The Study Session was jointly organized by the Viewer Working Group and the Technical Sub-committee at the SGI Hall in the Yebisu Garden Place Tower on July 20, 2007.
The theme was "Forefront of 3D viewers." We invited lecturers who have been active in the fields of science and industry. They gave lectures on the latest topics concerning 3D viewers including the current situation, required functions and future possible development of 3D viewers. An exhibition with demonstrations was also held.
There were 18 members at the study session for a total of 30 people attending.

* Outline of lecture
The beneficial effects of many kinds of medicine are achieved by their being bonded with protein in living subjects. Indicated by the fact that such bonding between chemical compounds of medicine and protein is often referred to as "keys" and "keyholes," their bonding is strongly dependent on specific combinations of their three-dimensional structures. Therefore, three-dimensional observations of their molecules are greatly helpful for research for drug discovery. In this presentation, the usefulness of computer-aided 3D in research for drug discovery was explained.

* Outline of lecture
It is known that the environment in space has been disturbed by high energy which comes from other parts of the space. Such disturbances cause harm to artificial satellites, manned spacecraft, and to our lives on earth. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is promoting space weather forecast projects which aim to forecast such disturbances to minimize possible damages. The space weather simulator monitors the entire geomagnetosphere by 3D numeric simulation while using a supercomputer that provides us a real-time forecast of the situation of the geomagnetosphere as it will be around one hour after the forecast. This forecast is open to the public on the Internet only with 2D images. NICT provides weather forecast information, and we developed a real-time space weather simulator visualization system by using a 3D display without special glasses to utilize 3D information acquired by a simulator. Explanation of this system was provided in this lecture.

* Outline of lecture
In this lecture, a technique to simulate the defocus caused by our eyesight and correction by using a lens which enables generation of computer graphics (CG) images with defocus and refraction in almost real-time was introduced. With the calculation mentioned above, spatial distribution information of defocus called "blur field" is generated. When CG images are drawn, they are processed by combining several drawings which are acquired by displacing all vertexes of models in space depending on each blur field. By using a wavefront tracking technique in the calculation mentioned above, simulated images for near sight, far sight, old sight, distorted vision and results of corrections can be shown. A technique which generates real-time images equivalent to those generated by ray tracing is used to show refraction.

* Outline of lecture
Contents including photos and videos which are displayed on hardware which enables 3D displays have evolved to a higher definition and more enhanced effects. However, since development of software is difficult, real-time 3D contents for user interface and simulation which enable discovery of 3D effects from various aspects have not shown any significant progress. In this exhibition with demonstrations, the latest 3D user interface and "MatrixEngine," which is a 3D multimedia contents viewer and a creation tool which are designed for creators who are responsible for such development, were introduced.

* Outline of lecture
Characteristics of real-time 3D technologies were explained with demonstrations of REMO, and the commitment toward a real-time 3D technology market by the developer of REMO was explained.