THURSDAY, May 23, 7pm
Those of you who have visited the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) know that the computer graphics for the 1977 "Star Wars" movie was created using EVL's hardware and software by artist Larry Cuba. In the movie, the computer graphics imagery of the Death Star is shown in a briefing room to members of the rebel alliance as they plot to attack and destroy it.
WTTW (Channel 11) is scheduled to feature this collaboration on THURSDAY, May 23, 2013, during the show "Chicago Tonight" at 7pm. Of course, breaking news can always change the schedule at the last minute.
What you may not know is that the hardware and software used to create the briefing room sequence still exist, as does the data. Steve Heminover was a UIC undergraduate at EVL (then called the Circle Graphics Habitat) when the special effects were made. Heminover kept the PDP11 computer and the Vector General graphics display, and in the past two weeks, turned them on for the first time in decades. The PDP11 still runs Tom DeFanti's software GRASS (GRAphics Symbiosis System), which Larry Cuba used to draw the schematic. Cuba kept a disk with the Death Star data, which he provided. In addition, Heminover and DeFanti had relevant videotapes from the 1970s which they provided to WTTW.
The PDP11 still works, but the Vector General has some problems. Given Heminover only had two weeks to work on this -- as well as run his own company, Aura Technologies -- he used a bit of special effects himself to bypass the internals of the Vector General system and send line-drawing signals directly to its monitor, so it appears as though the system is fully operational. WTTW is at Heminover's office this morning wrapping up the story for Thursday night.
The Force continues to be with EVL. The WTTW story will explain how science fiction continues to be an inspiration to EVL faculty, staff and students, and will profile the "Fleet Commander" game, an homage to Star Wars, by computer science graduate student Arthur Nishimoto. To date, a video of students playing "Fleet Commander" has received almost 750,000 hits on YouTube.
