RE: Be The Dinosaur museum exhibit: YouTube previews

["John R. Hutchinson" <jrhutch@rvc.ac.uk>]

I wasn't there but according to them, it was all AI except for the camera,
and I trust them enough to believe it. They also have tyrannosaurs swimming
impromptu, which is pretty neat.

Cheers,
John


-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Taylor [mailto:mike@indexdata.com] 
Sent: 05 May 2008 15:43
To: jrhutch@rvc.ac.uk
Cc: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Be The Dinosaur museum exhibit: YouTube previews


Very interesting stuff, John!

But how much cheating was involved?  In other words, did they really just
leave the AI to do what it would, controlling only the camera? Or did they
author some of the behaviour by hand?

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <mike@indexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of" --
         David Moser.



John R. Hutchinson writes:
 > Enjoy:
 > http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=be+the+dinosaur&search=Search
 > 
 > The first 3 videos are preliminary footage from the Be the Dinosaur
exhibit,  > which opens in mid-May at the Louisville Science Center, and
then will go on  > tour elsewhere (TBA and still some open spots for
interested museums).  > 
 > It is a work in progress; improvements, refinements are constantly being
> added in both graphics and technology - and will constantly be added
during  > the lifespan of the exhibit.  > 
 > The latest one is pretty cool: they did a 'mockumentary' a la 'Wild
Kingdom'  > (I know, that dates me...) where they sent a virtual camera into
their AI  > simulation and investigated what the dinos were spontaneously
doing...  > 
 > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm0dIBdq1as
 > (blame me for the filaments on the tyrannosaurs)
 > 
 > >From the producers:
 > "We are seeing REALLY interesting behaviors now.  They seem to be  >
spontaneously grouping together and such (with a limited but flexible AI  >
system that assigns basic drives and needs and some universal information  >
that any animal that would know about its environs).  In fact,  as I'd hope,
> the intermeshing of all these simple rules are beginning to produce really
> interesting animalistic behaviors and now we need to push them more
towards  > what we think dinosaurs may have actually done."  > 
 > Cheers,
 > John
 > 
 > 
 >