange via STEP notonly technological but also organiza-tional product data for the first time. SoSTEP was a conceptual extension of thecommon national standards VDA-FS,IGES, and SET, all generally confined tothe exchange of the geometry data ofthe product. Furthermore, with STEPthe prerequisite for digital product life-cycle management had been created.

Fraunhofer IGD’s task in the scope ofthe STEP project concentrated on twoareas: presentation and geometry. Inthe field of presentation it was aboutdefining a neutral interface containingthe instruction for generating a two-dimensional attributed view of the 3Dproduct model. For this aim a presenta-tion sequence for the geometry andlabeling was defined. A mechanism

was established allowing to assign pre-sentation attributes to the geometryand the labels on each level of the hier-archy and, at the same time, controllingthe inheritance of the presentationattributes. In the field of geometry, thecooperation focused, on the one hand,on the correction of faulty entity defini-tions and, on the other hand, onrestructuring the existing entities tofacilitate the formation of STEP powerstages.

The internal research activities ofFraunhofer IGD of the years 1987/88 inSTEP were funded by the BMFT in thescope of the project »KCIM in DIN«from March 1988. So, in the firstinstance, the urgently required actionswere formulated and the activities inthe areas considered important rein-forced in cooperation with otherresearch institutions.

Till now, STEP has been one of themost important standards for thedescription of product data.

Figure 2: User inter-face of ARCADE - acollaborative CADtool.

Figure 1: Processingof CAD vehicle parts.

19911988

From the foundation of the institutetill today, visualization has been oneof the core areas per se of the Fraunhofer Institute for ComputerGraphics Research IGD. Visualizationis understood as the transformationof voluminous amounts of data intoimages that serve to recognize andextract the information hidden in thedata. So the information can betransferred more quickly, more intel-ligibly, and in relation to further find-ings. The more CAD and digital cal-culations for the industrial productdevelopment and construction grewin importance the more a clear visu-alization of these processes andproducts also grew in importance.Consequently the visualization ofcomplex processes has more andmore moved into the focus of thescientists.

But not only the »visualization« ofcomplex data has played an impor-tant role when scientists of

Fraunhofer IGD have dealt with visu-alization technologies. Also thedevelopment of new, intuitive inputtools, that are more geared to theworking world and the social envi-ronment of the users, have beenamong the research topics of theinstitute since the early nineties.

Interactive Visualization of Volume Data (InViVo)Goal of the project started in 1992was to raise the speed and flexibilityof the visualization of big, three-dimensional, scalar fields. Such datafields can be found in many scientif-ic, technical, and medical applica-tions like with 3D measurements oftemperature, pressure, density, orconcentration or with imaging diag-nostic techniques like CT, MRI, and3D ultrasound. InViVo was the firstproject to integrate many new devel-opments of previous years concern-ing lighting models for volume data

German Abstract

Die Visualisierung war und ist eines der Kerngebiete des Fraunhofer-Instituts für Graphische Datenverarbeitungschlechthin. Unter Visualisierungist dabei die Umsetzung umfang-reicher Datenmengen in Bilder zuverstehen, anhand derer die in denDaten verborgenen Informationenerkannt und extrahiert werden. Sokönnen die Informationen schnel-ler, verständlicher und im Zusam-menhang mit weiterführendenErkenntnissen vermittelt werden.Je größer die Bedeutung von CADund digitalen Berechnungen fürdie industrielle Produktentwick-lung und -konstruktion wurde,desto mehr nahm auch die Bedeu-tung der anschaulichen Visualisie-rung dieser Prozesse zu. Und sorückte die Visualisierung komple-xer Prozesse mehr und mehr inden Fokus der Wissenschaftler. Doch nicht nur die »Verbildli-chung« komplexer Daten spielteund spielt dabei eine wichtige Rol-le, wenn sich die Fraunhofer IGDWissenschaftler mit Visualisie-rungstechnologien befassen. Auchdie Entwicklung neuer, intuitivererEingabewerkzeuge, die sich mehran der Arbeits- und Lebensweltder Nutzer orientieren, gehört seitAnfang der 90er Jahre zu den For-schungsthemen des Instituts.

Innovative Visualization TechniquesFacilitate the Work with Complex Data

Julia Mayer

CG topics 2/2007 7

Figure 1: CASUS

19921992

CG topics 2/20078

and the faultless scanning of discretedata fields. In the course of the fol-lowing years InViVo was systematical-ly developed to support medicalapplications. It was a breakthroughwhen, in 1994, Prof. Dr. GeorgiosSakas for the first time successfullyachieved a three-dimensional visual-ization of an embryo in the womb onthe basis of ultrasound data. In theyear 1997 the software license wassold to MedCom, a spin-off of Fraunhofer IGD founded by Prof.Sakas. Since then, they have success-fully realized medical applications onthe basis of InViVo.

VIS-A-VIS: Development of a Visu-alization Toolkit for Parallel Sys-tems Especially in the technical/scientificarea like fluid mechanics, medicalresearch, or material researchimmense amounts of data accrue. Tointerpret these data without a graph-ical visualization was extremely diffi-cult and time-consuming. To find asolution for this problem was thegoal the researchers of FraunhoferIGD pursued with the developmentof the VIS-A-VIS toolkit. This visual-ization system was based on high-quality computer graphics methodsfor 3D presentation which – to allowan efficient interactive visualizationand to counter the growing real-timerequirements in visualization – shouldbe as far as possible parallelized forimplementation. One of the biggestproblems the scientists had to facewas the high computing intensity ofthe direct graphical presentations ofmeasurement and simulation datadefined in the three-dimensionalspace in high quality. To solve thisproblem an improved front-to-back(FTB) projection algorithm was devel-oped serving to compute the presen-tations. Their resolution could beselected independent of the resolu-tion of the dataset. This method metthe accuracy requirements, but wasoptimized for the opaque visualiza-tion of volume data. Then, in 1992,this module for the visualization ofvolume data was parallelized on amulti-processor workstation.

In the same year, also the extensivebut efficient ray casting method forthe visualization of volume data wasported onto a multi-processor system(MANNA) developed by theGesellschaft für Mathematik undDatenverarbeitung (society for math-ematics and data processing) GMD.With this implementation the perfor-mance of the massive parallel com-puter system and the selected distri-bution strategy could bedemonstrated.

In the scope of the VIS-A-VIS tool-kit also new interaction devices like adata glove or a trackball were devel-oped enabling to operate severaldimensions at the same time andoffering a more intuitive handling ofthe systems.

In addition to the visual implemen-tation of numeric files the scientistsalso worked on the transformation ofnumeric data into audible signals. Bycombining visualization and sonifica-tion they wanted to increase theinformative value of the presentedinformation and to offer additionalinformation.

ISVAS – Interactive Software for aVisual AnalysisA possible application for the VIS-A-VIS toolkit was shown by theISVAS project. ISVAS, a visualizationsystem for the analysis of the resultsof finite element calculations devel-oped at Fraunhofer IGD, was used in1992 for example to depict numeri-cally calculated flow fields in a usefulway. This technology provided con-siderable improvements especially forcomplex geometries of the flowchannel and very large datasets,required for example for the simula-tion of injection processes in carcylinders.

Already in 1992, long before theInternet became a mass medium, theFraunhofer IGD scientists adopted inISVAS also an interface for an onlinevisualization.

MoVi – Mobile VisualizationIn 1995 scientists of Fraunhofer IGDbegan to reflect about how themobile end devices could be used tocombine mobility and informationsupply. Goal of the joint projectMoVi, Mobile Visualization, funded

Figure 2: User interface of the ConeptViewer.

19951994 1995

CG topics 2/2007 9

by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft(German Research Foundation) DFG,was to develop mechanisms for thevisualization of multimedia informa-tion on mobile, networked comput-ers in a user-friendly, comfortableform. What today mainly applies tomobile phones was at that time oneof the greatest challenges for devel-opments for the first laptops: theirlimited local resources and their limit-ed performance. Also the »compara-bly tiny display« (annual report 1995)was one of the special challenges thescientists had to face.

Internet-based VisualizationIn the mid-1990s the Internet wasstill a medium for some technophilespecialists. But at Fraunhofer IGDsome first research work started onvisualization technologies of theWWW. So technologies of theWWW-based, distributed visualiza-tion of scientific/technical datashould be developed and evaluatedin a pilot project by order of and incooperation with two partners. Thegoal was to realize a wide range ofvisualization solutions with Internettechnologies to be able to quickly,flexibly, and individually provideexperts and laypersons with graphicalrepresentations of data. For this aim

different visualization approaches forthe use in the Internet and theIntranet were prepared and imple-mented prototypically. Using tech-nologies new at that time like Java,CGI connections, and VRML individu-al visualizations could be realized ona fast special computer of the visual-ization provider and then displayedon a WWW client of the user. Fromlate 1996 the visualization solutionsdeveloped in the project were testedinternally.

The HEyeWall® – A PresentationSystem Unique WorldwideUntil a few years ago it was not pos-sible to quickly and easily representcomplex products and processes inreal time. There were no large-sizepresentation systems to display satel-lite pictures, vehicles, simulations ofair traffic, or complex information inan extremely high resolution and,thus, in every detail. This gap wasclosed by the presentation systemHEyeWall® presented for the firsttime to the public in 2004. Its resolu-tion of 6144 x 3072 pixels lies abovethat of the human eye. So far theviewer had to accept blurred con-tours, pixels, and muddy colors, butwith the HEyeWall® he can nowexamine from any position details in

a unique depth of focus and 3D ren-dering. Therefore, the system that ismeanwhile marketed as a product isideal for the presentation of complexproducts and processes.

19971996

Figure 3: The HEyeWall®: a worldwird unique presentation system.

In the mid-1990s, the use of CADand CAE systems in the automotiveindustry was advanced enough toprovide the basis for an implemen-tation of the first virtual prototypes.Using Virtual Reality (VR) technolo-gies in the industry the constructionof physical prototypes should bereduced or even avoided, thusspeeding up the product develop-ment process and reducing thecosts. Already in 1990, FraunhoferIGD started to do research work inthe field of Virtual Reality. Over theyears, the institute has with a VRtoolkit developed system modulesfor all areas of Virtual Reality, run aVR demonstration center, andinstalled the worldwide first 5-sidedCAVE. The research and develop-ment work performed at FraunhoferIGD has considerably contributed tocarry Virtual Reality into the indus-try.

Here some examples of Fraun-hofer IGD’s activities in the field ofVirtual Reality:

Demonstration center »VirtualReality«In the framework of an SME pro-gram of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft theFraunhofer demonstration center»Virtual Reality« was set up in1993in cooperation with the FraunhoferInstitutes IAO, IBP, and IPA. Thegoal was to realize over a periode offive years a demonstration and com-petence center for VR within the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. For thispurpose demonstration centers werebuilt up in the four institutes. In thefocus of the demonstration centerat Fraunhofer IGD were especiallysmall and medium-sized enterpriseswhich should benefit from this tech-nology. Fraunhofer IGD was the

only German institute at that timeoffering solutions in the whole sys-tem area and giving support in thedesign of applications, as consul-tants and usage planners.

Before the demonstration center’sfoundation Fraunhofer IGD hadalready generated system modulesfor all areas of Virtual Reality, theso-called VR Toolkit. Also the VIS-A-VIS rendering system of FraunhoferIGD conceived as a universal systemcould be used. This system couldhandle different renderers from acommon object handler. Further-more, additional modules could bedeveloped based on the real-timemode implemented in VIS-À-VIS,which allowed the realization ofapplications from the virtual world.

One of the projects realized in thedemonstration center was the »Vir-tual Design«. Here a special VR envi-ronment for the import and presen-tation of CAD model data wasgenerated. It was based on the VRToolkit of Fraunhofer IGD and sup-ported the preparation and conver-sion of a multitude of CAD datatypes so that all existing modelscould be easily integrated. As thedevelopment of the needed VRinfrastructure means high invest-ment cost for enterprises, thedemonstration center could at thattime already offer the execution ofpresentations as a service. So CADplanning data could virtually mani-fest and be experienced by anybody.

From 1996 the lab was extendedby a 3-sided CAVE consisting of sev-eral stereographic projection sides(floor and side walls). For the firsttime the user was present with hisown body in the computer-generat-ed world.

German Abstract

Mitte der 90er Jahre war der Ein-satz von CAD- und CAE-Systemenin der Automobilindustrie weitgenug vorangeschritten, um eineBasis für die Umsetzung erster vir-tueller Prototypen zu bilden. Zieldes Einsatzes von VR-Technolo-gien in der Industrie war es, denBau physikalischer Prototypen zureduzieren oder ganz zu vermei-den und durch virtuelle Modelle zuersetzen, um so die Produktent-wicklung zu beschleunigen undKosten zu reduzieren. Erste Arbei-ten im Bereich der Virtuellen Rea-lität begannen am Fraunhofer IGDbereits 1990. Im Laufe der Jahreentwickelte das Institut mit einemVR-Toolkit Systembausteine füralle Bereiche der Virtuellen Rea-lität, betrieb ein VR-Demonstra-tionszentrum und installierte dieweltweit erste 5-Seiten CAVE.Durch seine Forschungs- und Ent-wicklungsarbeiten auf diesem Feldtrug das Fraunhofer IGD maßgeb-lich dazu bei, die Virtuelle Realitätin die Industrie zu tragen.

Virtual Reality Facilitates and Accelerates Product Development

Julia Mayer

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VR System for the Visualizationof Vehicle Structure Components In 1996, Fraunhofer IGD, by orderof BMW AG, designed one of thefirst VR systems that were integrat-ed into the production process. Itwas the aim to develop a VR systemfor the visual analysis of vehiclestructure components. Based on ademonstrator developed in the pre-vious year the data export from the»Virtual Workshop« and the importinto the »Virtual Design« systemwas coordinated with Tecoplan undrealized within the project. Using agraphical surface the user was ableto import the geometries of thestructure components, processthem, start the VR system to viewthe selected components with theinput and output device BOOM(Binocular Omni Oriented Monitor),and perform different actions.

Virtual Reality for Assembly andMounting SimulationBackground of the project, also real-ized by order of BMW AG, was thatat that time the mountability andserviceability of components in theautomotive industry could only betested by a very cost- and time-intensive model-building. The proto-types served design engineers totest for example the assembly pro-cesses of the planned components,to discuss arising problems, and tomodify constructions which hadthen again to be built as prototypes.To considerably optimize these inef-ficient planning steps FraunhoferIGD developed a VR system for thesimulation of assembly and mount-ing. This included, on the one hand,the connection of the VR systems toCAx and PDM environments withBMW and, on the other hand, theuse of special features and interac-tion components in the VR system

itself. Aim of the project was todirectly import the constructed datafrom the CAD environment into aVR system, ensuring that all thosequestions were mapped in the virtu-al environment that previously couldonly be answered by means of realprototypes. In the final BMW bench-mark tests the system of FraunhoferIGD showed clear advantages com-pared to other VR systems.

The first 5-sided CAVE World-wideWith the opening of the new Fraunhofer IGD building in 1997also the worldwide first 5-sidedCAVE was installed. Due to the pro-jections on 5 sides the disturbingshadows of 3- and 4-sided CAVEson the floor projection could beeliminated. Two-handed interactionpossibilities, the user’s full freedomof movement, the 1:1 representa-tion of the objects, and the possibili-ty to discuss the results with otherengineers, make the CAVE the opti-mal output device for digital proto-typing. Therefore, most of the CAVEprojects were and are realized in thescope of digital prototyping withenterprises from the automotive andshipbuilding industry and from plantand aircraft construction.

IVIP – Virtual Product Develop-mentThe idea that a general digitizationof the product development processis one of the keys for increasing thecompetitiveness of enterprises wasthe starting point of the lead projectIVIP funded by the German FederalMinistry of Education and Research.From 1998, 50 partners workedwithin the project on questions aris-ing from the use of digital proto-types in the product development.The goal was to provide an integrat-ed overall solution allowing a com-pletely digitized product develop-ment. Fraunhofer IGD was involvedin two sub-projects: The softwareconnection of a force feedback sys-tem for virtual environments to theVR system »Virtual Design II« andthe development of digital testbeds,

Figure 1: Virtual Design in the 5-sided CAVE.

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supporting hybrid testing of digitaland physical prototypes. The aim ofthe latter was to create an efficientarrangement of tests covering thephases planning, installation, realiza-tion and analysis of tests.

OpenSG – The Open SourceScene GraphThe development of OpenSG beganin 1999 with the aim to elaborate afreely available scene graph featur-ing – in addition to a high renderingperformance – the following: – Portability– Multi-threading support– Support of several graphics

pipelines– Support of clusters– Extensibility – Flexibility

The kernel of OpenSG was devel-oped at Fraunhofer IGD. Today,OpenSG is the basis for numerousVR projects and is continuouslyadvanced by a worldwide developergroup.

CAx/VR Integration Tools for theSupport of DMU and VP ProcessesAround the turn of the millenniumthe development of digital mock-up(DMU) and virtual prototyping (VP)had technically advanced so far thatthey were in fact ripe for the practi-cal use in the industry. This processwas, however, prevented in manyareas of the producing industry bythe very time-consuming transitionfrom construction, simulation(CAD/CAE), and product data man-agement (PDM) into Virtual Reality,by a poor computer support, andlacking internal know-how. One ofthe core activities of Fraunhofer IGDsince the turn of the millennium hastherefore been the realization oftools for a better integration of VRsystems into the production process.Goal of the different projects in thisdomain is an effective support ofthe processes to digital mock-upand virtual prototyping.

Among others, the joint project»Digital Mock-Up Visualization inproduct conception and down-

stream processes« (DMU-VI) hascontributed to this aim by introduc-ing DMU tools for improving a con-sistent, supported digital productdevelopment and an optimization ofthe product development processes.The task of Fraunhofer IGD withinthis project was the conception and specification of the DMU-VI systemarchitecture as well as the develop-ment of the CAD server being thelink between an engineering envi-ronment (CAD/CAE/PDM) and VRfor the immersive real-time visualiza-tion of complex product models.Also the analysis of relevant stan-dards as to their role in and theirimpact on DMU-VI was part of theinstitute’s activities.

In the project »Integrated VRInterface« the CAD server prototypi-cally realized in cooperation withvrcom GmbH in the DMU-VI projectwas brought to product maturityuntil March 2000. The heart of theVDDP (Virtual Design Data Prepara-tion) is a graphical editor for thepreparation of modules and compo-nents allowing to import 3D CADmodels in a parametric representa-tion, to tessellate them in a suitableway, and to optimize them in theirrepresentation quality. Furthermore,model errors like miscalculated sur-faces or multiple surfaces can becorrected. Another elementary com-ponent of VDDP is a converterallowing to import CAD modelsfrom CATIA (a CAD system used inmany areas of the automobile andaerospace industry) into VDDP. Alsoa CORBA-based interface for theonline connection to PDM systemswas realized. The crucial property ofVDDP, however, is the fact that alsousers without special VR knowledgecan now generate digital prototypesin a considerably shorter time thanbefore. For complex componentsthe effort could thus be reducedfrom several working days to a fewhours.

Figure 2 (right) and3 (bottom): Twoexamples, renderedwith OpenSG in real-time.

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The more the developments proceed-ed towards digital product develop-ment and planning by means of VRtechnologies the clearer it becamethat the documentation of these pro-cesses in the conventional way, likemanuals with text, illustration, andphoto material, was not optimal. Inthe late 1990s first attempts startedat Fraunhofer IGD to superimposereal objects with virtual data, graph-ics, and instructions to give theworkers support – the idea of the so-called Augmented Reality (AR) wasborn and a first pilot project wasrealized in cooperation with BMWAG.

Fraunhofer IGD has since beeninvolved in numerous projects thatshow how big the potential of Aug-mented Reality is for the industrialproduction, service, and maintenanceas well as for training purposes.

AVALON - Basis for VR and ARApplicationsAvalon is an extensible X3d/VRMLenvironment for Virtual and Aug-mented Reality. It was jointly devel-oped by ZGDV and Fraunhofer IGD.The development started in 1997and has continued till today. In 2000,the scene-graph OpenSG was includ-ed. This resulted in a very powerfulsystem used as a basis for many pro-jects.

Using Avalon even computerlaypersons will be able to create newapplications for different domains bymeans of script commands. Thismeans that the user can interact witha 3D model previously imported toAVALON, for example the model of aship, and perform physically basedsimulations. AVALON enables the useof PC clusters, also the intelligentconnection of several computers for

German Abstract

Je weiter die Entwicklungen inRichtung digitaler Produktent-wicklung und Planung mit Hilfevon VR-Technologien voranschrit-ten, desto klarer wurde, dass dieDokumentation dieser Prozesse inherkömmlicher Form, wie etwaHandbüchern mit Text, Illustratio-nen und Fotomaterial, nicht opti-mal war. Ende der 90er Jahre star-teten am Fraunhofer IGD ersteVersuche, reale Objekte mit vir-tuellen Daten, Graphiken undAnleitungen zu überlagern und soden Mitarbeitern Unterstützungzu bieten - die Idee der so genann-ten Erweiterten Realität bzw. Aug-mented Reality (AR) war geborenund ein erstes Pilotprojekt inZusammenarbeit mit der BMW AGwurde realisiert.Seitdem war und ist das Fraunho-fer IGD in zahlreiche Projekteinvolviert, die zeigen, wie groß dasPotenzial der Augmented Realityfür die industrielle Produktion, Ser-vice und Wartung sowie für Trai-ningszwecke von Mitarbeitern ist.

Augmented Reality – A Mix of Real andVirtual World Supporting Maintenanceand Training Julia Mayer

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Figure 1: ARTESAS supports service and maintenance workers.

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more computing power, and the useof present-day VR installations like,for example, the CAVE. It can beused under the operating systemsWindows and Linux and so beinstalled on nearly any computer.

ARVIKA – Support of WorkingProcesses in Development, Pro-duction, and Servicing by Aug-mented Reality TechnologiesBased on an idea sketch submittedby Fraunhofer IGD in the scope of alead project call for tenders in thefield of »Human-Technology Interac-tion« of the BMBF (german federalministry of education and research)the key project ARVIKA – Augment-ed Reality for Development, Produc-tion, and Servicing – was started in1999. A total of 23 partners, usersfrom the aircraft and automotiveindustry and the tool and productionmachine planning, research anddevelopment partners as well asSMEs and integrators - worked morethan three years on user-centeredapplication-driven Augmented Realitytechnologies for an enhancement ofworking processes in development,production, and servicing for com-plex technical products. The imple-mentation had three thematic keyaspects: ergonomic design of the ARsystems, research and developmentof the AR basic technologies, andintegration into the enterprises bypilot application sceneries.

ARTESAS – Instrumentation-freeTracking Systems in Servicing Based on the results of ARVIKAFraunhofer IGD has developed andresearched Augmented Reality basictechnologies for use in the industrialservicing domain in the BMBF projectARTESAS started in 2003. It was theaim to support service technicians bymeans of Augmented Reality in theexecution of service and maintenancework. The technician is equippedwith semi-transparent data glassesand a mobile computer. Via dataglasses the AR system gives him avisual presentation of the differentwork steps directly superimposed tothe real field of view. An extensive

search for information in printed ser-vice and repair instructions is nolonger necessary, the enterprise savestime and thus costs.

In ARTESAS (»Advanced Augment-ed Reality Technologies for IndustrialService Applications«) mainly the top-ics instrumentation-free tracking sys-tem, suited for industrial use, anduser-oriented AR devices accordingto technical and ergonomic aspectswere treated. Fraunhofer IGD mainlyworked on the development ofvideo-based tracking methods andtheir combination with additionalsensor systems. The systems are eval-uated in specific scenarios of theapplication partners.

SketchAR – Collaborative Model-ing and Visualization in MixedRealities With SketchAR the researchers ofFraunhofer IGD succeeded for thefirst time to develop a system that

does not only support a direct mod-eling in the space but also in theAugmented Reality. With the com-puter-supported styling system thedesign phase of the product develop-ment can be shifted into Virtual Real-ity. In contrast to many other VR andAR systems just working with tessel-lated models SketchAR is based on aCAD kernel providing the whole CADinformation including topology andsemantics. Data can also beexchanged via interfaces like CATIA,IGES, or SAT, further interfaces areunder development.

In addition to basic functions likecopy, move, and layers SketchAR alsooffers features to create and modifycurves, surfaces, and 3D primitives.Freehand areas of curves are ana-lyzed to bring them into a mathe-matical form which, if possible, doesnot distort the original curve progres-sion. For the support in the three-dimensional space there are aids like

Figure 3: The Cyber-stilo.

Figure 2: within the ULTRA project, Ultra portable Augmented Reality applicatios for industrialmaintenance are developed

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mirror planes, projection planes, andclip planes, and real 3D snapping andpicking. Also the taping techniquewidely used in the motorcar designto describe characteristic curves atthe vehicle, was moved withSketchAR to the virtual space. Fur-thermore, SketchAR allows collabora-tive scenarios in which, for example,several users work on a virtual modelvia their Head Mounted Displays orlocally at a physical mock-up.

SketchAR is handled with an inputtool specially developed for this pur-pose by Fraunhofer IGD – the Cyber-stilo. The Cyberstilo works via a wire-less connection and allows freehandsketching of objects in the virtualspace. This input tool for productdevelopment in the cyberspace has

been developed in collaboration withBarski Design Studio in Frankfurt.

VAR TrainerAugmented Reality technologies foruse in advanced training have beenrealized by Fraunhofer IGD scientistswith the VAR Trainer (Versatile Aug-mented Reality Simulator for Trainingin the Safe Use of ConstructionMachinery). A combination ofmechanics, electronics, automationtechnologies, computer sciences, andAugmented Reality enables workersto train the handling of differentconstruction machines under realisticconditions. For this aim the learnersits in a driver’s cab. This cab is espe-cially prepared for the Mixed Realityenvironment. The panes of the cab

are varnished in blue. The learnerwears video glasses replacing all blueshares of the picture visible to him bya virtual scene. For this mix of simu-lation and reality the blue-box tech-nology is being used, generallyknown from the film production.

Figure 4: Threedimensional modelsketched in SketchARwithin a few minutes.

Figure 5: With theCyberstilo three-dimensional sketchesiin Virtual Reality canbe created.

20032003

Virtual Reality and, increasingly, alsoAugmented Reality systems havebecome an integral part of the indus-trial product development process ofmany enterprises. But these technolo-gies are primarily suited for a clearvisualization of static states as forexample for design or particular main-tenance tasks. They can, however, notcover one important process in theproduct development: the simulation.Here the optimal solution must still befound in several simulation proce-dures, which mostly means by trialand error. Especially for simulations ofcomplex processes this is very tediousand cost-intensive. To transfer thesimulation into the virtual space andto automate the optimization processin view of particular requirementswould enable industrial enterprises tolaunch new products in a shortertime, in a better quality, and at a low-er price.

Based on these considerations,Fraunhofer IGD has been working forsome years on different methods toautomate simulation processes, thustaking another step towards the goalof a completely digitized productdevelopment and production process.

ViSiCADE – Cooperative Interac-tion With SimulationsNumerical simulations are an impor-tant element of the analysis in digitalprototyping and, therefore, an essen-tial part of the product developmentprocess. The way from an adequatepreparation to the representable resultof an analysis is, however, time-con-suming and error-prone. Cost esti-mates show that in classic R&D analy-ses about 90 per cent of the worktime is used for data preparation andresult evaluation, without in fact con-sidering a modification of the simula-

tions. The scientists of Fraunhofer IGDhave for some years now aimed atfinding new solutions for a flexibleanalysis of digital models and proto-types in due course. In the EU project»ViSiCADE – Virtual Environment forthe Seamless Integration of CAD/CAEtasks into Virtual Reality« the scientistsare working on an innovative simula-tion environment which, based on VRtechnology, allows the integration ofCAD and CAE in VR. So the timeintervals of modeling and evaluationprocesses are reduced. The VR envi-ronment enables to load a CAD mod-el, to derive automatically and interac-tively an analysis model, and tomodify the model.

With ViSiCADE different users shallbe enabled to interactively influencesimulations. Also the entire analysisprocess is covered, from data editing,identification, and manipulation of therequirements to grid refinement andsimulation to post-processing. Sincewith today’s computational power noreal-time analysis is possible with com-plex models, ViSiCADE will includenew methods of »Sub-Modeling«,allowing a simulation-compliantdeduction of simpler analysis models.

In further development steps theresearchers are working on integrat-ing the simulation visualization withAR technologies. By superimposingthe visualizations onto the physicalprototype different dynamic or staticproperties of the prototype shall beidentified.

SR-PRO – Simulated Reality inProduct DevelopmentWith the project SR-PRO the Fraun-hofer Institutes IGD, SCAI, and ITWMhave developed a working environ-ment for planners, developers, andscientists since 2004. Their concept

German Abstract

Systeme der Virtuellen Realitätund zunehmend auch derErweiterten Realität sind mittler-weile bei vielen Unternehmen festin die industrielle Produktentwick-lung, Produktion und Wartungintegriert. Doch diese Technolo-gien sind hauptsächlich zuranschaulichen Visualisierung stati-scher Zustände wie etwa desDesigns oder bestimmter War-tungsaufgaben geeignet. Einwichtiger Prozess im Rahmen derProduktentwicklung, die Simula-tion, kann damit nicht abgedecktwerden. Hier muss noch immer inmehreren Simulationsdurchgän-gen, quasi durch Versuch und Irr-tum, die optimale Lösung gefun-den werden. Gerade beiSimulationen komplexer Prozesseist dies sehr langwierig und kos-tenintensiv. Die Simulation in denvirtuellen Raum zu verlegen undden Optimierungsprozess in bezugauf bestimmte Anforderungen zuautomatisieren, würde Industrie-unternehmen ermöglichen, neueProdukte innerhalb kürzerer Zeit,in besserer Qualität und preisgün-stiger auf den Markt zu bringen.Basierend auf diesen Überlegun-gen, arbeitet das Fraunhofer IGDseit einigen Jahren an verschiede-nen Methoden, um Simulations-prozesse zu automatisieren und sodem Ziel eines vollständig digitali-sierten und integrierten Produkt-entwicklungs- und Produktions-prozesses einen Schritt näher zukommen.

Optimized Simulations Accelerate theProduct Development Process

Julia Mayer

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basing on the idea of Simulated Reali-ty. Simulated reality is understood asthe approach to combinescientific/technical simulation withmethods of Virtual Reality. In the pro-ject SR-PRO the researchers are com-bining applications for current simula-tion and optimization algorithms withmethods from the field of SimulatedReality. They aim at supporting engi-neers by means of Simulated Reality ina quick search for optimal productsolutions and to facilitate decisionmaking. In the scope of the projectthe scientists are developing an inter-active working environment which willallow engineers to visually modify sim-ulation results in real time, to comparedifferent alternatives of a product,and to optimize the design accordingto the specification of target criteria.A newly created desktop VR workplace allows input and interaction

both in 2D and in 3D. The scientiststest their vision of Simulated Reality intwo application scenarios: the vehiclecollision simulation of the car bodyand the simulation of a productionprocess for nonwoven fabrics.

Example crash test simulation: Thecrash behavior of automobiles hasbecome a crucial purchase criterion.For advertising purposes marketingdepartments effectively present theclassification according to NCAP andthe distinction of vehicles with thecorresponding stars. For years theautomobile industry has banked onthe simulation of crash behavior basedon digital models to gain insight intothe crash behavior at an early stage ofthe development process. Besides thecrash behavior, there are some more,partly competing development goalslike the weight reduction and emis-sion minimization so that the develop-

ment process of a vehicle is a multi-criteria optimization problem. This iswhy a user-conducted, interactiveoptimization process is realized in theproject. The user visually exploresinterim results of the simulation gain-ing knowledge which will influencethe optimization.

This example of a crash test simula-tion furthermore points out anotherchallenge the researchers are facing inthe SR-PRO project: If simulations areexecuted with three-dimensionalmodels where time as a forth dimen-sion plays an important role immenseamounts of data accrue. The displayof the car model alone can consist ofseveral million elements. To representthe complete deformation of the carin the course of the simulationbetween 20 and 100 different timesteps are stored. So for the completesimulation we can observe data vol-umes of up to several hundred giga-bytes. If the user wants to graphicallyview and evaluate the results the sim-ulation computer must transfer thedata to the local computer. This trans-fer and archiving often cause greatproblems in practice. Even latestgraphics hardware cannot cope withthe data volume and so the transfervia network can cause bottleneckswhich again lead to long and unpro-ductive waiting times for the visualiza-tion result.

To solve this problem the Fraun-hofer scientists are using the so-calledfour-dimensional progressive datatransfer in SR-PRO. First a simplifiedversion of the simulation model is sentto the computer. As soon as the sys-tem receives further data packagesthe user receives exact details of themodel. This method shows severaladvantages: As not all data are sentsimultaneously there are no transferrestrictions in the network. Also theload for the local computer is low.Furthermore, the system avoidsunproductive waiting periods. Themodel appears on the monitor in ashorter time and so the viewer canstart to analyze the simulation whilethe remaining data are still sent to thecomputer.

Figure 1: Cooperati-ve analysis of flowfield around a turbi-ne (CFD simulation)

Figure 2: Car bodymodel for crash-worthiness simula-tion.

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The more the processes related toproduct development, production,service, and maintenance are digi-tized and transferred to the virtualspace and the more the involvedtechnologies are advanced, the morenew questions arise in the researchfocus of Fraunhofer IGD. So in nearfuture one of the key issues for theindustry, and, therefore one of thecrucial topics of Fraunhofer IGDtoday, will be the search for long-term usage and archiving methodsfor digital multi-dimensional models.This includes the development ofsolutions for an automatic indexingof the models, for abstract genera-tion, and for a content categoriza-tion, since only in this way the mod-els can later be retrieved and newmodels be generated on the basis ofexisting material. Another topic thatwill be in the focus of the FraunhoferIGD researchers is the maintenanceof semantics during the whole digitalmodeling process. The particular con-struction processes shall be stored bynew ways of model design and themodels be provided with additionalinformation to enable for examplethe described archiving, to accelerateand facilitate the generation of newmodels, and to facilitate simulationsthat have been very time-consumingso far. First approaches are offeredby the Simulated Reality technologiesas already presented. The third majortopic the scientists of Fraunhofer IGDaround Professor Fellner will dealwith is the overlapping area of com-puter vision and computer graphics.Here new potential for enterprises isdeveloping, for example for a morerealistic digital reproduction of prod-ucts or the use of computer visiontechnologies for Augmented Realityapplications. In the following, the

new key topics of Fraunhofer IGDand their relevance for industrialproduct development and productionprocesses shall be described in detail.

Maintenance of Semantics Duringthe Whole Modeling Process The semantic web, in which informa-tion is processed in a way thatmachines can find it based on itsmeaning and identify contexts, hasbeen a catchword for some yearsnow. It is indeed relatively easy todefine important key terms in textdocuments. With three-dimensionaldigital objects like in mechanicalengineering it is, however, muchmore difficult to define and todescribe basic properties of a particu-lar object or an object class. Butespecially in this area the semanticenrichment of models across themodeling process contains a greatpotential. So new interaction andvisualization methods could be real-ized based on semantic information,the construction process of an objectcould become comprehensible, andthe additional information alone willallow for a reasonable archiving ofthe digital data.

One example for an approach serv-ing to describe three-dimensionalforms as well as additional informa-tion on the forms is the so-calledGenerative Modelling Language. Dif-ferent from traditional modeling lan-guages three-dimensional objects arenot described by means of geometricforms but by functions. So inmechanical engineering, for example,not only the final form of the objectcan be stored but also the construc-tion process itself. Furthermore, theGenerative Modeling approachallows to fall back on already solvedconstruction tasks to reuse them in a

German Abstract

Eines der entscheidenden heuti-gen Forschungsbereiche desFraunhofer IGD ist die Entwicklungvon Langzeitarchivierungssyste-men für digitale multimedialeModelle. Ziel ist es, dreidimensio-nale Modelle zukünftig wie Text-dokumente archivieren zu kön-nen. Damit verbunden ist auch dieSuche nach Lösungen für die auto-matisierte Indexierung der Model-le, Generierung von Abstracts undInhaltkategorisierung für zukünfti-ge Abfragen und Neugenerierun-gen aus vorhandenem Material.Ein weiteres zukünftiges For-schungsthema ist der Erhalt vonSemantik über den gesamten digi-talen Modellierungsprozess hin-weg. Das dritte wichtige Feld fürdie zukünftige Forschung des Insti-tuts ist der Bereich der Überlap-pung von Computer Vision undComputergraphik. Durch dasZusammenwirken von ComputerVision Technologien und Compu-tergraphik können mehr Anwen-dungen realisiert werden, die inUnternehmen zur Optimierungvon Produktentwicklung, Produk-tion, Vertrieb, Instandhaltung undBetrieb eingesetzt werden kön-nen.

The New Main Research Areas of Fraunhofer IGD

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similar situation. In contrast to theconventional representation of three-dimensional models in geometricprimitives like triangles, points, orNURBS patches, the Generative Mod-elling Language allows a very com-pact description of highly complex3D objects. This description can beevaluated, represented adaptively,and viewed interactively in a veryefficient way. Thereby the user canalso interactively modify the modelparameters. The Generative Mod-elling can be used wherever digitalmodels are prepared based on firmrules as it is the case for example inthe automobile manufacture or inmechanical engineering.

The Confluence Between Comput-er Vision and Computer Graphics Computer vision is already used indifferent applications in the industry.Computers support for example qual-ity control and measure simpleobjects. In concurrence of computervision technologies and computergraphics even more applications canbe realized to be used in enterprisesfor the optimization of productdevelopment, production, distribu-tion, maintenance, and service. Based

on computer vision, for instance, inthe product design process, photore-alistic renderings can be prepared,which give models such a realisticlook that they are hardly distinguish-able from the realistic model. Theserenderings facilitate the designreviews and can be used in market-ing to offer their customers a realisticimpression of the product. Also forSimulated Reality applications, wheresimulation technologies are com-bined with Virtual Reality, the imagesgenerated by computer vision serveas a basis for the generation of thesimulations. On the other hand, thevirtual objects faded in in the Aug-mented Reality are generated withcomputer graphics technologies, andalso for the model-based visualizationof objects the computer vision isusing models that are generated withcomputer graphics methods.

Solution of library-oriented ques-tions in the context of three- andhigher-dimensional objects Product development and construc-tion in the industry is increasinglytransferred to the digital three-dimensional space. Nowadays, wecannot imagine industry without

CAD and CAE programs and, moreand more, also virtual models forvisualizing the developed products.Nevertheless, there are hardly anysatisfying solutions for a long-termarchiving of these models so far.How can sensible abstracts for thedigital models be generated? Howcan they be indexed? How can anautomatic content categorization beeffected and how can the models beretrieved later, easily and quickly?How can the data be compressed ina way that they need as little storagespace respectively as little transmis-sion time as possible? To solve thesequestions will soon be one of thegreatest challenges for the industryin the context of digital productdevelopment. Even today, FraunhoferIGD is working on providing suchsolutions. It is the aim of the scien-tists that, in future, it will be able totreat three-dimensional models as itis done today with text documents,which are by default provided withkeywords, indexed, archived, and socan be retrieved without any difficul-ties.

The Generative Modeling Language enriches digital models with semantic information.Graphic: Courtesy of TU Graz, Institute for Computer Graphics and Visualization.

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Dear Prof. Encarnação, dear Prof.Fellner, 20 years of Fraunhofer IGDare an occasion to look back on 20years of computer graphics. Whichwere, from your point of view, themost important computer graphicsdevelopments in this time?

Encarnação: The development ofcomputer graphics during the lastdecades was less marked by revolu-tionary leaps than by evolutionarysteps. These led then to an »expect-ed« technological revolution aboutevery five years. Nevertheless, we cansee significant steps in the develop-ment of computer graphics.

So one of the early major stepswas the creation of a reference archi-tecture for computer graphics whichenabled a general program environ-ment. So by creating a referencemodel with interfaces a general pro-gramming level was etablished onwhich all kinds of applications couldbe realized. Another important stepwas the change from vector displaysto raster displays. This allowed forthe first time to display grey values,

colors, and shadings. They provided acompletely new image quality. Inaddition, the foundation was laid fordisplaying real 3D objects. As a thirdimportant step I see the developmentof the interaction devices from thesimple insert/delete input per key-board, lightpen, and mouse to thenatural interaction as it is used e.g. inthe Virtual or Augmented Reality.

Fellner: As Professor Encarnação, Ialso regard the development of newinteraction devices as well as theestablishment of standards as two ofthe most important steps in thedevelopment of computer graphics.Particularly the latter has, in the firstplace, made the applications of com-puter graphics tangible and usablefor the industry. In the followingyears, the progressing of 3D tech-nologies and the acceleration of thegraphics hardware were, from mypoint of view, important points. Fromthe more recent developments, I con-sider above all (semi-)immersive tech-nologies where the user immergesinto virtual worlds, mobile usability

up to the »wearability«, meaning theminiaturization of devices up to theintegration of computer technologyinto everyday articles or clothes, andthe interaction of computer graphicsand computer vision allowing forintelligent environments real mile-stones of computer graphics.

What do you think will be the mostimportant application areas for com-puter graphics technologies in thenear future?

Fellner: I see the potential of comput-er graphics mainly in three domains:First the so-called »closed loops«. It is– as in medicine – mainly aboutinteractively adjusting the plannedand designed models to the modifiedconditions during realization by mea-surements and imaging systems. As asecond important domain I see thecontinuous use of semantics as it isalready aimed at in the field of func-tional DMU, in which also FraunhoferIGD is very active. A third importantapplication field is for me the interac-tion of computer graphics and com-puter vision especially important forthe developing domain of AmbientIntelligence. One of the driving fac-tors I think is the development to»computer graphics on the fly« byincreasingly smaller, better, andfaster end devices.

Encarnação: I agree that AmbientIntelligence is a very importantfuture-oriented domain. But I thinkthat mainly the increasing coales-cence of telecommunication, multi-media, and mobility is leading to thisdevelopment. We all are surroundedby more and more technical appli-ances. This multitude will, sooner orlater, no longer be manageable. Thatis why there has inevitably to be aparadigm shift. If the devices are asubiquitous as light and electricitythey must also be handled as easily.

20 Years of Computer Graphics – an Interview With Prof. Dr. José L. Encarnação and Prof. Dr. Dieter W. Fellner

CG topics 2/200720

Figure 1: The former Director of the Fraunhofer IGD, Prof. Encarnação (left) and the newDirector of the Fraunhofer IGD, Prof. Fellner (right).

20062006

CG topics 2/2007 21

As a second major application area Isee the experimental science forexample in physics or chemistry. Hereuser-friendly devices are neededallowing an evaluation of experi-ments and simulations with real-timefeedback to the lab. As a thirdimportant area I see the so-calledSerious Games transporting theadvantages and technologies of com-puter games to serious, professionalapplication areas like field service,simulation, or planning. The fourthmajor future application area will be,from my point of view, the digitalphotography. Currently a whole gen-eration is growing up using digitalcameras in their leisure time. To inte-grate these pictures in private butalso professional applications willbecome an exponentially increasingapplication area.

Prof. Encarnação, you foundedFraunhofer IGD 20 years ago. Whatwas the impetus?

Encarnação: At that time the possibil-ities at university to work in a prac-tice- and application-oriented waywere somewhat restricted. Particular-ly the permanent struggle for mon-eys for new research projects wascumbersome, protracted, and oftenaffected by university policy reasons.By founding Fraunhofer IGD wecould work more application-orient-ed and computer graphics as a disci-pline was benefiting from the goodreputation of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Finally the foundationof Fraunhofer IGD was one of themilestones for computer graphics onits way to an established disciplineand to an industry-relevant»enabling« technology for the wholeIT world.

Prof. Fellner, you have long accom-panied the institute as a member ofthe board of trustees, you have nowbeen its director for nearly one year.What were, from your point of view,the most important achievementsand accomplishments of the institutein the last years?

Fellner: Besides the technologicaldevelopments of the institute, it is,from my point of view, the greatmerit of Fraunhofer IGD that it hasconsiderably contributed to makingcomputer graphics a discipline appli-cable for the industry and so toestablish it in the industry. For a longtime, the Fraunhofer IGD was theonly research institution to workapplication-oriented thus makingsure that the developments wereadvanced with the industry and usedby it.

Where do you see the priorities ofthe research work of the institute inthe next years?

Fellner: We will of course continue touse the expertise acquired in theinstitute and this will allow a futurefocusing on three major researchlines.

First this will be the acquisition, themaintenance, and the use of seman-tics in the whole process chain ofmodeling. The second focus will beon the overlapping area of computergraphics and computer vision - andwill thereby provide the technicalbasis for the application area ofAmbient Intelligence. And, thirdly,we will deal with transferring»library« questions to the informa-

tion and communication domain inengineering and construction. Forthere are so far no tools availableallowing to classify the models andanimations used in engineering, toidentify their content, to generateabstracts or archive them over a longtime. We want to realize thesethings, which go without saying withclassic libraries, also for the digitalworld.

Prof. Encarnação, Prof. Fellner manythanks fo the interview.

Figure 2: Prof. Encarnação (left) and Prof. Fellner (right) during the interview.

20072007

Even nowadays, the facilitation ofworkshops and meetings is still typi-cally based on archaic tools: shakypin boards with flip chart paper, felt-tip pens, visualization cards and vari-ous adhesive or magnetic symbols.Now there is an alternative to theseantiquated communication processesand intensive time investments: TheFraunhofer Institute for ComputerGraphics Research IGD is now offer-ing Digital Moderation, its market-ready digital solution designed inclose cooperation with professionalfacilitators for facilitating businessworkshops. Digital Moderationimproves the effectiveness and effi-ciency of meetings by combiningproven facilitation methods with theinnovative possibilities of networkedcomputers. It eases the planning andexecution of events, as well as theevaluation, visualization and process-ing of results. It helps organize andfacilitate events, from small work-

shops with 5 participants up to largemeetings with 500 people, as well assupport the e-moderation of virtualworkshops over the Internet.

Innovative Companies NeedWorkshopsWorkshops are an essential part ofoperative decision-making processes.Workshops concentrate the expertknowledge of all involved people.Because of this, companies acknow-ledge the value of workshops fornew impulses and for innovation oncurrent and future projects.

While the importance and com-plexity of workshops has constantlybeen growing during recent years,applied methods and tools for facili-tation have basically stayed the same.Inflexible structures like flip chartsand glue dots still appear on theagenda. Few participants dominatethe discussions, and constructive dis-cussions are limited to group work

German Abstract

Digital Moderation steigert dieEffektivität und Effizienz einermoderierten Veranstaltung durchdie Kombination bewährter Mo-derationsmethoden mit den inno-vativen technischen Möglichkeitenvernetzter Computer. Es erleich-tert die Planung und Durchfüh-rung der Veranstaltung sowie dieAuswertung, Visualisierung undWeiterverarbeitung der Ergeb-nisse. Dabei eignet es sich sowohlfür Workshops mit 5 Teilnehmernals auch für bis zu Großveranstal-tung mit 500 Teilnehmern, oderzur e-Moderation von virtuellenWorkshops über das Internet.

Go Digital: Toss Pin Boards and Flip ChartsDigital Moderation – Experience Active Meetings

Dr. Peter Tandler

CG topics 2/200722

Figure 1: Contributions are made by participants using laptops. The submitted ideas are collectedby a workshop server.

CG topics 2/2007 23

and coffee breaks. The documenta-tion of results is cumbersome, timeconsuming and often even impossi-ble.

Advantages of Digital Modera-tionDigital Moderation brings manyadvantages. Various methods of facil-itation are available, such as singledot questions, rankings and cluster-ing. A special editor allows the quickand easy planning and execution ofworkshops.

The facilitator can observe thewhole process at any time. All opin-ions, contributions, assessments andother activities are processed digital-ly. The results of a workshop areavailable immediately. Digital Moder-ation automatically creates clearlyarranged and well-structured meet-ing minutes for the whole workshop.

Superior EfficiencyDigital Moderation improves the effi-ciency of events: All data which is

entered during the meeting is pro-cessed digitally and can be presentedonline immediately. The whole work-shop process is more effective andmore direct. This is achieved throughthe parallel input of contributions, aprocess that makes the time-consum-ing writing and collecting of resultsunnecessary. Digital Moderationenhances the facilitator to presentthe collected data faster and in abetter structured way. The timesaved can be used for the actual rea-son for the workshop: finding solu-tions to problems and creating novelideas.

Improved ParticipationParallel input of contributions by par-ticipants and the immediate digitalprocessing optimize the data-flowand communication, improving theinvolvement of your participants.With Digital Moderation, participantsperceive group processes as motivat-ing, fast and effective. Results aredeveloped and ranked by all partici-

pants, causing a high degree of iden-tification, motivation, commitmentand team-spirit among the group.Even uncommunicative people aremotivated, as it is not necessary forthem to speak in front of the groupor to stick paper cards on flip chartsor boards.

Higher QualityThe motivating dynamics of DigitalModeration have a positive effect onthe quality of meeting results. Thecorporate visualization of results anda better way to solve group problemssupport a stronger coordination of allparticipants’ competences. Theanonymous submissions reduce theeffects of nominal members: there isno way for participants to orientthemselves on the contributions ofother participants. Thus, pressure toadhere to the hierarchy or to con-form to the majority does not occur.This leads to straight and authenticresults.

Figure 2: Digital Moderation supports two modes for participants to enter contributions: turn taking – each participant submits a contribution –or group discussion – the group at a table must agree on one common contribution.

CG topics 2/200724

Extensive Scalability: from 5 to 500ParticipantsDigital Moderation provides flexiblescalability. Events, from small work-shops with about 5 participants up tolarge meetings with 500 people, canbe organized and facilitated.

Better OverviewInformation technology deals withthe counting, evaluating and process-ing of participants’ contributions. The

consequent use of large projectionsand screens eases the integration ofdigital media. Using computer fontsinstead of hard-to-read hand writingimproves the readability of all ideasand helps structure the contributions.Additionally, the meeting facilitatorreceives exact feedback from thesoftware regarding the status of theparticipants’ activities, easily identify-ing and resolving any issue.

New Facilitation MethodsThe use of digital information pro-cessing provides new ways for theevaluation and presentation of resultsworked out at meetings. IT supportallows for novel problem-solvingtechniques that are not possible withtraditional paper-based workshopfacilitation (like economic efficiencycalculation or cost-benefit analysis).Tools are developed tailored to thecustomer’s needs.

Processing of ResultsDigital Moderation provides econom-ic advantages through effectivenessand efficiency: All materials andresults are handed over in digital for-mat at the end of the meeting andcan be processed directly by theorganization’s IT systems, such asoffice applications or project man-agement tools. Digital Moderationsupports the necessary exchange for-mats such as Excel or XML. Tailoredinterfaces to the organization´s IT berealized upon request.

FlexibilityDigital Moderation is flexibly config-urable according to many facilitationstyles and modularly extensible. Thesoftware can be specially customizedand adapted to the product accord-ing to individual requirements.

LinkFor more information, please visit:www.digital-moderation.com

Points of Contact

Dr. Peter TandlerDr. Christoph HornungFraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, GermanyE-mail:peter.tandler@igd.fraunhofer.dechristoph.hornung@igd.fraunhofer.de

Figure 3: Participants can rate alternatives numerically, the average results are visualized graphically.

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IntroductionContent creation and authoring ofInteractive Storytelling based applica-tions, for example interactive theatre,movies, cartoons, video-games, interac-tive manuals, training simulators, etc.,can be a long and difficult processusing traditional authoring tools, espe-cially for people without programmingskills. Acknowledging the interest ofInteractive Storytelling for both authorsand users who need to experiencemore empowering stories, and relyingon the increasing relevance of thisdomain, the aim of the EU fundedINSCAPE project (EU FP6, IP, IST-2004-004150) is to offer creative people andnot only experts, means to readilytransform their ideas and mentalimages into appealing interactive storiesusing a scalable and intuitive authoringenvironment. In contrast to most of theexisting authoring tools on the market,INSCAPE provides a multi-sensorial (itgets beyond classical screen and mouseparadigms), interactive (it deliberatelyfosters on creation of interactive sto-ries), multi-participant (it enables devel-opment of stories for multiple users atthe same time) authoring environmentbased on a visual language (i.e. the»What You See Is What You Get« prin-ciple).

INSCAPE breaks the traditional cre-ation pipe where stories are authoredand then broadcasted or viewed. Allthe tools provided by INSCAPE areoperable during the experiencing modeof the Story in the INSCAPE system.Hence, the authoring user can partici-

pate in the experience as well anddirectly modify the scenario accordingto the user actions and reactions.

INSCAPE GUI and Overall ArchitectureThe INSCAPE authoring environmentconsists of four categories of softwarecomponents: the core, mandatory plug-ins, optional plug-ins and standaloneapplications (see figure 1).

The core and the mandatory plug-instogether form the main software appli-cation of INSCAPE. The optional plug-ins share interaction and GUI principles,but appear as separate entities withinINSCAPE. The standalone applicationsare linked and possibly share resourceswith INSCAPE (for example database,or native formats), but appear as sepa-rate applications.

In the default setup the core and themandatory plug-ins are represented inthe main GUI with separate windows.These are:– Story Planner– Story Editor– Stage Editor (2D or 3D) and– Object Browser

When opening INSCAPE, all of theseappear simultaneously, and can bemanipulated separately. Figure 2 showsthe main INSCAPE GUI in authoringmode:

On the left there is the Story Planner.The Story Planner is used as a text edit-ing environment, similar to a basicword processor in which text can bytyped or imported/copy and pasted

German Abstract

Der Bereich Interactive Storytelling– eine Erweiterung der klassischenGeschichtenerzählung um Interak-tion – wird zunehmend interessan-ter für Wirtschaft und Forschung.Der Prozess der Storyerstellungund der Content-generierung,unabhängig von der Art derGeschichte, seien es interaktiveMuseumsrundgänge, interaktiveSchulungen im Bereich Training &Simulation, Edutainment Anwen-dungen, storybasierte Computer-spiele, kann ein langwieriger undkomplizierter Vorgang sein. Esexistieren zwar bereits einigeAutorenwerkzeuge, die den Autorbei diesem Prozess unterstützen,doch besonders bei interaktiven,nichtlinearen Stories, zeigen dieseerhebliche Mängel auf.Ziel im Rahmen des integriertenProjekts INSCAPE (EU FP6, IP, IST-2004-004150) ist es, dem Autordie Möglichkeit zu geben, seineIdeen auf einfache Art und Weiseumzusetzen und daraus spannen-de interaktive Stories zu erstellen.Die dafür entwickelte Autorenum-gebung verzichtet auf textuelleProgrammierung und bietet statt-dessen Möglichkeiten zur visuellenStrukturierung und Beschreibungder Story.

INSCAPE: Interactive Storytelling for Creative People

Stefan Göbel, Luca Salvatore, Kristina Cinquegrana

CG topics 2/2007 25

Figure 1: The INSCAPE bundle

CG topics 2/200726

from another source and which con-tains textual descriptions which are nec-essary for planning a story. There is alsoa possibility to import and link referencematerials, for example images, soundfiles, storyboard images, as well asassign expected time for the differentsections.

The Stage Editor (top-middle) is theprimary interaction area where thestage and objects on it are accessedand modified. The Stage Editor alsoacts as the experiencing window allow-ing the users to preview their project.Objects with a physical representation(for example characters, props) are visi-ble in actual size, position, etc. Objectswith no physical representation (likemouse, sound, scripts) are representedwith icons.

The Story Editor (bottom-middle) isthe place for managing and structuringthe story. There are two levels available:the stages and the situations. This is anabstraction of the story. In manydomains, a stage refers to the physicalsurrounding (decor elements) in whichthe action of the story takes place. InINSCAPE, it refers to a global structurefor several situations where commonelements (typically the surroundings)can be defined. A situation is a specificphase of the story, defining all sur-roundings, characters, etc. and theirbehaviours, similar to a scene in its»cinema« meaning. When selecting asituation in the Story Editor, all objectsin that situation are visible in the StageEditor (for manipulation) and the sec-tion of the script in the Story Planner ishighlighted.

In INSCAPE all assets are treated asobjects, once they are imported,whether they are characters, code snip-pets, sound files, etc. – with distinctrepresentations. The Object Browser (onthe right) comes with a set of prede-fined generic objects (like characters,backdrops, props, cameras, lights). Theauthor can drag and drop the objectsinto the Stage Editor or into a Stage orSituation in the Story Editor _ both rep-resentations are updated either way.

A fifth part comes into play whencreating an interactive story withINSCAPE: the Object Editor. The ObjectEditor allows defining all the propertiesof all objects of the story according totheir role and where they belong. Thisis the visual way to »program« the

interactive story by assigning events andactions to the situations, stages, charac-ters, etc. There are two possibilities todefine actions and events: 1. LUAscripts and 2. a PEP-Editor (Plain EnglishProgramming) for the non-program-ming users.

The Story Editor in DetailAs mentioned in the previous chapter,the Story Editor provides one ofINSCAPE’s core functions and authoringenvironments. The Story Editor bridgesrelationships between the Story Plan-ner, the Stage Editor and the ObjectsBrowser and articulates basic storystructures as well as primary interactiverelationships.

Functionally the Story Editor splits aninteractive story into two components:Stages and Situations. The Stage con-tains all (often non-interactive) objectswhich go to make up a particular partof the story and be re-used in severalsituations. Typical example of this mayinclude backgrounds or scene objects ina 2D or 3D story, ambient sounds, etc.The objects with a physical representa-tion (for example 3D models) can becreated with modelling tools like Mayaor 3ds Max and can be imported viathe Objects Browser.

The Story Editor provides a semanticzoom function which shows differentlevels of detail depending on the zoomlevel (for example, the objects on thestage are represented as colour codedsquares depending on the type or for-mat of the object, icons or a thumbnailpreview image within the Stage box).The Stage representation can be setwith a background image which may

be a drawing, photograph or piece oftext. Furthermore the Stage can beassociated with text or images withinthe Story Planner.

A situation contains all the objectswithin the story that are needed forthat particular situation not yet definedat stage level. As with the stage eachsituation is named and may have animage or piece of text from the StoryPlanner attached to it and containsiconic representations of objects.

Associations/Transitions betweenstages and/or situations are representedby arrows. Transitions are defined in theObject Editor and would be triggeredby some interaction (for example timeout, or some interactive event like aclick on a hotspot).

Apart from the work performed inINSCAPE different additional interfaceshave been developed in order to inte-grate/combine INSCAPE componentssuch as the Story Editor into other sys-tems, for instance as an authoring toolto create and drive games.

Current Status and OutlookThe INSCAPE project started in 2004with a 4 year runtime. For the 31st ofAugust 2007 the beta release of theINSCAPE system is planned. Peoplewho are interested in evaluating thesoftware will then have the possibilityto download a tryout version from theINSCAPE website (www.inscapers.com).

Points of ContactDr. Stefan Göbel, Luca Salvatore, ZGDV DarmstadtE-mail: stefan.goebel@zgdv.deluca.salvatore@zgdv.de

Figure 2: The INSCAPE GUI

From May 31 to June 2, 2007 thethird »Game Days« took place inDarmstadt, organized by the Centerfor Computer Graphics ZGDV e.V., incooperation with the Fraunhofer Insti-tute for Computer Graphics ResearchIGD, hessen-it, and the main researchareas Computer Graphics and E-learning of TU Darmstadt. Under themotto »Science Meets Business« theseries of events acts as intermediarybetween science and game industry(developers, publishers, and otherindustries that want to use games for»serious applications«); this year’sfocus being on the topic »SeriousGames«. Learning applications andsimulations are the most prominentexamples of these playful applicationswith a serious background. The moti-vational aspects of computer gamesshall be used to create motivationwhere now boredom is prevailing.The technology for a realistic real-time simulation of complex, three-dimensional environments developedin the game industry shall also beused in other domains like trainingand simulation, marketing and adver-

tising, tourism, or the health sectorand sports.

On the first two days, a great num-ber of lectures gave professional visi-tors an insight into different topicsaround Serious Games. In addition tobasic talks, also particular titles andtheir development were addressedmore in detail, for example GlobalConflicts: Palestine presented by Dr.Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen of SeriousGames Interactive from Denmark.Furthermore, the lecture also dealtwith the problems that may occurduring the development of educa-tional games and the current marketsituation for such games.

Sten Hübner of CryTek gave a lec-ture on the generation of a realisticvirtual world using the game Crysis asan example. Although this title is amere game without any serious pre-tensions, the explanations of thegraphics and physics simulation arealso relevant for serious applications,and the game impressively demon-strated the outstanding results of theFrankfurt enterprise in these coreareas.

German Abstract

Die diesjährigeren GameDayswaren dem Thema »SeriousGames« gewidmet. In verschiede-nen Vorträgen von Experten ausWissenschaft und Spielindustriewurden neue Lernanwendungenund Simulationen vorgestellt. Zielder »Serious Games« es, die moti-vierenden Aspekte von Computer-spielen zu nutzen, um da Interessezu erzeugen, wo derzeit Lange-weile vorherrscht. Ein weitererTrend, den die »GameDays 2007«zeigten, waren Bewegungsspiele,wie zum Beispiel das virtuelleTischtennis der TU Chemnitz oderInteraktives Fußball vom ZGDVDarmstadt. Beim abschließendenFamilientag konnten Kinder undjunge Erwachsene in verschiede-nen Kursen eigene Spiele entwi-ckeln. Die Game Days 2008 sindbereits in Planung und werdenvom 29. bis 31. Mai 2008 inDarmstadt thematisieren»Educa-tional Games« fokussieren.

GameDays 2007

Dr. Stefan Göbel, Robert Arthur Konrad

CG topics 2/2007 27

Figure 1: Children developing games.

CG topics 2/200728

A lecture dealing with playfulmovement games was offered byProf. Dr. Josef Wiemeyer of TU Darm-stadt: Different research projects likethe virtual table tennis of TU Chem-nitz, interactive football of ZGDVDarmstadt, or commercial game titlesand series (for example Wii Sports ofNintendo or EyeToy Kinetics of Sony)show the trend towards activegames.

»In Germany alone 2607 gamescame into the market last year. Atotal turnover of more than one bil-lion euros was achieved«, said FrankHolz, marketing manager of 10tacle,and described that, on the one hand,only a fractional amount of it con-tains Serious Games (primarily educa-tional games for children); that, onthe other hand, however, the trendgoes towards this direction and that10tacle, for example, will increasinglybecome active in this area.

Also politicians support this trend:So, in the context of the opening ofthe GameDays 2007 in Darmstadt,the government of Hesse has forexample offered the »Serious GamesAward« endowed with a prize moneyof 24,000 euros for game developers,explicitly awarding games that can beused for example in advanced train-ing or in the sports and health sector.More information can be found here:www.serious-games-award.de.

As in the past years the GameDayswere closed with a family day:Besides several hands-on games,

talks, and a »view behind the scenes«the kids and young adults could indifferent courses develop games oftheir own. The exceptionally highmotivation of the participants andtheir ultimate success with the devel-opment of their own games indicatethe highly positive contribution ofcomputer games to the studies ofcomputer science or to the subjectsessential for game development likemathematics and physics. The visitorsproved such a great interest thatsome of them asked the organizersfor internships (which have alreadybeen successfully completed, nowresulting in concrete applications forapprenticeships).

On all three days, different exhibitscould be examined and tested. TheZGDV showed, for example, thelearning adventure World ofDinosaurs developed by students. In acomprehensive, three-dimensionalmuseum young people shall fulfilltasks in form of games thus learningsomething about the dinosaurs. Alsoexhibited by ZGDV was InteractiveSudoku presented on a screen and,different from keyboard, mouse, andcontroller, is operated by naturalinteractions (point gestures andspeech commands).

The Fraunhofer Institute for Com-puter Graphics Research and theGames Academy presented with theemo glove a new input device. Theglove measures different body valueslike skin temperature and heart rate.A little dexterity game that becomesthe more difficult the more excitedthe player is demonstrated the func-tionality.

In two play dens unusual inputdevices were presented besides clas-sics, curios, and the latest novelties:For instance different movements andmusic games made the guests sweat;especially the dance mats meanwhileused by different commercial titlesproved to be demanding and sweaty.

Also presented in the play den wasthe MyVITness system of OK-Vital.Based on regular home trainers andbicycles (body racers) the systemallows to play usual computer gameswith physical exertion, in this way,highly motivated, working off excesspounds.

Nintendo demonstrated with titleslike Dr. Kawashimas Brain Joggingand Wii Sports that recently also withthe classical game developers therehas been a trend towards SeriousGames. With such games, the tradi-tional developer and publisher ofvideo games could successfullyextend its target group and bothachieve a conderable increase in salesand also inspire the visitors of theGame Days 2007.

The Game Days 2008 are already intheir planning stage and will takeplace again under the motto »ScienceMeets Business« in Darmstadt fromMay 29 to 31, 2008 and will focus on»educational games«.

Further information:www.zgdv.dewww.zgdv.de/GameDays2007

Point of ContactDr. Stefan GöbelZGDV DarmstadtEmail: stefan.goebel@zgdv.de

Figure 3: Wii Sports inaction.

Figure 2: Interactive sudoku (ZGDV)

CG topics 2/2007 29

TU Darmstadt Confers HonoraryDoctorate upon Hartmut RafflerOn January 17, 2007, the TechnischeUniversität Darmstadt conferred anhonorary doctorate upon HartmutRaffler, Director of Siemens AG. Themathematician Raffler received theaward »in recognition of his path-breaking scientific achievements inthe field of computer science, bothat the university and in industry, andfor his visions, his involvement in cru-cial innovations, and his pioneerwork in information and communica-tion technologies and many years ofsustainable commitment at the inter-face between university and indus-try«. The award was presented byTUD president Professor Dr. Johann-Dietrich Wörner in the scope of anacademic ceremony in the RobertPiloty Building of TU Darmstadt.»Germany owes the work of Hart-mut Raffler important innovations inindustry and science. He has conse-

quently spoken for the dialogbetween enterprises and universitieslike the TU Darmstadt. Therefore it isa special honor for us to confer onHartmut Raffler the degree of DoctorHonoris Causa«, Wörner said.

With his work, Dr. Raffler has con-siderably contributed to establishGermany as an outstanding IT loca-tion worldwide. Among the mainareas of his work rank, for exampleservice-centered communication, per-sonal agents, intelligent autonomoussystems, adaptable human-machineinterfaces, IT security, automaticspeech recognition, and peer-to-peernetworks.

Hartmut Raffler was born inStuttgart in 1946. He studied mathe-matics and computer science atTechnische Hochschule München.After his studies, he worked at UlmUniversity in the field of stem-cellresearch, and in 1979 went toSiemens AG, where he became headof the »Software & Engineering«department in 1993. In 1996 Rafflerbecame head of the department»Information & Communications«,comprising about 350 scientists inMunich, Princeton/USA, and Bei-jing/China. Finally, in 1997, he wasappointed director of Siemens AG.

Learning Corporate Success It is a challenge to establish smalland medium-sized companies suc-cessfully in the long run. To establishand maintain the competing powerof a company, the development ofpromising innovations in the technol-ogy and service domain is indispens-able. But where do the new ideascome from? Can you learnentrepreneurial creativity? »Youcan«, Eva-Maria Mahnke says, headof the department Post-professionalEducation of ZGDV Rostock. »It isimportant to introduce innovativeproduct development processes pur-posefully. This implies that connec-tions, strategies, and methods areidentified and implemented accord-ingly. In short, market requirementsand company services must be har-monized.«

In cooperation with the CIM-Tech-nologie-Zentrum Wismar the ZGDVRostock offers an on-the-job

advanced training program dealingwith »Innovation Management forProducts and Processes in Compa-nies«. The qualification started onFebruary 15, 2007 and mainlyaddresses staff members in the man-agement domain of small and medi-um-sized enterprises in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Two courses with twelve partici-pants each were realized in Rostockand Wismar. The principles of inno-vation management were workedout and, in a practical part, appliedto the specific requirements of theparticular company. The specialrequirements of the enterprises wereidentified in individual sessions,where the implementation of thelearned was accompanied by acoach. Theory, practice, and coach-ing were always closely related toeach other.

The project was funded by theEuropean Social Fund and the gov-ernment of Mecklenburg-WesternPomerania.

IT Companies in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Think in NewDimensionsThe new spirit of optimism wasalmost tangible! Early in January2007 the partners of the network»Go-3D – Efficient Process Chains for3D Computer Graphics« initiated byZGDV had a first meeting. They joint-ly defined aims and expectations ofthe future collaboration. Theexchange of experiences, the jointpreparation of technical solution ele-ments and the commercialization of3D software products of the networkpartners are major aspects of the col-laboration.

Today, 3D models are key applica-tions of computer graphics, used indifferent businesses. Whether wethink of the development of a virtualprototype in car manufacture andshipbuilding or the development ofvirtual training worlds for thedefense of dangerous situations likefloods or forest fires – without com-puter graphics such developmentwere not possible.

In Mecklenburg-Western Pomera-nia, too, significant solutions havebeen developed in this domain by

A-ZNEWS

Hartmut Raffler, Director of Siemens AG

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small and medium-sized enterprises.An example are the flexible softwareand hardware products for the use ofVirtual Reality of the Rostock compa-ny OTLO VR Systeme GmbH. Thisand other firms like CiS GmbH andMarineSoft GmbH will collaborateand implement IT solutions via thenetwork for example in the areas ofproduct development, interactivetraining worlds, and spatial informa-tion systems, also including currentresearch results of the scientists ofZGDV, Fraunhofer IGD, or RostockUniversity.

»No doubt, companies andresearch institutions of the regionhave developed innovative offers inthe 3D domain. But a closer collabo-ration in research, development, andmarketing will certainly increase thesuccess significantly. Especially thenationwide or even international dis-tribution of products of small andmedium-sized businesses from Meck-lenburg-Western Pomerania is still achallenge«, Dr. Uwe von Lukas said,branch manager of ZGDV Rostockand one of the network managers.»With `Go-3D´ we will bundle thedifferent competences and capacitiesof the network partners in a waythat the different companies willhave a sustainable and increasingeconomic success«, von Lukas con-tinues. Therefore, in the long run, itis the aim to establish the networkpartners as key experts in NorthernGermany and the whole Baltic Searegion beyond the funded run timeof three years.

»Go-3D« is supported by the pro-gram »Netzwerkmanagement-Ost«(NEMO) of the Federal Ministry ofEconomics (BMWI). The ZGDV, asone of the winners of the selectionprocess was entrusted with the for-mation and management of this net-work in Mecklenburg-WesternPomerania. In the next three yearsthe institute will coordinate the col-laboration of the participating com-panies and research institutes.

License for Company FoundersMore than ninety per cent of allenterprises in Europe have less thanten employees and therefore belongto the so-called micro-businesses.

Their employees usually have a widefield of responsibility facing chal-lenges as entrepreneur in the enter-prise. The education in Europe -whether at the university or invocational schools – does, however,not sufficiently prepare for such chal-lenges. To go into business for one-self is often difficult, because manypeople lack business managementknowledge having also difficulties inassessing what will lie ahead ofthem. There are sufficient trainingoffers in this area but content andquality are very different and there-fore not comparable on an Europeanlevel. The European project SofE –IDEA School of Entrepreneurs –wants to close this gap: »It is our aimto create a high-quality training stan-dard giving people who are interest-ed in self-employment all overEurope a guideline of which skillsand knowledge are necessary forstarting their own businesses. At thesame time we want to achieve anEurope-wide comparability of know-ledge to make it easier for those whohave completed starter courses tosettle also in other European coun-tries«, Dr. Marion Mienert, managerof INI-Novation GmbH, describes theambitious objective of the project.»The certification program is gradu-ated into three competence levels.After each level the learner takes astandardized examination, similar tothe European Computer DrivingLicence ECDL. The result of this testis documented in a certificate. Itserves company founders as refer-ence for example to demonstrateinvestors that they have necessaryentrepreneurial knowledge and for-mation competences«, Mienertexplains the certification system.

The first level imparts basic knowl-edge. On this basis increasingly com-plex competences are transferred.The last level is seen as incentive fora lifelong learning. The issued certifi-cate will lose its validity after sometime. Then the learner must acquirenew knowledge and prove in anoth-er test that he or she has improvedher/his skills. The content of thecourses covers a total of seven sub-ject areas which are elementary forthe work in micro-enterprises. Thisincludes management, marketing

and organization as well as legal andcultural aspects. To keep the contentup to date they are regularly re-worked by an international expertteam.

The project has run since October2005 and will end in September thisyear. The work has advanced accord-ingly. »The content of the coursesand a model curriculum has alreadybeen designed. We are now organiz-ing the examination system for thecertificates and defining the franchiseconcept which will serve to take theexams in any EU country«, Mienertexplains the current project status.

The project is financed by the Euro-pean Commission and the Europeanexchange program Leonardo da Vinci.

Venture Capital for iPharro – aYoung Enterprise is Taking off It happens again and again that pub-lic Internet pages like YouTubeunwittingly host big amounts of ille-gal video footage. As in most casesthe metadata necessary for recogni-tion have been removed the tracingof proprietary content is difficult. TheiPharro Media GmbH has developeda search machine serving to analyzeand identify video clips faster andmore efficient than with the humaneye. As initial aid the company nowhas got four million euros from theFund IV of the Triangle Venture Capi-tal Group Management GmbH.

Being the only venture capitalist inGermany focusing exclusively onspin-offs from universities andresearch institutes, Triangle is nowsupporting with an investment iPhar-ro, a spin-off of Fraunhofer Institutefor Computer Graphics Research IGDin Darmstadt. The software devel-oped by iPharro matches videos in aclip-to-clip process with video infor-mation from an existing database.David T. Fisher, manager of iPharro,explains: »According to the USPatent and Trademark Office thereare every year losses amounting to250 billion US dollars due to Internetpiracy. Our technology will help toget this problem under control.«

This technology, however, is notonly useful for the detection of copy-right violation, it is also extremelyinteresting for media research. It

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identifies variations in commercials ormonitors different TV channels in realtime to get an overview of the timingof certain commercials. One of thefirst customers benefiting from thispossibility is Nielsen Media Research.

In the scope of a technologyscreening the technology of iPharroMedia GmbH was categorized by theINI-GraphicsNet Stiftung and the INI-Novation GmbH as marketable. Theyhave since watched and accompa-nied the utilization consequently, forexample by supporting the prepara-tion of a business plan, the identifica-tion of financing options, or thesearch for VC investors. They accom-panied the negotiation of the licenseagreements and the negotiation ofthe investment agreement. The INI-GraphicsNet Stiftung will also contin-ue to act as shareholder and supportiPharro in achieving its growth anddevelopment goals.

New Life Quality – Technologiesfor the Generation 65+The demographic change is one ofthe greatest challenges for Europe.For a steadily increasing lifeexpectancy of the population alsoimplies that the countries must findnew solutions for emerging socialand economic problems. Above allthe care of old and sick people inresidential care homes is a constantlygrowing expense factor. For theaffected persons, too, it is in mostcases a great burden to relocate toresidential homes, for it implies togive up their personal autonomy.This is where the project PERSONA(PERceptive Spaces prOmoting iNde-pendent Aging) funded by the EUstarts. The vision of the project part-ners is to provide systems supportingthe autonomy, social relationships,and a healthy way of life of olderpeople. They shall be enabled to staylonger in their familiar surroundingsand to postpone or even avoid amove in an old people’s home.

To realize this vision the researchersare working on a scalable technologyplatform which shall serve as a basisfor future developments in the fieldof Ambient Intelligence. The platformenables different appliances to net-work and communicate with each

other. In this way they get reactiveenvironments which are able to ana-lyze the situation of the user, to rec-ognize his preferences and inten-tions, and to react accordingly. Infuture, analysis tools could, for exam-ple, recognize objects from videodata and signal dangers to the occu-pants. And new, intuitive input toolsallow an effective communicationand interaction with the environ-ment. Also daily activities like takinga shower, cooking, shopping, keep-ing appointments, and observingmedical instructions shall be support-ed by the intelligent systems. Theidea of this Ambient-Assisted Living(AAL) is not restricted to the livingspace of the seniors. The technologyshall permeate as many areas of lifeas possible and include as manywhereabouts as possible, from thehome to the neighborhood to theurban environment.

Fraunhofer Institute for ComputerGraphics Research IGD is a leadingtechnology partner of the project.The Darmstadt scientists are responsi-ble for the specification of the plat-form architecture. This means thatthey see that the platform can beeasily adapted to different applica-tions and different devices. They arealso responsible for a seamless inte-gration of multimedia and the inves-tigation of novel interaction facilitiesin AAL environments. In addition, theinstitute works on the provision of anintelligent middleware.

Further information about the PER-SONA project can be found on theInternet: www.aal-persona.org.

CityValidator – Quality Controlfor 3D City Models Three-dimensional city models aremore and more used in differentapplications: so in tourism for thevisualization of historical sights, incity planning for the development ofnoise and disaster control measures,or by providers of navigation devicesfor the generation of pedestrian andcar navigation systems. The modelsare exchanged in the CityGML for-mat which is based on XML, a stan-dard language developed for theWWW. CityGML allows to considernot only the geometry but also the

semantics and the topology. But test-ing the model quality means consid-erable expenses for providers andconsumers. If, after the delivery of amodel, the customer finds a bug, atroublesome search for the causeswill start. Are there problems withthe hard- or software of the cus-tomer? Or do the delivered dataactually contain faults? These ques-tions must be checked, which willtake a lot of time and effort. »Thereis no tool so far able to automaticallydetect missing elements or syntaxerrors in the model. The softwaredevelopers or their customers musteither test the data manually orresort to XML validation serviceswhich are not very useful for the spe-cial requirements of city models,«Jörg Haist, responsible scientist of thedepartment Graphic Information Sys-tems of Fraunhofer IGD, describesthe initial situation for the project.

With the CityValidator the scientistsof Fraunhofer IGD now offer a toolspecialized on three-dimensional citymodels which automatically detectssuch errors at the push of a button.The CityValidator performs differenttests: »The version activated on theInternet checks if the triangulation inthe model is correct, if there areholes in the geometries, and if theorientation of the triangles is cor-rect,« Haist explains the method. »Inaddition we learn if the buildings aretextured, a necessary prerequisite tomake a city model really intuitive. Ifall three tests are positive we canassume that the models are correctand complete.« A tedious troubleshooting with the data provider andthe client is no longer necessary. Tobe able to adapt the CityValidator todifferent applications and require-ments the basic version can beextended by semantic tests andincluded in spatial data infrastruc-tures as Web Processing Service(WPS).

The CityValidator is a proprietarydevelopment of the Graphic Informa-tion Systems department of Fraun-hofer IGD and is based on the spatialdata server CityServer3D. A first freeversion is available for download onwww.igd.fraunhofer.de/igd-a5.

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Geometric Algebra – GettingResults in a Shorter TimeSo far, geometric algebra has mainlybeen used at universities. Now it shallassist enterprises in saving time andcosts for the development of techni-cal software. Up to now, severalmathematical systems had often tobe combined to generate a programin the technical sector. Geometricalgebra, however, comprises differentsystems. So you need just one systemwhich serves to calculate from geo-metric intuition without having to usepages and pages of formulas. Sospheres, circles, or planes becomemathematical language tools whichcan be directly used for computation.In this way, the software develop-ment process is considerably simpli-fied and accelerated.

In addition, using geometric alge-bra allows an interactive develop-ment. This means that the developerscan immediately check the outcomeof their work three-dimensionally onthe screen and can check from theinput if the algorithm works well.»Due to this technology calculationsin the field of computer animationcan meanwhile be performed up tothree times faster. In the future, weexpect such a performance also forother applications«, Dr. DietmarHildenbrand, scientist at the comput-er science department of TU Darm-stadt, explains. »As many problemsfrom natural science and technologyhave a geometrical background, geo-metric algebra lends itself for a greatnumber of applications. We work onmaking this performance also usefulin the field of computer vision androbotics.« On June 11, 2007, Dr.Hildenbrand introduced in his talk»Geometric Algebra and its Applica-tion in Robotics« this new technolo-

gy at the University of Applied Sci-ences Aschaffenburg. He firstexplained the basic principles of geo-metric algebra and presented asexamples from robotics the inversekinematics and the grasping processof a simple robot.

Business Knowledge – Efficient,Semantic, Well-structured Often employees are wasting valu-able working time going throughsearch results, projects stagnatebecause important contacts cannotbe found in the documents, andexpert knowledge remains unused infiles which have simply not beenfound. The unstructured search forinformation does not only take timeit also causes unnecessary costs. TheSoftware ConWeaver puts an end tothis. Just one entry and the softwarebrowses all the different data sourcesof a company. ConWeaver does notonly include the term entered by theuser but also the translation into oth-er languages and the thematic con-text. Furthermore, the software auto-matically generates from thecompany data a semantic knowledgenetwork. The contained data linksallow to search for the meaning of aword. So ConWeaver automaticallyrecognizes that the word »client« inthe sales database is equivalent tothe word »customer« in the e-mailarchive and »contractor« in the pro-ject documents. »In contrast to con-ventional search machines Con-Weaver creates a relationshipbetween the different data formats.Therefore, the software can efficient-ly search unstructured as well asstructured information sources«, Dr.Thomas Kamps explains, head of theConWeaver team at Fraunhofer Insti-

tute for Computer Graphics ResearchIGD in Darmstadt.

By combining different modules,so-called workflows, the Fraunhoferscientists can adapt ConWeaver tothe special requirements of the com-pany. Also Fresenius Medical Care,the worldwide leading provider ofservices and products for patientswith chronic renal failure, wants tobenefit from the system. The compa-ny has just started to test ConWeaverin the scope of a pilot project in thefield of international controlling.

At the Science meets Businessworkshop »Enterprise Search 2.0 –Well-structured and Quickly throughthe Information Flood« at FraunhoferInstitute for Computer GraphicsResearch IGD Mr. Kamil Isik, techni-cal project manager with FreseniusMedical Care, got again an overviewof present systems for informationstructuring and search.

»The event gave an interestingoverview of the different possibilitiesto structure knowledge in enterprisesand to search for information in aquick and carefully targeted way.After a long period of search, wehave now found with ConWeaverthe system which promises to meetour high requirements. It is especiallyimportant for us that the searchindexing detects commonalities evenin unstructured data and can gener-ate intelligent search lists«, Mr. Isiksaid.

»In the international controlling wehave data in many different formats.The search for the right informationis often complex and time consum-ing. The problem of intelligently con-necting different data types to collectvaluable information for the usershas been solved promisingly. I lookvery much forward to the project as

Calculation of all angles of a robot at given target positions.

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it will allow us a more efficient use ofour data.«

You can get further informationabout ConWeaver on the Internet at:www.conweaver.de.

Fraunhofer IGD Rostock is»Selected Landmark«They puzzle, research, experiment inthe land of poets and thinkers. Manygood ideas from business and sci-ence originate from here and turnthe country into a multiple exportworld champion. But the good ideaalone does not suffice. It must alsobe put into practice!

The Fraunhofer Institute for Com-puter Graphics Research IGD Rostockis one of the think tanks in Germanythat makes visions become concreteprototypes. Therefore, the institutehas been selected from about 1,500candidates as one of the 365 land-marks of the national initiative »Ger-many – Land of Ideas«, presentingthis year the Federal Republic of Ger-many as a modern and creative loca-tion for business and science.

On June 12, Fraunhofer IGD wasawarded a roll of honor distinguish-ing the house as »Selected Landmark2007«. The reason for the applica-tion was not a matter of mere imagecultivation. »Far from it, our concern

was to support the national publicityfor Rostock and Mecklenburg-West-ern Pomerania as IT center of Ger-many. Especially the rapidly develop-ing market in the Baltic Sea regionoffers Rostock a unique opportunityto distinguish itself, also internation-ally, as gateway to the land of ITideas. We want to benefit fromthat«, Prof. Dr. Bodo Urban said,head of Fraunhofer IGD Rostock andmember of the board of the IT-Initia-tive Mecklenburg-Western Pomera-nia.

On September 13, 2007 the scien-tists of Fraunhofer IGD will, there-fore, bridge the local IT research andthe good local conditions of Rostock.Under the motto »Enjoy IT – Workwith the Computer and Relax« theywill present jointly with partners fromthe Rostock University and the ZGDVe.V. (Computer Graphics Center) tothe inhabitants of Rostock and sur-roundings IT developments from theareas of health, tourism, and cultureas well as recreation. »We want toshow that IT research is not out oftouch of the everyday life but isgeared to the needs of people tosupport them in their everyday life«,Prof. Dr. Urban said. Urban thinks ofinnovations like the EmoHandschuhserving to make the computer recog-nize the emotions of the user, or the

mobile »DiaTrace« measuring bodyactivities in the daily routine thusencouraging more exercise.

The initiative »Germany – Land ofIdeas« was created in 2006 on theoccasion of the FIFA World Cup bythe Federal Government togetherwith the German industry. After thebig success of the previous year theseries of events is now continued in2007. In the scope of a competitionthe organizers were looking again for»365 landmarks in the land ofideas«, one for each day of the year.From more than 1,500 candidates –private and public institutions, cultur-al and church organisations, memori-als, museums, social projects, compa-nies, research centers, or universityinstitutes – an expert jury selectedthe 365 winners. The project is real-ized in cooperation with DeutscheBank.

The Digital Agency: New E-Government Solution for RostockTime is money! And we were used tolose some of it in the past: due tolong waiting lines and processingtimes at offices. But there will be anend to it for the Rostock citizens. Thesolution is e-government and promis-es more citizen-friendliness, trans-parency, and efficiency in administra-tive processes. The vision is: In futurethe citizen will do their administrativepaperwork in the virtual office athome. This will save time, money,and in many cases also nerves.

In cooperation with the HanseaticCity of Rostock the researchers ofZGDV Rostock have developed in theVESUV project digital assistants thatsupport the citizen in his administra-tive matters in the network. They alsogive support for recurring administra-tive matters like the commercial regis-tration or the organization of bigevents. »The software allows a digitalevent management that is unique inthis form in Germany«, GuntramFlach says, head of the department»eGovernment & Multimedia Infor-mation Management« at ZGDV Ros-tock. Different German cities likeHannover, Frankfurt am Main, andGörlitz have already indicated theirinterest in this software.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD Rostock was awarded a roll ofhonor distinguishing the house as »Selected Landmark 2007«.

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»E-government has long come ofage and can contribute to dismantlebureaucracy and improve the qualityin the administrative work. Therefore,it is time now to make use of theelectronic handling of administrativeprocesses area-wide«, Flach contin-ues. The institute is supported by theComputer-Beratungs-GesellschaftmbH Schwerin, responsible for theindustrial development and the distri-bution of the agent software.

A last test run is, however, stillmissing. Therefore, in the nextweeks, the program will be exten-sively tested in a practice test. In afirst phase, there will be an in-housetest in the municipal offices, thenthere will be a user test by thewholesale company GroßmarktGmbH Rostock organizing big eventslike the HanseSail or the RostockChristmas market. After the success-ful completion of these tests theelectronic administrative system willalso be activated for the Rostock citi-zens in fall 2007.

VESUV is a cooperation projectwhere the advantages of secure soft-ware agents that act with legallybinding effect are investigated in twoconcrete applications: e-governmentund e-tourism. As one of the leadingresearch institutes in Germany forthe establishment of electronic infor-mation and communication channelsthe ZGDV is responsible for the pro-ject management in the field of e-government. The scientists of theinstitute have implemented theirideas and concepts in close collabo-ration with the municipality, support-ed by the University of Kassel andthe Fraunhofer Institute for Comput-er Graphics Research IGD in Darm-stadt. After a runtime of two years,the final meeting of VESUV tookplace in Görlitz at the end of June2007.

With Virtual Ships Heading toSuccess German shipyards must presently notcomplain about being short of work.Due to the good international ordersituation of the maritime industry inthis country the turnover hasincreased by more than four percent. So German shipbuilders could

indeed stand up to the Europeancompetitors, but the price dumpingof the Asiatic competitors continuesto put pressure on them. On thelong run, they will only be able toextend their competitiveness in theinternational market by developingtechnical innovations.

An example for the innovationadvantage as to the development ofnew ship types is the use of VirtualReality technologies. The work withvirtual ship models can cruciallyshorten the entire planning and con-struction phase and can help in thisway to reduce the total developmentcost. So far, the models and applica-tions could, however, only be pro-duced by IT experts individually andcustomized. The programming workand above all the capital expenditurewas very high accordingly so thatpotential savings were nullified. »Forthe future we have to optimize theefficiency of the use of VR technolo-gies. This is the aim of our joint pro-ject USE-VR«, Dr. Uwe von Lukassays, head of the Computer GraphicsCenter ZGDV e.V. in Rostock. »Weintend to develop a marketable VRsoftware kit and accompanying ser-vices the different customers of themaritime industry can useautonomously and efficiently even ifthey have no special IT knowledge.«Shipbuilding engineers shall beenabled to generate autonomouslyvirtual models of their projects wherethey can have a look at every cornerof the interior space before produc-tion and shape it accordingly to beable to optimize the production.

In addition to the ZGDV Rostockand the TU Hamburg-Harburg alsothe Fraunhofer Institute for Comput-er Graphics Research and the OTLOVR Systeme GmbH are involved inthe research project. Renowned ship-builders like Aker Yards Deutschland,Meyer Werft Papenburg, VolkswerftStralsund, and ThyssenKrupp MarineSystems are included on the industryside. They contribute requirementsand practice-relevant experiencewhich will be incorporated into theresearch work of ZGDV Rostock andTU Hamburg-Harburg. It is the aim toextend the supra-regional collabora-tion of the project partners in thenext two years and to transfer it later

to a European level. »USE-VR« isfunded by the German Federal Min-istry of Research and Technology.

Software Makes Narrowing ofArteries VisibleCalcifications in the coronary vesselsare the major cause for cardiovascu-lar diseases like cardiac infarctions.They result in different modificationsof the vascular walls which lead to anarrowing of the artery, a so-calledstenosis. An early diagnosis of suchnarrowed areas can save life. So far,to detect stenoses, the patient is, in aso-called coronary angiography,injected with a contrast mediumthrough one of the aortas invasivelyand directly into the heart. In a radio-gram this contrast medium makesthe heart and the arteries clearly visi-ble to the doctor. For the patient,however, this treatment is a physicalstrain.

CT scan images of the heart havemuch less impact on the patient, asthe contrast medium can be injectedinto the basilica vein. By improvingthe imaging technology and newlydeveloped CT scanners enormousimprovements of the image qualitywere achieved in the last years sothat they are already used in partstoday.

The researchers of Fraunhofer Insti-tute for Computer Graphics ResearchIGD have taken another step for-ward. Developing the Cardio AnalysisTool they have now generated a soft-ware which allows a quick and auto-matic diagnosis of stenoses on thebasis of the CT data.

Software Calculates Stenoses Automatically In a first step a specially developedsegmenting algorithm extracts theartery from the overall image. Forthis aim the radiologist only marksthe initial and the end point of theartery in the image and anotherpoint in the line of the vessel. Thenthe segmentation is done automati-cally.In a second step the software mea-sures the extracted artery, comparesthe local diameter with the environ-ment and can in this way detectirregularities in the run. As analysis

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result he gets a three-dimensionalimage of the artery where all nar-rowed areas and also calcificationsare marked. »The software devel-oped by us relieves the radiologist ofa manual search for variances.Instead all critical areas are indicatedand he can then concentrate onthese«, Stefan Wesarg, manager ofthe project at Fraunhofer IGD,describes the advantages of the newmethod. Above all the sensitivity ofthe diagnosis is critical. This meansthat the software must detect reallyall variances.

Clinical Tests Show: High QualityWith Double Speed Two clinical tests carried out in coop-eration with the University HospitalFrankfurt/Main should show if thesoftware was already suited for theclinic routine. The scientists haveanalyzed the quality of the systemcompared to the conventional coro-nary angiography and compared tothe manual analysis of the CT data.»The tests have proved that the new

computer tomography devices deliverimages of such a high quality thatthey can be used without any diffi-culty for the diagnosis of stenoses.The comparison between the manualand the automatic analysis has alsoshown that our software detectschanges just as well as a health pro-fessional. The automatic diagnosis,however, took half the time of themanual examination. It is to the cred-it of the software that it works abso-lutely objectively while, for the man-ual analysis, the subjective perceptionand the experience of the radiologistplay a crucial role«, Wesarg describesthe test results. »This implies that theautomatic analysis of CT data hastwo essential advantages comparedto the conventional coronary angiog-raphy. First of all it is much gentlerfor the patient as it is non-invasive.And, secondly, the radiologist cannotably save time and therefore alsocost«, the Fraunhofer scientist sumsup. The results of the study werepublished in the medical magazine»European Radiology« in 2006.

Distinction of the Society of ImagingInformatics in Medicine (SIIM)

This essential improvement of thediagnosis possibilities is also acknowl-edged by the Society for ImagingInformatics in Medicine (SIIM). Theyawarded Stefan Wesarg and his co-workers M. Fawad Khan of the Uni-versity Hospital Frankfurt and EvelynA. Firle of Fraunhofer IGD for theirpaper with the JDI Best Paper Award2006, 2nd, in June 2007.

Currently, the scientists are lookingfor industry partners who want tointegrate the software into their ownsystems thus allowing a quicker andgentler diagnosis. At the same timethey work on finding additionalapplication areas for the software.

The Cardio Analysis Tool makes narrowing of arteries visible

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Visual Data Analysis – Supportfor Financial Analysts The economic success of financialinstitutions is based on precise,quick, and well-founded marketanalyses and prognoses. For this aimfinancial analysts must handleincreasing amounts of data in lesstime. The user must find his way inthe resulting data jungle to makecorrect analyses, so he needs soft-ware which effectively supports himin his tasks. New chances are offeredby the visual analysis, an area ofcomputer graphics. It allows to gainquick findings from big amounts ofdata. Which graphics applicationsplay a role in financial analysis andhow the future of the graphics-sup-ported data analysis could look likewas shown in the workshop »Graph-ical Insight into Financial Data – NewWays through the Data Jungle«,organized by Fraunhofer IGD on Jan-uary 23, 2007. The Science meetsBusiness workshop of FraunhoferInstitute for Computer GraphicsResearch IGD also dealt, for exam-ple, with the chances and risks ofsuch new developments for banksand insurance companies and thechallenges arising from the data pro-cessing and evaluation in the finan-cial area.

Renowned experts from businessand science, including Arnold Wagn-er (Director Finance of GartnerDeutschland GmbH), Stefan Ott(Reuters), Dr. Björn Fischer (EuropeanCentral Bank), Gerhard Rauh(Xchanging Transaction BankGmbH), and Jens Quadbeck (Interac-tive Data), gave an overview of theIT trends in the finance sector, theyspoke about their experiences with agraphics-supported analysis andcommented on its impact on differ-ent financial analytical workingdomains. Interesting technologydemonstrations and discussionsrounded off the event.

Learntec – Knowledge WorldsToday: Interactive, Dynamic,Cross-linkedWith conventional means alone, therequirements of today’s teachingand knowledge transfer can nolonger be covered. The futurebelongs to the electronically support-ed knowledge preparation andexploration. For only improved struc-tures in advanced training and inter-linked information and knowledgeworlds can help enterprises in Ger-many to further develop their exper-tise and the know-how of their staffso that they will be able to keeppace on the international market.

The department e-Learning &Knowledge Management of Fraun-hofer IGD aims at establishing cur-rent research results from the fieldsof e-learning and knowledge worldsin the application-oriented environ-ment of business and educationalinstitutions. Whether expert man-agement systems or virtual learningworlds, for 15 years now the depart-ment has dealt with training andinformation technologies for themanagement and transfer of knowl-edge. At the Learntec fair, February13 to 15, 2007, the Fraunhofer IGDresearchers presented the followingprojects at the shared Fraunhoferbooth:

Information – Just in Time!The visualization tool »TM-Viewer«gives enterprises the chance to linkfields of knowledge and managethem graphic-interactively. The »TM-Viewer« clearly presents com-plex issues in form of knowledgemaps. It allows an aspect-orientedvisualization and can thus be usedfor example from a manager’s per-spective or a co-worker’s point ofview. And, in a very short time, theuser can extract just the informationrelevant to his job. Therefore theTM-Viewer is effectively usable in allknowledge-intensive applications likethe structuring of learning organiza-tions or the generation of knowl-edge repositories and so contributesdecisively to the efficiency of prob-lem solving. In cooperation with SAPFraunhofer IGD has developed visu-alization concepts on the basis ofthe TM-Viewer technology.

Virtual Learning WorldsWith »VAH – Virtuelles Autohaus«(virtual car dealer) the researchers ofFraunhofer IGD have developed alearning platform to supplement thedual education system in the carindustry and for advanced vocationaltraining. VAH offers a virtual learn-ing world as bridge between voca-tional school and enterprise servingas a teaching tool which can also beused as quality assurance tool forthe education. »With its 3D learningworld character VAH can create andmaintain a high motivation of thetrainees«, Eicke Godehardt of Fraun-hofer IGD explains. »The traineescan for example interact with avatarsas their electronic representatives inthe world of the virtual car dealerand in this way practice their behav-ior towards customers. Due to thevisual representation of real jobs inthe virtual environment the VAHachieves a great practical relevance.«

The project is funded by the BMBF(German Federal Ministry of Educa-tion and Research). Cooperationpartners are the ZentralverbandDeutsches Kraftfahrzeuggewerbee.V. (German Association for MotorTrade and Repair) and the IG Metall(German industrial union). Furtherinformation: www.vah-projekt.org

DigiMod – Digital ModerationDigital Moderation enhances theeffectivity and efficiency of a moder-ated event by combining provenmoderation methods and the inno-vative technical means of networkedcomputers. Wrapping paper, illegiblefile cards, and useless photo proto-cols – the traditional moderationreaches its limits. Digital Moderationis a proven system with computersfor moderators and participantgroups proving traditional and novelmoderation methods. »DigiModfacilitates the planning and realiza-tion of the event as well as the eval-uation, visualization, and follow-upof the results«, Dr. Peter Tandler ofFraunhofer IGD explains. »So DigitalModeration intensifies the progressof the event, allows more time forthe basics, and leads to betterresults.«

EventsWorkshops

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CeBIT 2007In 2007 too, the scientists of Fraun-hofer Institute for Computer Graph-ics Research IGD presented at theFraunhofer shared booth some oftheir latest developments. The morethan 500-square-meter sized Fraun-hofer booth proved to be a magnetto visitors.

BERNIE – Shopping Cleverly MadeEasyRFID – the Radio Frequency Identifi-cation- allows an automatic identifi-cation of objects even across dis-tances. RFID-Chips are for exampleused for access control, for storingdata on tickets, or in the stock andgoods management. The researchersof Fraunhofer Institute for ComputerGraphics Research IGD have nowrealized a new scenario: BERNIE, theconsultant for nutrition and intelli-gent shopping.

BERNIE is a software serving theuser to create his personal nutritionprofile. He can for example enterthat he is diabetic or vegetarian.During shopping BERNIE comparesthe ingredients of the goods in theshopping cart with the personal pro-file of the user and warns him assoon as he chooses a product thatdoes not match his profile.

»As a pre-requisite for this sce-nario’s realization it is necessary thatall goods are provided with RFIDtags that include the ingredients ofthe products. By means of these tagsthe product ‚knows’ itself andinforms of its ingredients«, MichaelHellenschmidt explains, responsiblescientist at Fraunhofer IGD. »In addi-tion the carts must be equipped witha RFID reader and the buyer mustbring his mobile device, for examplea PDA or smartphone, with theinstalled software.« As soon as theuser has put the products into thecart the RFID reader reads the datastored on the chips and forwardsthem to the mobile device. The soft-ware then compares the data withthe profile of the user. »As the pro-file is stored on the personal deviceof the shopper his choice is person-alized and, at the same time, abso-lutely anonymous«, Hellenschmidtexplains one of the advantages ofthe technology. Especially these

properties make the applicationinteresting for supermarkets since itallows them to offer their customersa brand-new service.

Prior to a mass application a lastdecisive hurdle must be taken: »TheRFID tags are still too expensive tobe widely used in supermarkets«, soHellenschmidt. If this problem issolved the provision of the productswith RFID tags will offer the super-markets many advantages: So, dueto the self-disclosure of the prod-ucts, stocktaking can be automa-tized and finished in a matter ofminutes. Also the commodities man-agement and the logistics of theproducts are considerably facilitatedby this new technology. In addition,new service offers like BERNIE can berealized.

CONFUO©O – Secure, Legal, Peer-2-eerPeer-to-peer (P2P) networks are net-works with all connected computerson a par. This means that each com-puter also serves as server and con-tributes storage capacity and band-width. P2P networks are often usedfor the exchange of music files orvideos. But to many enterprises likedisk labels or photography agenciesthese networks are a thorn in theirflesh: Once the content has entered

such a P2P network the owners loseany control over its distribution.Track the download of files? Stopthe distribution if needed? Nochance! On the other side, it is near-ly impossible for the user to judge ifthe exchanged files are proprietary,and if he, by downloading them,becomes liable to prosecution.

This is different using the CONFUO©O software developed byFraunhofer Institute for ComputerGraphics Research IGD. »CONFUO©O is as easy to use asany other P2P software. For therights owner, however, CONFUO©Oadds the crucial point that he alwaysretains control of his content«, soAlexander Opel, scientist at Fraun-hofer IGD. This means that the rightsowner can always retrace who hasexchanged his content, and he can,at any time, withdraw his contentfrom CONFUO©O. »Before a con-tent may be exchanged, it must beregistered. If a user wants toexchange a song without authoriza-tion the exchange is automaticallystopped. So providers and users canboth be sure that all actions will belegal«, Opel continues. To ensure ahigh security standard the contentand the user registration is out-sourced to central servers, so-called»Trusted Third Parties«. These com-pare the songs according to certaincharacteristics similar to the melody.In this way it is ascertained that alsocontent that has been compressedor transformed to another data for-mat is recognized.

These properties of CONFUO©Oallow most diverse business models:»CONFUO©O can, for example, beused by photograph agencies whocan then put photographs at the dis-posal of their customers, or bymobile radio providers enabling theircustomers to exchange ring tones ormusic files«, Alexander Nouak, headof the Security Technology depart-ment at Fraunhofer IGD, suggestspossible business models.

3D Watermarks – Data Under ControlAre your digital data safe againsttheft and fraudulent use? Can youtrack and control the distributionpaths and the identity of the recipi-

BERNIE:The consultant software for nutrition andintelligent shopping.

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ents of your data? For quite sometime now, many enterprises havefaced this problem which increasing-ly also applies to three-dimensionaldigital models.

It is impossible today to imaginethings without the clear advantagesof an easy and rapid handling andprocessing of digital data, neverthe-less they entail massive securityproblems: Undesirable manipulation,loss and theft of digital data havebecome quite usual especially incompany networks. One possibilityto track the distribution paths of dig-ital data is the integration of digitalwatermarks. The data are providedwith specific additional informationso that they can be identified at anytime. At the same time, the digitalwatermark is not perceptible by theuser of the data. The watermark canbe selected by a secret key which isonly known to the author and otherauthorized users.

While research in the field of digi-tal watermarks has so far been limit-ed to image, music, and video data,the Security Technology for Graphicand Communication Systems depart-ment of Fraunhofer Institute forComputer Graphics Research IGDhas been concentrating for someyears on the development of digitalwatermarks for the tracking andcontrol of the distribution paths ofCAD data.

The solution developed by Fraun-hofer IGD for digital watermarks inCAD models is presently supportingthe two major data types in thisdomain: NURBS and polygon mod-els. High-quality NURBS-based mod-els are generated in the constructionand design phase and also used forproduction, while polygon modelsare often used in visualization andsimulation, recently also for illustra-tions in PDF documents. The methodfor NURBS-based models optionallyoffers a reversible mode: After enter-ing a secret key, an authorized usercan remove the digital watermarkfrom the model. This option is espe-cially interesting for production envi-ronments in which the digital water-mark can be removed from themodel of the part just before pro-duction, for example in a CNCmachine.

Hannover FairAt this year’s Hannover Fair fromApril 16 to 20, 2007 the scientists ofFraunhofer Institute for ComputerGraphics Research IGD presentedseveral projects around industry andthe industrial development and pro-duction processes.

Application Sharing – rapid andhigh-quality video transmission No matter if the transferred contentsstem from Office packages, CADapplications, or visualization systems,the Realtime Remote Desktop (RRD)continuously records any screen con-tent of the source computer andsends it to the target computer. Thedata do not have to be modified. Sothe RRD software is not confined totext-based applications, it also sup-ports all graphics applications whichuse OpenGL or DirectX. The RealtimeRemote Desktop features a transferrate which is unequaled by any soft-ware available on the market. With acomparatively low network load itpresents an extraordinary imagequality with a high frame rate. Thisallows for example to play evenmost complex computer games onremote computers in real time. Fur-thermore, the Realtime RemoteDesktop runs without any difficultyon any customary PC and Microsoftsystem software and adapts itself toany bandwidth. Mainly visualization-intensive industries benefit from ause of the software, like the auto-motive domain, the oil and gasindustry, the building sector, or the chemical and pharmaceuticalindustry.

A test version of the RealtimeRemote Desktop as well as furtherinformation on the licensing condi-tions are offered on the Internet:www.igd.fhg.de/igd-a2/rrds/.

From CAD Conversion to High-quali-ty Rendering – Efficiently andAutonomouslyUsually, conventional CAD convert-ers are only offered in connectionwith expensive VR processing tools.The Fraunhofer Institute for Comput-er Graphics Research IGD has there-fore developed the conversion soft-ware CAD2Vis. For data conversionthe user does not need a license

environment for a particular CAD orVR system. For, in contrast to otherproducts available on the market,CAD2Vis enables to convert the dataindependent of a particular provider.CAD2Vis supports the CAD inputformats ACIS SAT, CATIA V4 andV5, IGES, Pro/E, STEP, and VDA-FS.The output can be in the visualiza-tion formats OpenInventor 2.1,VRML 2.0, and OpenSG, as well asin the CAD formats ACIS SAT, CATIAV4, IGES, STEP, and VDA-FS. Differ-ent from conventional tools CAD2Visstores the geometries contained inthe CAD data also as NURBS modelif desired, if this is supported by thetarget data format. In addition,CAD2Vis offers the possibility toclose gaps between adjacent sur-faces by »sewing«.

The software is, above all, suitedfor product developers who includeVR technologies or Digital Mock-Ups(DMU) into their process chain, look-ing for an independent solution forthe conversion of CAD into VR data.It is also useful for service providersprocessing VR or web presentationson the basis of CAD data as well asfor VR providers offering CADimports.

With the rendering module»SHREg« (Spherical Harmonics Ren-dering Engine) also developed byFraunhofer IGD you can make high-quality design reviews. The moduleallows getting a physically based dis-play of the data converted withCAD2Vis in real time. Using the real-istic presentation of the modelsdeciders can then for example inter-actively test different materials orlighting situations, better assess theproduct quality, and save precioustime in search of the best solution.Besides dynamic soft shadows SHREgalso supports image-based lighting.Based on an environment exposurethe software calculates how anobject is illuminated. For this aimSHREg uses the so-called HighDynamic Range Images (HDRI). Incontrast to the use of conventionaldigital photographs the renderingmodule can correctly record alldetails of a real scene using HDRI,both in the dark and the light areaof a picture. The same method isapplied to display flections with a

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high volume range. These propertiesmake SHREg especially interestingfor Augmented Reality applications.

Virtual Simulation – Product Development SupportAn important step within the processchain is the regular exchangebetween developers, designers, andcustomers, because the best possibleproduct variant can only be foundtogether. In the ideal case the differ-ent participants can analyze a simu-lation model and process it interac-tively in real time from differentlocations. In practice, however, thiscooperative work is often difficult.Due to the transfer of enormousamount of data necessary for exam-ple for the simulation of crash testsor streaming simulations the hard-ware of the computers often reachesits limits. The iFX post-processor ofFraunhofer Institute for ComputerGraphics Research IGD sidesteps thisproblem. With just a minimal needof bandwidth several users at differ-ent locations can simultaneouslywork cooperatively via a networkand jointly analyze and evaluate thesimulation models. The simulationdata, which can sometimes reachthe volume of several gigabytes, areforwarded via secure communicationchannels, for example by DVD.Unlike other postprocessors just con-trol commands and no sensitive dataare exchanged via the networkbetween the partners during thecooperative work. For the visualiza-tion of the data the researchers relyon advanced graphics hardware thatallows to interactively display simula-tion models with 20 million elementsand more.

View Into the Virtual World A quicker and more economicalproduct development, a demonstra-tive transfer of learning content or more realistic, interactive presen-tation of 3D models – these aresome of the advantages the use ofVirtual and Augmented Realityoffers. Accordingly the two relatedtechnologies are increasingly used.Two examples were shown by Fraun-hofer Institute for Computer Graph-ics Research IGD at the HannoverFair.

Using the system MovableScreenthe user can intuitively navigatethrough virtual realities. For this aim,the scientists have installed an inter-active display at a rotatable column.Via sensors the rotation of the dis-play is recorded and transferred tothe navigation in the virtual world. Ifthe user turns the column this rota-tion is transferred to the 3D modeland he can look around in the virtualmodel. For the walk through thescenery he presses an interactionpuck. A head-tracking camera addi-tionally integrated into the displayrecords the eye movement of theuser and orients the display of thevirtual scene according to the view-ing direction of the user. »Using theMovableScreen even users who havenot had any experience with 3Dcomputer graphics so far can navi-gate through virtual worlds. Theadaptation of the display to his lineof sight gives the user the impres-sion to look through a window intothe virtual world«, so Michael Zöll-ner, staff member of the departmentVirtual and Augmented Reality ofFraunhofer IGD. The system can forexample be used for a vivid visualiza-tion of architecture models. »TheMoveableScreen is intuitively operat-ed and usable for the most differentapplication areas, for example forthe visualization of virtual factoriesor plants as well as for the virtualarchitectural inspection,« Zöllner fur-ther explains.

The MovableScreen is operatedwith the VR system Avalon which

has been developed in the scope ofthe Virtual Competence Network forVirtual and Augmented Reality(ViVERA). In this network five Fraun-hofer institutes and their partner uni-versities pool their competencesfrom different sectors to furtherexpand the top position of Germanyin the fields of Virtual and Augment-ed Reality. The research results shallbe made available primarily to smalland medium-sized companies.

Augmented Reality for service andmaintenanceTogether with Rittal GmbH & Co. KGand InnoTeamS GmbH, the scientistsof Fraunhofer IGD also presentedtwo mobile AR applications for thesupport of maintenance workers.

In the first application example theservice technician gets an AR-sup-ported maintenance instruction. Hewears data glasses and has a PDA.With the video camera integratedinto the PDA he takes a picture ofthe machine. Having started the pro-cess by speech input the servicetechnician is led step by stepthrough the complex work process.With the data glasses he gets 3Danimations which are projected inthe correct position onto themachine. These animations explainto him which work must be execut-ed. »The instructions are very intu-itive. Even inexperienced workerscan carry out complex tasks. In addi-tion, the technician has both handsfree for the jobs he has to do anddoes not have to get along with

The MovableScreenoffers an intuitiveand interactiveaccess to virtualmodels.

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printed manuals«, Dr. Didier Stricker,head of the department Virtual andAugmented Reality at FraunhoferIGD, describes the advantages of thesystem.

In the second example, the AR-supported teleconsultation, theexperienced service expert gives hisnew colleague support for the main-tenance of a machine. The colleagueat the machine wears data glassesserving to receive the instructions inform of 3D animations. The picturesof the PDA camera are transferred tothe expert in his office. So he can atany time observe the state and theprogress of the work. »Of coursethey can both communicate witheach other and the colleague in theoffice can fade in audio or visualinformation into the field of view ofthe service technician on site«,Stricker says.

Both developments are based onthe results of the EU-IST projectULTRA (Ultra portable AugmentedReality for industrial maintenanceapplications). Objective of the pro-ject is to make use of the increasingperformance of mobile end deviceslike PDA or pocket PCs for AR appli-cations to support mobile servicetechnicians in complex maintenancework. Presently the developmentsare tested in different companiesunder real conditions.

VAR-Trainer – Safely Workingwith Construction MachineryThe real-time simulator »VAR-Train-er« (Versatile Augmented RealitySimulator for Training in the SafeUse of Construction Machinery) is acomputer-based training tool.Thanks to the combination ofmechanics, electronics, automationtechnologies, computer sciences,and Augmented Reality workers canpractice the handling of differentconstruction vehicles under realisticconditions. For this aim the learnersits in a driver’s cab. This cab is espe-cially prepared for the so-calledmixed reality environment. This com-ponent has been developed byresearchers of Fraunhofer Institutefor Computer Graphics ResearchIGD. The panes of the cab are var-nished in blue. The learner wears

video glasses replacing all blueshares of the picture visible to himby a virtual scene. For this simulationand reality mix the bluebox methodis used which is commonly knownfrom film production.

So, with this development, Fraun-hofer IGD sees that the representa-tion of environment conditions likeweather, buildings, or persons is asrealistic as possible. The worker canfully immerse into the training sce-nario. Different from conventionaltraining devices no expensive andunhandy projection systems areneeded for the display of the train-ing scenario.

In Munich the visitors of the 28thInternational Trade Fair for Construc-tion Machinery, Building MaterialMachines, Mining Machines, Con-struction Vehicles and ConstructionEquipment bauma could see theVAR-Trainer from April 23 to 29,2007.

Girls’Day – Computer Science isnot a Men’s Domain Gender equality at work is a red-hottopic in Germany. For even thoughthe limits between classical men’sand women’s jobs are much moreblurred than some years ago, youngwomen choose disproportionatelyoften »typically female« professions.For years professions like medicalassistants or administrative assistantshave been at the top of the popular-ity scale of young girls. But compa-nies increasingly lack junior staff par-ticularly in technical andtechnology-related areas. Thereforethey can and should not do withoutqualified young women. At the Girl-s’Day 2007, this year again Fraun-hofer Institute for Computer Graph-ics Research IGD in Darmstadtshowed interested girls that informa-tion technology is not »for menonly«. On April 26, 2007 FraunhoferIGD opened its doors to 20 younggirls at the age of 12 to 15 years.Under the motto »Virtual and Aug-mented Reality at Fraunhofer IGD«the schoolgirls were informed aboutone of the most interesting facets of

Versatile Augmented Reality Simulator forTraining in the safe use of constructionmachinery

Girls learned the exciting aspects of computer science.

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computer science: computer graph-ics. In dialog with the scientists ofFraunhofer IGD they could learn allabout training facilities and new-comer offers in this domain. Further-more, lots of live presentationsshowed the many application areasof computer graphics. A highlight ofthe event was the demonstration ofthe CAVE, a projection cube inwhich the user can directly immerseinto the presented virtual scene.

The Girls’Day is a nationwide cam-paign aiming at arousing interestwith young girls for occupationaland study areas beyond the »typicalfemale« professions. Started in 2001in close cooperation with the min-istry for social affairs and the min-istry of education and culturalaffairs, the annual future day foryoung girls became a great successall over Hesse due to a statewidecommitment of the cooperationpartners.

Clear View in the InformationJungleFrom the junior to the senior staff tothe manager, staff members areincreasingly spending their work

time on searching for informationnecessary to perform their jobs.According to a study of the consult-ing firm Accenture executives use toinvest an average of two hours a dayon the information search. Half thedata they find are, however, not rel-evant and thus worthless. This wasteof work time involves high cost forthe company. The expenses can beeven higher if, in the end, the wronginformation is used which, accordingto the Accenture Study, is indeedhappening once a week.

This can be avoided by usingsemantic search technologies andcompany-wide knowledge databas-es. »New information and communi-cation technologies assist companiesin structuring the internal knowledgeand make it available to all col-leagues«, Dr. Thomas Kamps says,head of the Conweaver developmentteam at Fraunhofer Institute forComputer Graphics Research IGD.The software Conweaver developedby Kamps and his team interlinks theknowledge available in the enter-prise and allows a semantic, intelli-gent, and linked search across allinformation sources. »With just onequery the co-workers can for exam-

ple simultaneously search in the cus-tomer database, on the intranet, inthe document server, and in theproduct catalog. Also the transla-tions of the term or related issuesare found«, the scientist explains.»As a result Conweaver delivers aclearly structured knowledge net-work containing for example contactpersons, documents, and specifica-tions.«

Conweaver and other innovativesolutions for a structured and effi-cient information search in enterpris-es were introduced by FraunhoferIGD at the Science meets Businessevent »Semantics Day: EnterpriseSearch 2.0 - Well-structured andQuickly through the InformationFlood« in Darmstadt on May 22,2007.

Renowned experts from scienceand business presented new devel-opments, promising companies away out of the information floodthus helping them to save time andcost. Dr. Uwe Schmid, senior expertof the worldwide Business Technolo-gy Office of McKinsey, for examplegave in his keynote speech aninsight into the challenges of a suc-cessful enterprise search, also pre-senting technical solutions. JoachimGlaubrech of Google Germany pre-sented Google Services as compo-nents of the information network.Dr. Jörn Kohlhammer of FraunhoferIGD showed how new methods ofthe graphical data analysis qualita-tively extend the semantic enterprisesearch, especially as to quantitativedata.

Games Summit - Playing in theService of the IndustryGame technologies and classicalindustry - at first sight these twoareas do not quite seem to fittogether. That the industry canstrongly benefit from the use ofplayful applications was shown atthe Industry Summit »Serious Games- Playing in the Service of the Indus-try« on May 30, 2007. In coopera-tion with the Center for ComputerGraphics ZGDV e.V., the FraunhoferICT Group organized the IndustrySummit in the building of the Hessis-ches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt. Indus-

20 girls visited theFraunhofer IGDDarmstadt at theGirls’ Day (left).

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trial representatives and IT expertsgot to know everything about theapplications of Serious Games andcould exchange the latest trends inthis domain.

Art Meets Science: Recent Photography at the INI-GraphicsNet StiftungAbout a dozen artists were present-ing their work in the exhibition ofthe Contemporary Art series in theINI-GraphicsNet Stiftung building.The exhibition started on the occa-sion of the 3rd Darmstadt Days ofPhotography, and so the Foundationshowed on four floors exclusivelyphoto art.

How beautiful, dignified, strong,and yet vulnerable a woman can be,independent of space, age, back-ground, or classic beauty ideal, wasrevealed by the multiple internation-al awards winning artist Angela Mut-ti under the title »Women« – inmemoriam to Christine 2. Since1995 Angela Mutti has exhibited herwork regularly in individual or sharedexhibitions and is publishing in cal-endars and photo art catalogs. Forher photographic work she has forexample been awarded several timesat the HASSELBLAD AUSTRIANSUPER CIRCUIT and other interna-tional photo competitions. The cen-tral issue of her artistic work is thephotography of people. »With mypictures I wish to capture peoplewith all their facets. Playing on per-spectives, props, forms, and colors, Igive my pictures content depth thatshall vitalize them and thus emotion-ally touch the beholders«, the artistsaid.

Klaus Philipp, too, can look backon many years of experience in pho-tography and personal book pro-jects, publications in photo maga-zines and books, as well asnumerous exhibitions. On thepremises of the INI-GraphicsNetStiftung he was showing his pictureseries »Light Figures«. What remindsof organic forms like amebas, seaanimals, or body tissues are in factreflections of the sunlight on watersurfaces resulting from changed pro-jection properties of the photo-graphic lens.

Uli Gasper has dealt with photogra-phy since 1991. In 2003 he started toface up with »LoFi« photography.Here the technology is knowinglybrushed the wrong way. Pictures aretaken with defective cameras, misex-posed and -developed. By a furthercomputer manipulation of the pictureblurry, grainy, overexposed picturesare generated recalling the early stageof photography. Besides »LoFi« pho-tography Uli Gasper showed in theINI-GraphicsNet Stiftung under thename of »Lomic« a panel out of fourmoments that combine with oraculartexts comic, photography, and tarot.

But also young, less known artistswere given a platform by INI-GraphicsNet Stiftung. Threegroups of the design department ofthe University of Applied SciencesDarmstadt presented their work.Under guidance of the photographerand assistant lecturer Andreas Klehmsome students dealt in the project»A look back ahead« with classicalpainters like Rembrandt or Vermeer,whose way to capture mood lightingwas unequalled in their time. For thework to be seen in the Stiftungbuilding the students have thor-oughly studied, transposed, andphotographically reconstructed thework of the Old Masters. The stu-dents of Professor Dr. Kris Scholzwere restaging in their still lifes»Dead animals, vegetables, bottles,bulky waste« known subjects andthus spanned an array from thosedays to today. In addition, five stu-dents of the design department spe-cializing on photography presentedtheir diploma theses.

At the top, in the light-flooded,nearly 5-meter-high staircase of theexecutive floor of the INI-Graphics-Net Stiftung building, you could findthe work of a rather unexpectedartist. Here Prof. Dr. Johannes Buch-mann presented his »ShowcaseFaces«. Dr. Buchmann, actuallyknown as professor of computer sci-ence and mathematics at TU Darmstadt, shows in his pho-tographs the heads of showcase fig-ures with their faces that appear las-civious, devoted, abstract, cool, orbrutal. Taken out of their actual con-text the scientist stimulates a newapproach to the usual.

The only three-dimensional workof art of this exhibition was theobject »Memorial angel« of theWeiterstadt artist Dirk Gaydoul. Theshining sculpture made of beechwood, brass, high-grade steel, andlight-leading Perspex hang in theouter area above the foyer directly infront of the historical prison wall ofthe former city prison. Intuition ofthe artist: »Angel memorizes the his-torical location he is hovering aboveand bethinks of modern history.«

Accessible Web 2.0 – Access forAll?!Web 2.0 has undoubtedly become abuzzword. Stylized to a new hype bymany people the subject persists inthe media coverage. Web 2.0 is seenas the generic term for differentinteractive technologies and servicesof the Internet describing above all anovel user behavior. For the conceptof Web 2.0 is based on the principleof »participation«: By providing con-tent himself like for example blogs,the previously passive user changesfrom a media consumer to a produc-er. The classical Internet with its stat-ic web pages shifts to a dynamic»Social Web«. But how can really allusers participate in the new techno-logical and also social developmentswithout excluding certain groupsfrom the content? This was the cen-tral question of the 6th congress foran accessible e-government the Cen-ter for Computer Graphics ZGDVe.V. organized in Darmstadt on June20, 2007. At the congress renownedexperts showed in their lectures howWeb 2.0 can be connected to acces-sibility. They outlined the new tech-nologies and explained which barri-ers particular user groups like blindor visually impaired people have toface. At the same time, they showedthe risks and chances of an accessi-ble Web 2.0 and presented applica-tions and solutions. In differentworkshops the participants could,for example, learn how an accessibleWeb design becomes possible by acorrect use of AJAX und Co. or howaccessibility can be realized withTYPO3.

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10 Years InGeoForum: An ActivePlatform for a Dynamic IndustrySpatial data are used in more andmore application areas: Retail busi-nesses use them for an optimal plac-ing of their store, authorities andmunicipalities use the data for trafficplanning purposes and cities realizenew, digital travel guides on thebasis of this information presentingto their guests the most impressingsights.

But to tap the full potential of thisdynamic sector it is necessary to cre-ate uniform standards and establisha close cooperation betweenproviders and users of spatial data.These are exactly the objectives ofthe InGeoForum founded in 1997. Itwas created by Fraunhofer Institutefor Computer Graphics ResearchIGD, TU Darmstadt, Hessen AgenturGmbH, the regional authorities forsoil management and geoinforma-tion (Hessisches Landesamt fürBodenmanagement und Geoinfor-mation) as well as the chamber ofengineers of the state of Hesse, andserves as platform for information,cooperation, and communication ofthe parties involved in the geoinfor-mation market, from industry, sci-ence, and administration. Mean-while, nearly fifty members havejoined InGeoForum, includingrenowned enterprises like Dornier,MapInfo, or ESRI, but also manysmall and medium-sized enterprises.

Networked Regionally, Nationally,and InternationallyArising from an initiative of theRhein-Main region and located inthe city of research and scienceDarmstadt the InGeoForum encour-ages with its activities the coopera-tion on a regional, national, andinternational level. Mainly the manysmall companies characterizing thesector benefit from this network:»The membership of InGeoForumopens up to SMEs the access to use-ful information about spatial dataand their possible applications«, Dr.Ralf Borchert, spokesman of themanagement of InGeoForum,explains. Dr. Bodo Bernsdorf, presi-dent of DDGI e.V. (DeutscherDachverband für Geoinformation,German umbrella organization for

geoinformation), agrees: »The geoin-formation sector is, in spite of bigplayers like Google-Earth, stillstrongly characterized by small andmedium-sized enterprises. To be ableto do an effective lobbying andmake their interests heard a closenetwork is necessary. The activitiesof InGeoForum in the DDGI alsocontributes to strengthen this net-work.«

Due to the membership of theDDGI in the European umbrellaorganization for geoinformationEUROGI InGeoForum is also activeon a European level. One of the coretopics is the Europe-wide harmoniza-tion of spatial data aspired by theEuropean INSPIRE initiative. To trans-form the regulations of INSPIRE, theEuropean framework law for theconsolidation and shared use of spa-tial data in the EU, into national lawis one of the major tasks in the nexttwo years.

A successful harmonization is alsothe aim of some InGeoForum mem-bers. Under the direction of Fraun-hofer IGD they work in the Hum-boldt project on laying thefoundations for the harmonizationdefined in INSPIRE. But Humboldt is

only one of numerous projectswhere InGeoForum members areactive. Borchert: »The members areactive wherever the integration ofspatial data from different areas is ofinterest. This can be the extension ofthe Frankfurt airport where anincredible amount of data is involvedor the EU project Humboldt thatshall prepare the ground for aEurope-wide harmonization of geo-data.«

Anniversary celebrations in the signof a Europe-wide harmonization Also the anniversary celebrations onthe occasion of the 10-year existenceof InGeoForum were marked by theEurope-wide integration. In thescope of the conference titled»Geoinformation in Europe« on July3, 2007 international experts gavean insight into the details of theINSPIRE initiative, presented firstresults of the HUMBOLDT projectand identified possible Europeanfunds. The opening talk was givenby the newly-elected president ofthe European umbrella organizationfor geoinformation, Prof. MauroSalvimini. He described the Europeanview of the geoinformation sector

From left to right: Dr. Ralf-H. Borchert (spokesman of the InGeoForum management), Prof.Mauro Salvimini (president EUROGI), Ernest McCutcheon, Daniel Holweg (both managementInGeoForum), Dr. Bodo Bernsdorf (president DDGI).

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and pointed out the importance of anetworking of the European regionsalso in view of the use of spatialdata.

Further information about InGeo-Forum and its members can befound here: www.ingeoforum.de.

Conference among Children: Ger-man-French Promotion of YoungTalents at Fraunhofer IGD RostockThe promotion of young talents can-not start soon enough: In a virtualvideo conference preschool childrenfrom Rostock and France met recent-ly at the Fraunhofer Institute forComputer Graphics Research IGD.Via Internet they exchanged viewswith each other in the video lab ofFraunhofer IGD about »Life in theflow«, and so playfully learned theuse of the new media.

»It is like in the kindergarten«,Christian Peter said, researcher atFraunhofer IGD Rostock, with asmile. He meant the conferenceroom where children of the AWOday-care center »Rappelkiste« virtu-ally exchanged views with a Frenchpeer group from Bois in NorthernFrance. »It is always amazing howquickly kids can communicate witheach other in spite of their differentmother tongues«, Peter continued, afather himself of one of the day-carekids.

The video conference between thekindergartens was organized for thefirst time last year, then in a smallmedia room of the day-care center.It is since a regular meeting offer forthe children, across all country bor-ders. »In the scope of the EU projectCOMENIUS the children shall be pre-pared for the new media and, at thesame time, develop first foreign-lan-guage and intercultural compe-tences«, Marion Hornke, one of thetwo project coordinators in Rostock,informed. The »Rappelkiste« daycare in the Rostock Südstadt is oneof the two bilingual day-care centersof the Hanseatic city. Luc Abot, thesecond project coordinator of theproject is teaching the children first-hand French. Like a sponge the littlenon-native speakers absorbed newwords, the Frenchman by birth said.

Fraunhofer IGD is supporting thevirtual globetrotters with the neces-sary technology on their neighboringinstitute premises. »It is important toteach children the use of new mediaearly and in a reasonable manner.Therefore we are happy to supportcomputer users and perhaps alsocomputer scientists of tomorrowwith technology and expertise«,Prof. Dr. Bodo Urban, director ofFraunhofer IGD Rostock, said. Theinstitute is anyhow a particularlychild-friendly employer. »Our col-leagues can flexibly organize theirwork time and also work fromhome. So it is no problem at all if achild suddenly falls ill and needsher/his parents’ care«, Urban contin-ued.

Summer Academy 2007 – DesignMade EasyThe Center for Computer GraphicsZGDV e.V. has been internationallyknown for more than 20 years asspecialists for latest developments inthe field of computer graphics. Sowhat stands more to reason thanalso offering courses in graphics pro-grams for designers? Particularlybecause the application-orientedresearch institute has been success-fully active in advanced training formany years. And so the ZGDV opensits doors for the Summer Academyfor designers for the second timethis summer with a comprehensiveoffer of advanced training courses.To adequately allow for the specialrequirements of designers and peo-ple interested in design, the coursesare organized in cooperation withthe association Hessen Design e.V.,last year’s initiator of the SummerAcademy.

From the design of accessible Webpages to Flash and Adobe coursesfor all levels to 3D Studio MAX thecourse offer ranges. To guarantee anintensive, individual support thenumber of participants is limited to12 persons per course.

The course program, detailedinformation about the differentcourses, and registration forms areavailable on www.zgdv.de.

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Of course the student exchangeappointee will assist you too, if youhave further questions. Anothergood starting point for a search forscholarships is http://www.daad.de/.

Marie Curie Fellowships for exampleprovide European placements for preand post-doctoral researchers, usuallyup to the age of 35, and for experi-enced researchers. A good place tostart searching for Marie CurieActions, actual proposals and dead-lines for applications, is the websitehttp://cordis.europa.eu/mc-opportuni-ties/.

While Marie Curie Fellowships aretargeting experienced researchers,there are other funding opportunitiesfor internships. The Leonardo da Vinci program for example supportsexchanges for internships withinEurope. Due to the increased numberof INI-GraphicsNet institutions withinthe European community, this pro-gram seems to be very promising(see also http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/programmes/leonardo/new/leonardo2_en.html).

Do not hesitate to contactstudini@igd.fraunhofer.de for infor-mation and for assistance with theapplication.

Additionally there are some new callsfor application for PPP projects, pro-grams for the exchange of persons inpredefined projects. These programsare offered by the DAAD and are avail-able for a special exchange countryand typically a German project partner.More information on that subjectyou can find athttp://www.daad.de/ppp (in German).

Contact

Student Exchange AppointeeFraunhofer Institute forComputer Graphics ResearchFraunhoferstrasse 564283 DarmstadtPhone: +49 (0) 6151/155-581Fax: +49 (0) 6151/155-199E-mail: studini@igd.fraunhofer.dewww.inigraphics.net/students/studiniResearchers and Students at

INI-GraphicsNet

Due to its international nature, theINI-GraphicsNet is obliged to a longtradition of exchanging researchersand students. Visitors in research andacademia from all over the worldhave been hosted in INI-GraphicsNetinstitutes, which are adjoined to localuniversities and participate in univer-sity research, teaching and life. ThePortuguese Centro de ComputaçãoGráfica (CCG) is related to the Uni-versity of Minho, CAMTech in Singa-pore to the Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity (NTU) and imedia, TheICPNM Academy in the US to RISD,the Rhode Island School of Design.The German institutes are adjoinedto the Universität Rostock and theTechnische Universität Darmstadt.Recently several new institutes joinedthe INI-GraphicsNet, VICOMTech inSan Sebastian/Spain, IGI inSeoul/Korea and GraphiTech in Tren-to/Italy. And of course not to forgetthe new partnerships with the affili-ated universities. These are the Uni-versidad del País Vasco Euskal HerrikoUnibertsitatea (University of the BasqueCountry), the Ewha Womans Univer-sity in Korea and Università degli Studidi Trento in Italy. Student exchangeprograms between IGD and imediain Providence or CAMTech in Singa-pore directly support the exchangeof students between these institutes.This way is very easy and much lessbureaucratic for students to get finan-cial support. But of course there areother possibilities to get funding forexchanges where none of theseinternal exchange programs apply.Several hints on how to find thesescholarships can be found on thestudINI Web Sitehttp://www.inigraphics.net/students/studini/index.html.

Addressing former staff members of INI-GraphicsNet:

The INI-Graphics-Alumni Forum

is a meeting-place and pool for former staff members ofthe INI-GraphicsNet. If youwish to become a fellow member please contact:

Computer Graphics CenterHerbert KuhlmannRundeturmstrasse 1064283 DarmstadtGermanyPhone: +49 (6151) 155-120Fax: +49 (6151) 155-450E-mail: herbert.kuhlmann@zgdv.deURL: alumni.zgdv.de

A L U M N I

StudINIINI-GraphicsNet

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Dr. Sascha SchneiderNovember 24, 2006»Interactive Massive ParallelVisualization of Large DatasetsFrom Fluid Simulations«Supervisors: Prof. Dr. José L. EncarnçãoProf. Dr. Reinhard Klein

Nowadays, the computer-driven sim-ulation of physical fluid processeshas become an important topic. Thefields of application are widely diver-sified, reaching from the area ofproduct development up to safetyanalysis and optimization.

Whereas the simulation in the pastwas able to benefit from the perpet-ual parallelization of the availablehardware, the respective visualiza-tion of fluid datasets still has notice-able deficits. This imbalance resultsin a situation in which a fluid simula-tion is able to produce much more

data per time interval than the corre-sponding visualization is able to han-dle.

To accomplish this fundamentalproblem of the visualization of fluiddatasets, this dissertation builds upseveral strategic solutions. In thiscontext, the principle of paralleliza-tion is transferred to the computa-tion of the visualization. Therefore, aconcept is developed to achieve themassive parallel process and displayof several concurrent visualizationmethods, no matter if they are oftechnical scientific or realistic nature.

The parameters of the herein-usedvisualization methods are interactive-ly steerable, their application on ded-icated parts of the data space con-trollable. Derived from an abstractmodel of a visualization method andits parallel representation as anobject in the system, an importantpoint of the developed approachconsists of the encapsulation of indi-vidual visualization methods in socalled »probes«: Virtual units, whoseposition, transparency and size canbe freely controlled by the user.

Individual modules of the systemare decoupled through abstractinterfaces. This enables an asyn-chronous and event-driven computa-

tion of the visualization algorithms,respectively, the geometries pro-duced by them, like particles, vol-ume-rendering or streamlines.

Separated from the specializeddata formats of the fluid simulation,a progressive data format optimizedfor the visualization is developed.Using it, a compression of the fluiddata can be realized, together withan optimization of the data accessfor the visualization.

Through the massive parallel sys-tem and the progressive data for-mat, the scalability of the visualiza-tion is achieved. This allows thesystem to run on different hardwareplatforms, from laptops to multi-coreCPU/GPU systems – always adaptedto the available computational per-formance. Through that, it is possi-ble to display and investigate largefluid datasets even on relatively slowmachines and to overcome theimbalance in the performancebetween fluid simulation and thecorresponding visualization.

GRADUATIONS

Dr. Sascha Schneider relaxedly celebrates his graduation with his doctor adviser Prof. Dr. José L.Encarnção.

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Dr. Dietmar HildenbrandDecember 13, 2006»Geometric Computing in Com-puter Graphics and RoboticsUsing Conformal Geometric Alge-bra«Supervisors:Prof. Dr. Marc AlexaProf. Dr. D. FellnerProf. Dr. W. Straßer

In computer graphics and robotics, alot of different mathematical systemslike vector algebra, homogeneouscoordinates, quaternions or dualquaternions are used for differentapplications. Now, it seems that achange of paradigm is lying aheadof us based on conformal geometricalgebra unifying all of these differentapproaches in one mathematical system.

Conformal geometric algebra is avery powerful mathematical frame-work. Due to its geometric intuitive-ness, compactness and simplicity, itis easy to develop new algorithms.Algorithms based on conformal geo-metric algebra lead to enhancedquality, a reduction of development

time, better understandable and bet-ter maintainable solutions. Often, aclear structure and greater eleganceresult in lower runtime performance.However, in this thesis, it could beshown that algorithms based onconformal geometric algebra can beeven faster than conventional algo-rithms.

The main contribution of this the-sis is the geometrically intuitive and -nevertheless - efficient algorithm fora computer animation application,namely, an inverse kinematics algo-rithm for a virtual character. Thisalgorithm is based on an embeddingof quaternions in conformal geomet-ric algebra. For performance reasons,two optimization approaches areused in a way to make the applica-tion now three times faster than theconventional solution. These twoapproaches are based on the codegenerator Gaigen 2 and on the sym-bolic calculations with the help ofthe computer algebra system Maple.They have different advantages:Based on the Gaigen 2 approach,we are able to implement our algo-rithms in a way that still reflects the

elegant features of Conformal Geo-metric Algebra. Based on the Mapleapproach, we are able to implementthem with the help of our standardcompilers without the need of addi-tional libraries.

With these results, geometric com-puting using conformal geometricalgebra will become more and morefruitful in a great variety of applica-tions in computer graphics androbotics as well as beyond theseapplications in all engineering areas.

Dr. Dietmar Hilden-brand celebrates hisgraduation.

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Analysis and Interpretation of QualityMetrics for Digital Passport PhotosDiploma thesis by: Mathias FrohnaSupervisors: ECM. Oriana Yuridia Gonza-lez Castillo, Prof. Dr.-Ing. J. Encarnação

BackgroundSince the facial image is the mandatorybiometric identifier to be included in digi-tal travel documents, the quality of digitalpassport photos must be guaranteed forthe fulfillment of the related internationalstandards, such as the International CivilAviation Organization Machine ReadableTravel Documents specification(ICAO/MRTD 9303) and the InternationalOrganization for Standardization (ISO)19794- 5 »Information Technology - Bio-metric data interchange formats - part 5Face image data«. The International CivilAviation Organization New TechnologiesWorking Group (ICAO/NTWG) recognizesthat member states currently and willcontinue to utilize the facial image as theprimary identifier for Machine ReadableTravel Documents (MRTDs). Methods tomeasure the image quality are dividedinto two categories: objective and subjec-tive. An objective measurement estimatesa constant value for the quality of animage through different mathematicalalgorithms. A subjective measurementestimates a variable value for the qualityof an image through different studies,such as direct estimation, visual analogscale or adjetival scales, in which thehuman opinion of the image plays themain role.

ObjectiveThe objective of this diploma thesis is todevelop an application to integrate andto analyze the quality metrics obtained.The result of the integration and analysisis the subjective description of the qualitylevel of a digital passport photo.

Problem descriptionThere are three indexes to measure thequality of a passport photo: ImageAttributes Quality Index (IAQI), BiometricContent Quality Index (BCQI) and Biomet-ric Content Image Quality Index (BCIQI).

With this three indexes, a three-dimen-sional graphic is constructed to show thequality score of the analyzed passportphoto; the three indexes are calculated inisolated modules in the same develop-ment environment, the results are inter-preted manually, and the graphic is pro-duced using other software tools, Thewhole process consumes too manyresources, and there is a dependency ofthe process expert.

Probe strategyThe application will be tested using goodand bad quality passport photos previ-ously evaluated and qualified with themanual method.

Scientific contributionThe work specified in this document is apart of a new development to measurethe quality of passport photos and to ver-ify that quality can be measured.

Conception and Implementation of a Vegetation Component in aComputer-graphic 3D City Model Diploma thesis by: Beate GeibelSupervisors: Jörg Haist, Prof. Dr. RalfDörner, University of Applied SciencesWiesbaden

The concept and implementation of theintegration of vegetation into a 3D GIS isexplained. The automated representationof plants within a city model introducedin this work serves to simplify the cityplanning process by a more realistic viewand to improve the visual quality of themodel. As technological platform theCityServer3D of Fraunhofer IGD is used.

Different approaches from the field ofvegetation representation are analyzedand tested for suitability for a web-based3D city model. After this analysis a newapproach for integrating and visualizingvegetation objects is elaborated anddescribed.

Adaptive Sampling of IntersectableModels Exploiting Image and Object-space CoherenceDiploma thesis by: Artur SchmidtSupervisor: Anders Adamson

In ray casting, interactivity is limited byintersection tests with the underlying sur-face. Depending on the surface, intersec-

tion tests can be very expensive opera-tions. To achieve interactivity in ray cast-ing in spite of that fact, a framework isimplemented that accommodates theamount of intersection tests on the sam-pling grid in image space according tothe surface variation. The shape isapproximated by bilinear patches thatrepresent several samples in a rectangulararea that can be interpolated, illuminatedand tested for occlusion using ordinarygraphics hardware, leaving more CPUtime for intersection tests. Object-spacecoherence is exploited by reusing thesebilinear patches in consecutive views.

Development of Methods and Con-cepts for the Creation of a Story-telling-based 3D Action Role-playingGameDiploma thesis by: Thibaut BrusseauxSupervisor: Dr. Stefan Göbel

This work presents the development ofmethods and concepts for the creation ofa storytelling-based 3D action role-play-ing game (action RPG) named Tib’sQuest. Action RPGs have two particularaspects in which we are interested in thiswork: on the one hand, a real-timeaction and combat system in a 3D-envi-ronment and, on the other hand, story-telling elements, with which the playerhas to ask the other non-player charac-ters for the next quests to fulfill.

We implemented the 3D game engineusing the DirectX API in C++. We keptthe classic top-down view of the early 2Dconsole action RPGs, which simplifies therendering optimizations. However, westill need some classic 3D engine featureslike frustum culling, which we imple-mented by traversing a quadtree struc-ture. To perform collision detection andresponse, we implemented a version of aswept sphere algorithm. The terrainstructure of the game engine involvesclassic heightmap and lightmap, and isable to represent both indoor and out-door environments. The lightmap is com-puted by ray-casting supported by thequadtree structure.

We present and implement a gameobject component system to representthe game objects populating the virtualworld. It is used instead of the usualinheritance-based approach. One advan-tage of the component-based system isto provide a natural data-driven system

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which we use to compose the gameobjects from outside the game exe-cutable. The game objects are geographi-cally registered on a grid to perform effi-cient proximity tests, such as collisionsand interactions.

The storytelling relies on the ICML for-mat (Inscape Communication MarkupLanguage), which enables the descriptionof interactive stories, and the NarrationController, an external DLL, which is ableto read ICML stories and manage the sto-ry states. The final achievements of thiswork are the programming of an inter-face between the Narration Controllerand a 3D-game engine as well as theillustrating of the ICML interactive story-telling capabilities in an Action-RPG. Wealso provide a level editor.

Using Two-dimensional Features toIdentify Sheet MusicDiploma thesis by: Sonja BeckerSupervisor: Dr. Martin Schmucker

Nowadays, computer equipment such ascopiers and scanners are commonly useddevices. By using this equipment, docu-ments, particularly sheet music, can becopied relatively problem-free. The copiercan be used to copy music cheaply andquickly. There are few distortions, blotsor other markings on the page. The scan-ner provides quick digital image repro-duction, by which the sheet can be sentquickly through the Internet without anyfurther loss in quality. In contrast to con-ventional copying machines, the copyand the original are identical. For Internetsharing, software called peer-to-peer(P2P) systems are used, which providenetworks on which different users canaccess the files. A well-known example isthe exchange system Napster, whichfacilitated the exchange of MP3 musicfiles over the Internet. Respect for copy-rights or for copyright-protected data israrely taken, which means that illegalcopies often result.To detect such misuse,it is important to be able to recognizesheet music clearly. Therefore, propertiesof sheet music can be used to identifythem.

For the identification of sheet music,various procedures have already beendeveloped. They can be divided into twoclasses: watermarking and fingerprinting.Watermarking embeds information (so-called watermarks) into the data, which

creates a modified version of the original.Fingerprinting procedures compute a fin-gerprint as a characteristic for digitaldata, which helps to identify the sheetmusic clearly. They map digital contentsto a clear ID, without modifying the data.

This thesis evaluates which informationof a music sheet can be used to computefingerprints and which are suitable toclearly distinguish and identify differentscores. Therefore, two-dimensionalgraphical characteristics are used for theidentification of sheet music. The charac-teristics are based on mathematicalmoments. These moments are statisticalfactors, which can be used to character-ize the sheet music. The two-dimensionalpixel distribution of the sheet music onthe note sheet is observed. A compactdescription can be created from the dis-tribution of the pixels. From selected fea-tures, a compact representation is triedto be found by using principal compo-nent analysis (PCA) and the followingquantization. Finally, the result is com-pared with existing approaches and eval-uated.

Conception and Realization of anInteractive Visualization Module forthe Configuration and Control ofServer NetworksDiploma thesis by: Quentin DecavelSupervisor: Thorsten May

The goal of this work is to define andimplement a module for »Visionapp Con-trol Center«. »Visionapp Control Center«is an application which aims to providesystem administrators with a graphicaluser interface for the automatization ofserver management inside a network.The module provides an easy way toquickly create server networks, to displayinformation about these networks and tovisualize them as completely as possible.Thus, a central part of this work is thedevelopment of a so-called »Fisheye«-view. Fisheye-views help visualize het-erogenous amounts of data by allowingthe user to focus on any subset of datawhile still keeping the whole data set insight. In our case, the user can choose tofocus on a particular connected set ofobjects and connections inside the net-work while still being able to see thewhole network. This part is essentially amathematical one, with the characteriza-tion of network objects as elements that

move on the surface of a sphere. Anoth-er very important aspect of this work isthe user-friendliness of the module: theuser must be able to create, visualize andexpand networks as easily as possible.This demand leads to a need for appro-priate user event handling to facilitatethe user’s task.

Development of Methods and Con-cepts for Storytelling-based 2DAdventureDiploma thesis by: Robert KonradSupervisor: Dr. Stefan Göbel

Adventures are an established computergame genre, which, in contrary to othergenres, concentrates primary on story-telling. After an introduction about thedevelopment of the adventure genre, thethesis deals with the different compo-nents constituting the game, which wasimplemented as part of the thesis. Afteran overview of the underlying gameengine, a discussion of the possibilities of2D graphics using current computerhardware follows. Then, the story rele-vant aspects of the game are discussed,which are implemented almost complete-ly in ICML (INSCAPE CommunicationMarkup Language), a language for thedescription of interactive stories. The finalpart addresses the implemented con-cepts, which distinguish the game fromother adventures. This is primarily thedesign of the agent architecture, which isresponsible for the behavior of all com-puter-controlled characters in the game.The appendix includes different imple-mentation details of the game as well asan authoring chapter.

Geospatial Composite Web Servicesin Three-dimensional GeographicInformation SystemsDiploma thesis by: Thorsten ItzelSupervisor: Jörg Haist

This thesis focuses on geospatial compos-ite web services and their integration intothree-dimensional geographic informa-tion systems (3D-GIS). The provision ofspatial data over commonly accessibleweb services has enormously increasedover the recent years. This success washighly promoted by the standardizingefforts of the non-commercial organiza-tion Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

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The OGC tries to push the distributedmanagement of geodata even furtherand is currently developing a web servicethat enables users to process geodata ondistributed resources. A draft specifica-tion already exists.

The thesis deals with compositions ofgeospatial web services that provide thepossibility to execute complex processingtasks on geodata exclusively on distribut-ed resources. In this paper, currentapproaches for combining and executingcomposite web services are considered.Additionally, existing OGC standards andspecifications are analyzed for their easeof integration into composite web ser-vices. Based on the acquired results, aconcept for automated geospatial webservice compositions is developed. Theconcept is evaluated by a prototypeimplementation of a use case into theCityServer3D.

Automatic Generation of Three-dimensional Triangular Meshes fromPoint Cloud DataDiploma thesis by: Stefan Uhrig, Supervisor: Frank Zeilfelder

In recent years, considerable advance-ments in the development of geometricobject scanning technologies wereachieved. Typically, so-called point cloudsare the result of these scans. They consistof discrete points recorded from the sur-face of the scanned object.

An efficient and high-quality recon-struction of the original object based onthe measured data is of high importancein modern computer graphics. Besidesthe actual surface reconstruction, theconversion to an appropriate non-discreterepresentation forms a challenging task.The description of surfaces by triangularmeshes is still a widely spread standard.

This thesis studies both arbitrary topol-ogy surface reconstructions from pointclouds and the following surface mesh-ing. In particular, modern advancing frontalgorithms are analyzed. Due to a highlevel of control on the triangulation,these algorithms are able to produce ahigh-quality mesh. They reconstruct sur-faces by employing a method that pro-jects points in space onto the surface.Providing an efficient and robust projec-tion method therefore constitutes a cen-tral requirement of a successful triangula-tion. Up to now, moving least squares

were usually used to project points ontosurfaces represented by point clouds. Weshow that practical computation prob-lems occur when using moving leastsquares in conjunction with advancingfront algorithms. These problems arebased on the necessity to solve a nonlin-ear minimization problem.

The main contribution of this thesis isthe development of a new projectionmethod that is based on Delaunay trian-gulations. Compared to moving leastsquares, it features a better reconstruc-tion of surfaces represented by pointclouds. Furthermore, our method doesnot require solving a nonlinear minimiza-tion or similar problem, but efficient androbust algorithms for all necessary com-putations exist. As the direct conse-quence, the computational costs are low-er.

Numerous tests resulting from ourcomplex implementations show thatthese new methods lead to a previouslyunachieved high robustness and perfor-mance in automatic point cloud triangu-lations.

Generative Programming forDatabases Using the Example ofMediaSeekerDiploma thesis by: Malte RiedSupervisors: M.Sc. Mareike Behr, RenéCavet

If many developers work on a project fora database, they often use different waysto access the data. Those different solu-tions are hard to maintain. Another prob-lem is the changing of the databaseschema. If a changing is done, big partsof the code have to be changed as well.To solve these problems, one could use acode generator which uses the databaseschema to produce the code.

The presented generator DBCodeGentakes the schema of a running SQLServerdatabase and passes it to one or moreoutput plugins. These are loaded andmanaged at runtime.

The plugin DBCodeExporter is a pluginfor DBCodeGen. It produces its outputwith the database schema and so-calledtemplates. The templates are written in aspecial language which is interpreted byDBCodeExporter. With this language, it ispossible to create loops (like for everytable), branches (like if a column is a pri-mary key) and constant data (like the

name of the database). All text, which isnot part of the language gets copied tothe output. With this technique, it is pos-sible to generate simple text, source codeor others which can be written as text.

The presented code to access thedatabase is generated with DBCodeGenand DBCodeExporter. If using this code,one cannot easily write a code whichdoes not work. The most possible mis-takes were intercepted while compilingthe program.

Plan and Control of Operations andInterventions Using ComputerTomographyDiploma thesis by: Mira PommerSupervisor: Christian Dold

Medical treatment of bronchial carcino-ma (lung cancer) often includes surgicalintervention. New challenging bronchialreconstruction techniques (wedge resec-tion, end-to-end anastomosis, y-sleeve)allow the derivation of healthy lung tis-sue, but require special planning andpostoperative supervision. This work pre-sents a semi-automatic analysis ofbronchial segments by calculating the runof cross-section diameter and lumen.These measurements are conducted inthe original gray-level volume by a com-bination of the first and second deriva-tives. Furthermore, there is a bronchial-axis parallel and perpendicularvisualization to navigate through thebronchial segment and get a better spa-cial impression.