This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Visual Form, IWVF-4, held in Capri, Italy, in May 2001.
The 66 revised full papers presented together with seven invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. The book covers theoretical and applicative aspects of visual form processing. The papers are organized in topical sections on representation, analysis, recognition, modelling and retrieval, and applications.

The range of issues considered in graph drawing includes algorithms, graph theory, geometry, topology, order theory, graphic languages, perception, app- cations, and practical systems. Much research is motivated by applications to systems for viewing and interacting with graphs. The interaction between th- retical advances and implemented solutions is an important part of the graph drawing eld. The annually organized graph drawing symposium is a forum for researchers, practitioners, developers, and users working on all aspects of graph visualization and representations. The preceding symposia were held in M- treal (GD 98), Rome (GD 97), Berkeley (GD 96), Passau (GD 95), Princeton (GD 94), and Paris (GD 93). The Seventh International Symposium on Graph Drawing GD 99 was or- nized at Sti r n Castle, in the vicinity of Prague, Czech Republic. This baroque castle recently restored as a hotel and conference center provided a secluded place for the participants, who made good use of the working atmosphere of the conference. In total the symposium had 83 registered participants from 16 countries."

Understanding Virtual Design Studios examines the issues involved in setting up and running a virtual design studio. Rather than focusing on the technology or how to apply it, the reader is presented with an interdisciplinary framework for understanding, organising, running and improving virtual design studios both in professional and educational practice. The authors assess the potential benefits, such as improved creativity and collaboration, and highlight the areas in which our understanding needs to improve:
How people collaborate in an environment where interaction is mediated by shared computer resources
How to organise and manage a distributed workspace efficiently
How people represent and communicate design ideas in an electronic form
Of interest to both design professionals and researchers interested in computer-mediated collaboration, this volume will also be of interest to anyone who needs a clear picture of what this new technology can do for them.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the International Workshop on Vision Algorithms held in Corfu, Greece in September 1999 in conjunction with ICCV'99.
The 15 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions; each paper is complemented by a brief transcription of the discussion that followed its presentation. Also included are two invited contributions and two expert reviews as well as a panel discussion. The volume spans the whole range of algorithms for geometric vision. The authors and volume editors succeeded in providing added value beyond a mere collection of papers and made the volume a state-of-the-art survey of their field.

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Automated Deduction in Geometry, ADG'98, held in Beijing, China in August 1998. The 14 revised papers presented were selected from the papers accepted for the workshop after careful reviewing. The papers address all current issues in the area, in particular automated geometry theorem proving, automated geometry problem solving, plane Euclidean reasoning, Clifford algebraic methods for geometric reasoning, decomposing algebraic varieties, applciations in computer vision, mechanical CAGD, etc.

This book constitutes the joint refereed proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Structural and Syntactic Pattern Recognition and the 3rd International Workshop on Statistical Techniques in Pattern Recognition, SSPR 2000 and SPR 2000, held in Alicante, Spain in August/September 2000. The 52 revised full papers presented together with five invited papers and 35 posters were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 130 submissions. The book offers topical sections on hybrid and combined methods, document image analysis, grammar and language methods, structural matching, graph-based methods, shape analysis, clustering and density estimation, object recognition, general methodology, and feature extraction and selection.

The papers in this volume were selected for presentation at the 6th Annual International Computing and Combinatorics Conference (COCOON2000), in Sydney, Australia from July 26 - 28, 2000. The topics cover many areas in t- oretical computer science and combinatorial optimization. There were 81 high quality papers submitted to COCOON2000. Each paper was reviewed by at least three program committee members, and the 44 papers were selected. It is expected that most of them will appear in a more complete form in scientic journals. In addition to the selected papers, the volume also contains the papers from two invited keynote speeches by Christos Papad- itriou and Richard Brent. This year the Hao Wang Award was given to honor the paper judged by the programcommittee to have the greatest merit. The recipient is \Approximating Uniform TriangularMeshes in Polygons"byFranz Aurenhammer, NaokiKatoh, Hiromichi Kojima, Makoto Ohsaki, and Yinfeng Xu. The rst Best Young - searcher paper award was given to William Duckworth for his paper \Maximum Induced Matchings of Random Cubic Graphs." We wish to thank all who have made this meeting possible: the authors for submitting papers, the program committee members and the external referees, sponsors, the local organizers, ACM SIGACT for handling electronic subm- sions, Springer-Verlagfor their support, and Debbie Hatherellfor her assistance.

In 1998, SC24, the subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC 1 concerned with computer graphics and image processing, completed work on a new standard for multimedia presentation; the PREMO standard (Presentation Environment for Multimedia Objects) is published under the official reference ISO/IEC 14478. PREMO essentially provides a middleware specification for multimedia programming - more generally it also serves as a reference model for distributed multimedia. This book does not attempt to replace the official standard but provides a readable version of the basic concepts, presents some features of the PREMO objects in detail, highlights the reasons for specific design decisions, and gives simple examples and motivation claryfying the underlying concepts. A particularly helpful feature is that the authors provide detailed specifications of the PREMO objects in Java. Mainly for students and professionals who need to improve their understanding of the issues involved in distributed multimedia.

An Introduction to Applied Semiotics presents nineteen semiotics tools for text and image analysis. Covering a variety of different schools and approaches, together with the author's own original approach, this is a full and synthetic introduction to semiotics. This book presents general tools that can be used with any semiotic product. Drawing on the work of Fontanille, Genette, Greimas, Hebert, Jakobson, Peirce, Rastier and Zilberberg, the tools deal with the analysis of themes and action, true and false, positive and negative, rhythm narration and other elements. The application of each tool is illustrated with analyses of a wide range of texts and images, from well-known or distinctive literary texts, philosophical or religious texts or images, paintings, advertising and everyday signs and symbols. Each chapter has the same structure - summary, theory and application, making it ideal for course use. Covering both visual and textual objects, this is a key text for all courses in semiotics and textual analysis within linguistics, communication studies, literary theory, design, marketing and related areas.

Symmetric multiprocessors (SMPs) dominate the high-end server market and are currently the primary candidate for constructing large scale multiprocessor systems. Yet, the design of e cient parallel algorithms for this platform c- rently poses several challenges. The reason for this is that the rapid progress in microprocessor speed has left main memory access as the primary limitation to SMP performance. Since memory is the bottleneck, simply increasing the n- ber of processors will not necessarily yield better performance. Indeed, memory bus limitations typically limit the size of SMPs to 16 processors. This has at least twoimplicationsfor the algorithmdesigner. First, since there are relatively few processors availableon an SMP, any parallel algorithm must be competitive with its sequential counterpart with as little as one processor in order to be r- evant. Second, for the parallel algorithm to scale with the number of processors, it must be designed with careful attention to minimizing the number and type of main memory accesses. In this paper, we present a computational model for designing e cient al- rithms for symmetric multiprocessors. We then use this model to create e cient solutions to two widely di erent types of problems - linked list pre x com- tations and generalized sorting. Both problems are memory intensive, but in die rent ways. Whereas generalized sorting algorithms typically require a large numberofmemoryaccesses, they areusuallytocontiguousmemorylocations. By contrast, prex computation algorithms typically require a more modest qu- tity of memory accesses, but they are are usually to non-contiguous memory locations.

From video games to mobile augmented reality, 3D interaction is everywhere. But simply choosing to use 3D input or 3D displays isn't enough: 3D user interfaces (3D UIs) must be carefully designed for optimal user experience. 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice, Second Edition is today's most comprehensive primary reference to building outstanding 3D UIs. Four pioneers in 3D user interface research and practice have extensively expanded and updated this book, making it today's definitive source for all things related to state-of-the-art 3D interaction. This edition goes far beyond VR, covering the full spectrum of emerging applications for 3D UIs, and presenting an extraordinary array of pioneering techniques and technologies. The authors combine theoretical foundations, analysis of devices and techniques, empirically validated design guidelines, and much more. Throughout each chapter, they illustrate key concepts with running case studies on gaming, mobile AR, and robot teleoperation. You'll find authoritative, accessible coverage of all this, and much more: Essentials of HCI and human factors (for thousands of students and practitioners now entering the field) How 3D UIs have evolved, and the "hard problems" that remain 3D UIs in console gaming, VR, augmented reality (AR), robot teleoperation, mobile/wearable computers, and remote collaboration How 3D input/output enables users to perceive and act much as they do in the physical world 3D output devices, including visual, auditory, haptic, and tactile displays 3D input devices, including traditional, special purpose, and direct human input via biosignals (e.g., brain input) 3D interaction techniques for common tasks such as selection, manipulation, navigation, and system control Strategies for designing and developing 3D UIs, including the use of 2D interaction; "magic" vs. "natural" interaction techniques; multimodal interaction, and two-handed interaction Evaluating existing 3D UIs, and previewing their future

Das englisch-deutsche Buch Beyond the Borders stellt Ideen, Projekte und Positionen von KA1/4nstlern und Gestaltern vor, die die Grenzen ihrer eigenen gestalterischen Bereiche A1/4berschreiten und Neues entdecken. Ein GroAteil der BeitrAge wurde, unter Verwendung der unterschiedlichsten Techniken, von den KA1/4nstlern und Designern exklusiv fA1/4r dieses Projekt konzipiert und gestaltet, u. a. von der englischen Designgruppe Tomato, dem Macher des Benetton-Magazins Tibor Kalman, dem Chairman von Vitra Rolf Fehlbaum, dem amerikanischen Designer- und Musikerpaar Scott & Laurie Makela, dem Chef von NORTH-Design aus London Sean Perkins, dem Intermedia-Professor Peter Rea, dem Frankfurter Video- und ComputerkA1/4nstler Michael Saup sowie dem Typografie-Guru Edward Fella von der Calarts in Los Angeles.
The English-German book Beyond the Borders presents the ideas, projects, and opinions of artists and designers who cross the boundaries of their own creative disciplines and make new discoveries. Many of the contributions were conceived and designed exclusively for this project, whereby a variety of different techniques were employed. The contributors include: Tomato, the English group of designers; Tibor Kalman, the designer of the Benetton magazine; Rolf Fehlbaum, the chairman of Vitra, a Swiss furniture company; Scott and Laurie Makela, the American designers and musicians; Sean Perkins, the manager of NORTH Design in London; Peter Rea, the professor of intermedia; Michael Saup, the video and computer artist from Frankfurt; and Edward Fella, the typography guru from Calarts in Los Angeles.

The first International Workshop on Interactive Distributed Multimedia Systems and Telecommunication Services (IDMS) was organized by Prof. K. Rothermel and Prof. W. Effelsberg, and took place in Stuttgart in 1992. It had the form of a national forum for discussion on multimedia issues related to communications. The succeeding event was "attached" as a workshop to the German Computer Science Conference (GI Jahrestagung) in 1994 in Hamburg, organized by Prof. W. Lamersdorf. The chairs of the third IDMS, E. Moeller and B. Butscher, enhanced the event to become a very successful international meeting in Berlin in March 1996. This short overview on the first three IDMS events is taken from the preface of the IDMS'97 proceedings (published by Springer as Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 1309), written by Ralf Steinmetz and Lars Wolf. Both, Ralf Steinmetz as general chair and Lars Wolf as program chair of IDMS'97, organized an excellent international IDMS in Darmstadt. Since 1998, IDMS has moved from Germany to other European cities to emphasize the international character it had gained in the previous years. IDMS'98 was organized in Oslo by Vera Goebel and Thomas Plagemann at UniK - Center for Technology at Kjeller, University of Oslo. Michel Diaz, Phillipe Owezarski, and Patrick Senac successfully organized the sixth IDMS event, again outside Germany. IDMS'99 took place in Toulouse at ENSICA. IDMS 2000 continued the tradition and was hosted in Enschede, the Netherlands."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Multimedia Applications, Services and Techniques, ECMAST'99, held in Madrid, Spain in May 1999.The 37 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 71 submissions. The book is divided in sections on services and applications, multimedia terminals, content creation, physical broadcast infrastructure, multimedia over the Internet, metadata, 3D imaging, multicast protocols, security and protection, and mobility.

Ten years ago, the inaugural European Conference on Computer Vision was held in Antibes, France. Since then, ECCV has been held biennially under the auspices of the European Vision Society at venues around Europe. This year, the privilege of organizing ECCV 2000 falls to Ireland and it is a signal honour for us to host what has become one of the most important events in the calendar of the computer vision community. ECCV is a single-track conference comprising the highest quality, previously unpublished, contributed papers on new and original research in computer vision. This year, 266 papers were submitted and, following a rigorous double-blind review process, with each paper being reviewed by three referees, 116 papers were selected by the Programme Committee for presentation at the conference. The venue for ECCV 2000 is the University of Dublin, Trinity College. - unded in 1592, it is Ireland's oldest university and has a proud tradition of scholarship in the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences, alike. The Trinity campus, set in the heart of Dublin, is an oasis of tranquility and its beautiful squares, elegant buildings, and tree-lined playing- elds provide the perfect setting for any conference.

1 - Kamera-Setup.- 1.1 Grundlegende Kameraeinstellungen.- 1.1.1 Empfehlungen.- 1.2 Bildaufloesung.- 1.3 Bildkomprimierung.- 1.4 Aufloesung und Komprimierung eintesten.- 1.5 Scharfung.- 1.6 Farbraum.- 1.7 Digitalzoom.- 1.8 Sucher.- 1.9 Monitor.- 1.10 Belichtung.- 1.10.1 Belichtungsmessung.- 1.10.2 Belichtungsprogramme.- 1.10.3 Belichtungsvarianten.- 1.10.4 Belichtungskorrektur.- 1.11 Autofokus.- 1.11.1Sensorwahl.- 1.11.2 Statischer und dynamischer Autofokus.- 1.11.3 Ausloese- und Scharfeprioritat.- 1.11.4.Manuelle Scharfeinstellung.- 1.12 Empfindlichkeit.- 1.13 Weissabgleich.- 1.13.1 Lichtfarben.- 1.13.2 Automatischer Weissabgleich.- 1.13.3 Manueller Weissabgleich.- 1.14 Datum und Uhrzeit.- 1.15 Dateneinbelichtung.- 1.16 Fernsehsignal.- 1.17 Tonsignale.- 1.18 Optimiertes Kamera-Setup kurz gefasst.- 1.18.1 Standardsituationen.- 1.18.2 Hoechste Anspruche.- 1.18.3 Available-Light-Situationen.- 1.18.4 Nah- und Makroaufnahmen.- 1.18.5 Schnelle Fotografie.- 2 - Belichtung.- 2.1 Belichtungsmessung.- 2.1.1 Charakteristik der Belichtungsmessung.- 2.2 Belichtungsprogramme.- 2.2.1 Programmautomatik.- 2.2.2 Programmshift.- 2.2.3 Motivprogramme.- 2.2.4 Zeitautomatik.- 2.2.5 Blendenautomatik.- 2.2.6 Manuelle Belichtungseinstellung.- 2.3 Belichtungseingriffe.- 2.3.1 Belichtungskorrektur.- 2.3.2 Ersatzmessung.- 2.3.3 Kontrastmessung.- 2.3.4 Belichtungsreihe.- 3 - Praxis der digitalen Fotografie.- 3.1 Vorzuge.- 3.2 Anmerkungen.- 3.3 Aufnahmevorbereitungen.- 3.3.1 Energieversorgung.- 3.3.2 Speichermedien.- 3.3.3 Kamera-Setup.- 3.3.4 Belichtungsmessung.- 3.3.5 Nutzliches fur die Kameratasche.- 3.3.6 Kameratasche packen.- 3.4 Fotos gestalten.- 3.4.1 Der Goldene Schnitt.- 3.5 Gestalten mit der Brennweite.- 3.5.1 Weitwinkelbrennweite.- 3.5.2 Normalbrennweite.- 3.5.3 Telebrennweite.- 3.5.4 Scharfentiefe.- 3.5.5 Brennweitenwirkung.- 3.6 Licht in der Fotografie.- 3.6.1 Tageslicht.- 3.6.2 Aufhellen.- 3.6.3 Available Light.- 3.6.4 Kunstlicht.- 3.6.5 Mischlicht.- 3.6.6 Langzeitbelichtung.- 4 - Blitzlichtfotografie.- 4.1 Blitzlicht.- 4.2 Grundlagen.- 4.2.1 Blitzleistung.- 4.2.2 Abstandsgesetz.- 4.2.3 Blitzsynchronisation.- 4.2.4 Blitzreichweite.- 4.3 Blitztechniken.- 4.3.1 Vorblitz.- 4.3.2 Aufhellblitz.- 4.3.3 Vollblitz.- 4.3.4 Kurzzeitsynchronisation.- 4.3.5 Langzeitsynchronisation.- 4.3.6 Blitz-Belichtungskorrektur.- 4.3.7 Ultrakurzzeitfotografie.- 4.3.8 Drahtlose Blitzsteuerung.- 4.4 Blitzautomatiken.- 4.4.1 Blitzen mit Programmautomatik.- 4.4.2 Blitzen mit Zeit- oder Blendenautomatik.- 4.4.3 Manuelles Blitzen.- 4.5 Besseres Blitzlicht.- 4.5.1 Indirekter Blitz.- 4.5.2 Entfesselter Blitz 1.- 4.5.3 Entfesselter Blitz 2.- 4.5.4 Blitzreflektor.- 4.5.5 Servoblitz.- 5 - Motive und Themen.- 5.1 Handwerkliches.- 5.2 Visuelle Notizen.- 5.3 Landschaftsfotografie.- 5.4 Architekturfotografie.- 5.5 Nah-und Makrofotografie.- 5.6 Menschenbilder.- 5.7 Reise und Reportage.- 5.8 Infrarotfotografie.- 5.9 Ultraviolettfotografie.- 5.10 Experimente.- 5.11 Panoramafotografie.- 6 - Studiofotografie.- 6.1 Sachaufnahme.- 6.2 Stilleben.- 6.3 Reproduktion.- 6.4 Lichtquellen im Studio.- 6.4.1 Tageslicht.- 6.4.2 Blitzlicht.- 6.4.3 Kaltlichtleuchte.- 6.4.4 Kunstlichtleuchte.- 6.4.5 Portables Studioblitzgerat.- 6.4.6 Studioblitz.- 6.4.7 Studioblitzgerat zunden.- 6.5 Einrichten des Studios.- 6.5.1 Tipps zum Raum.- 6.5.2 Aufheller und Neger.- 6.5.3 Hintergrund.- 6.5.4 Aufnahmetisch.- 6.6 Lichtfuhrung.- 6.6.1 Lichtposition.- 6.6.2 Lichtcharakteristik.- 6.6.3 Licht einrichten.- 6.6.4 Lichtfuhrung im Nahbereich.- 6.6.5 Hellfeldbeleuchtung.- 6.6.6 Dunkelfeldbeleuchtung.- 6.6.7 Lichtzelt.- 6.6.8 Polarisiertes Licht.- 6.7 Ausrustungsvorschlag.- 6.8 Setup fur Sachaufnahmen.- 7 - Fotos digitalisieren.- 7.1 Analoge Vorlagen digitalisieren.- 7.2 Digitalisieren mit der Kamera.- 7.2.1 Aufsichtvorlagen digitalisieren.- 7.2.2 Durchsichtvorlagen digitalisieren.- 7.3 Filmscanner.- 7.4 Flachbettscanner.- 7.5 Trommelscanner.- 7.6 Scan-Service via Photo CD.- 7.7 Hinweise zum Digitalisieren.

Multimedia Communications is at the core of the advanced interactive services that make up today's Information Society. Videoconferencing, teleworking, teleshopping and video-on-demand will benefit from developments in broadband and mobile telecommunication systems, intelligent multimedia terminals and digital signal processing. The latest research findings from these fields are presented here in the proceedings of the 10th Tyrrhenian Workshop on Digital Communications, held in Ischia, Italy, September 19 98. Focus is placed on the following four areas: Signal Processing for Multimedia Communications. Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Multimedia Traffic Sources. Access Techniques. Multimode Multimedia Terminals. In particular, multimedia services and applications are presented. This comprehensive collection of papers will enable the reader to keep pace with the rapid changes that are taking place in this field. Experts have co-operated with top research centers worldwide, on an academic and industrial level, to make this an up-to-date reference volume for all those who are concerned with technological advances in Multimedia Distributed Systems.

Multimedia '99 covers technological and scientific areas of media production, processing and delivery. 24 contributions from research laboratories and universities worldwide give a broad perspective on multimedia research with a special focus on media convergence. The topics treated in this volume: image and sound content analysis and processing, paradigms and metaphors for multimedia authoring and display, applications such as education or entertainment, and multimedia content authentication and security.

Java is an object oriented language which allows you to create interactive Web pages, or to write applications which will run on any computer. Visual J++ gives you access to the power of Java with all the benefits of a modern visual development environment, for fast programming, and debugging. If you are new to Java or are an existing Java programmer who wants to switch to Visual J++, this book gives you all the essential information you need using lots of examples. Topics covered in this book include: the Java language, polymorphism, inheritance and encapsulation, graphics and animation, handling events, using files, exception handling, abstract windowing toolkit, the Java applet wizard and the resource wizards, debugging, and project management. Essential Visual J++ 6.0 fast is designed for professional developers or students who need to learn the maximum in the minimum time and to develop applications fast.

Graphdrawingaddressestheproblemofconstructingrepresentationsofabstract graphs, networks, and hypergraphs. The 6th Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD '98) was held August 13{15, 1998, atMcGillUniversity, Montr eal, Canada.ItimmediatelyfollowedtheTenth Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry (CCCG '98), held August 10{12 at McGill. The GD '98 conference attracted 100 paid registrants from academic and industrial institutions in thirteen countries. Roughly half the p- ticipantsalsoattendedCCCG'98.Asinthepast, interactionamongresearchers, practitioners, andstudents fromtheoreticalcomputer science, mathematics, and the application areas of graph drawing continued to be an important aspect of the graph drawing symposium. In response to the call for papers and system demonstrations, the program committee received 57 submissions, of which 10 were demos. Each submission was reviewed by at least 4 members of the program committee, and comments were returnedto the authors.Following extensive email discussions andmultiple rounds of voting, the program committee accepted 23 papers and 9 demos. GD '98 also held an unrefereed poster gallery. The poster gallery contained 16 posters, 14 of which have abstracts in this volume. The poster gallery served to encourageparticipationfromresearchersinrelatedareasandprovidedast- ulating environment for the breaks between the technical sessions. In keeping with the tradition of previous graph drawing conferences, GD '98 held a graph drawing contest. This contest, which is traditionally a conference highlight, servestomonitorandtochallengethestateoftheartingraphdrawing. A report on the 1998 contest appears in this volume.

This volume and the accompanying software describe and demonstrate all the basics and fundamentals of modern computer graphics. After an overview of computer graphics, the following chapters--complete with discussions and exercises--are devoted to modeling of 3D objects with polygons and wireframes; animation of modeled objects; and rendering of photorealistic images from the modeled objects, including lighting, shading, and texture mapping. After modeling, animating, and rendering, coverage details how to add special effects such as warping, bending, or morphing, as described in the chapter on image manipulation and postproduction. The book concludes with a look into the future of computer graphics and an overview of computer graphics in various fields. The CD-ROM software includes a complete 3D graphics application with a user-friendly graphical interface, which can be used to perform all the exercises in the book.

Multimedia information systems is a rapidly growing area of research and development, attracting increasing interest from a variety of application fields including business, entertainment, manufacturing, education, CAD, CAE, medicine, etc. Due to the diverse nature of the information dealt with and the increased functionality (e.g., user interaction), the capabilities and system requirements of multimedia information systems dramatically exceed those of conventional databases and database management systems.
This book presents an integrated approach to interactive multimedia documents. After summarizing the prerequisites and background information, the author develops an IMD model taking into account interaction and spatiotemporal composition. Based on this model, the author develops an integrated framework covering most of the steps during the life cycle of an IMD, namely data modeling, authoring, verification and querying, execution and rendering, and indexing.

Ten years after Virtual Environment research started with NASA s VIEW project, these techniques are now exploited in industry to speed up product development cycles, to ensure higher product quality, and to encourage early training on and for new products. Especially the automotive industry, but also the oil and gas industry are driving the use of these techniques in their works. The papers in this volume reflect all the different tracks of the workshop: reviewed technical papers as research contributions, summaries on panels of VE applications in the automotive, the medical, the telecommunication and the geoscience field, a panel discussing VEs as the future workspace, invited papers from experts reporting from VEs for entertainment industry, for media arts, for supercomputing and productivity enhancement. Short industrial case studies, reporting very briefly from ongoing industrial activities complete this state of the art snapshot."

The 1999 International Workshop on Interactive Distributed Multimedia Sys tems and Telecommunication Services (IDMS) in Toulouse is the sixth in a se ries that started in 1992. The previous workshops were held in Stuttgart in 1992, Hamburg in 1994, Berlin in 1996, Darmstadt in 1997, and Oslo in 1998. The area of interest of IDMS ranges from basic system technologies, such as networking and operating system support, to all kinds of teleservices and distributed multimedia applications. Technical solutions for telecommunications and distributed multimedia systems are merging and quality-of-service (QoS) will play a key role in both areas. However, the range from basic system tech nologies to distributed mutlimedia applications and teleservices is still very broad and we have to understand the implications of multimedia applications and their requirements for middleware and networks. We are challenged to develop new and more fitting solutions for all distributed multimedia systems and telecom munication services to meet the requirements of the future information society."

Min Chen, Arie E. Kaufman and Roni Yage/ Volume graphics is concerned with graphics scenes defined in volume data types, where a model is specified by a mass of points instead of a collection of surfaces. The underlying mathematical definition of such a model is a set of scalar fields, which define the geometrical and physical properties of every point in three dimensional space. As true 3D representations, volume data types possess more descriptive power than surface data types, and are morphologically closer to many high-level modelling schemes in traditional surface graphics such as parametric surfaces, implicit surfaces and volume sweeping. The past decade has witnessed significant advances in volume visualisation, driven mainly by applications such as medical imaging and scientific computation. The work in this field has produced a number of volume rendering methods that enable 3D information in a volumetric dataset to be selectively rendered into 2D images. With modern computer hardware, such a process can easily be performed on an ordinary workstation. More importantly, volume-based rendering offers a consistent solution to the primary deficiencies of the traditional surface-based rendering, which include its inability to encapsulate the internal description of a model, and the difficulties in rendering amorphous phenomena. The emergence of volume-based techniques has not only broadened the extent of graphics applications, but also brought computer graphics closer to other scientific and engineering disciplines, including image processing, computer vision, finite element analysis and rapid prototyping.