Open problems in computer graphics

CS 348B - Computer Graphics: Image Synthesis Techniques
Spring Quarter, 1997
Marc Levoy
Handout #3

Ivan Sutherland's Ten Unsolved Problems
(Datamation, 1966, interpreted by Frank Crow)

1. Hardware characteristics and cost
2. Problems of technique (e.g. rubber banding)
3. Coupling problems (display-to-simulation)
4. Describing motion
5. Digital halftoning
6. Structure of drawings (making the structure explicit)
7. Hidden line removal
8. Program instrumentation (and visualization)
9. Logical arrangement (e.g. hierarchical modeling)
10. Working with abstractions (e.g. scientific visualization)

Siggraph '91 Unsolved Problems Panel

Al Barr (CalTech)

managing scene complexity

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (UNC)

programming tools for managing "serious models"

Stuart Card (Xerox)

large-scale user interfaces

Jim Clark (SGI, now Netscape)

multimedia

Steven Feiner (Columbia)

automatic design of graphics, "the design equation"

A. Robin Forrest (E. Anglia)

robust geometric algorithms

Pat Hanrahan (Princeton, now Stanford)

efficient and physically valid light transport algorithms

Andries van Dam (Brown)

graphics standards

Marc Levoy's favorites

1. Modeling complex environments (cluttered office, busy street scene)
2. Modeling nature (human faces, human and animal movements, trees)
3. Smoothly varying level-of-detail under extreme scale changes
4. Tools for extemporaneous data analysis
5. Useful virtual reality (we aren't there yet)