Computer graphics around the world

Abstract

Computer graphics has become an important discipline in both academia and industry, and an enabling technology for a broad variety of applications such as engineering (CAD, CAE and CAM), geographic information systems (GIS), publishing, office applications, games and the filmmaking industry. Graphics is also integrated to Internet application systems, and graphics and image techniques are combined together in some special applications. Computer graphics can no longer be regarded as a confined discipline devoted solely to graphics standards or traditional techniques of 3D representations and rendering. The influence of computer graphics and its related techniques can be felt in almost all of today's key industrial areas, wherever computers are employed.Computer graphics has been a subject of interest in China for many years. Primary overviews of computer graphics activities in China were presented in [9] (on research and industry) and [8] (on education). In addition, there was also a special journal issue on computer graphics in China [10]. However, computer graphics activities in Hong Kong [7] and Macao were not included in these materials. Furthermore some new achievements were achieved in the past years. For example, in the State Key Lab of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University, a four-sided CAVE was installed in 1999. In addition, nowadays virtual reality (VR) is a hot research topic. In China researchers have attained many achievements in various VR fields. We will emphasize this aspect as we introduce computer graphics activities in China.This article gives an overview of the research and development of computer graphics in China, including the mainland of China, Hong Kong and Macao. The article is organized as follows. The next section introduces computer graphics research in some major universities and institutes in China. The section following that presents some industrial activities in computer graphics in China. The next section presents some other activities related to computer graphics. The final section gives closing comments.