Computer Vision News - January 2017

mom had to come with me to sign the contract because I was still a minor. Then I had the opportunity to work in Tokyo through Attila Vass, a friend of mine who had connections there. I worked at SEGA in Tokyo designing virtual reality games which was in the very early days of the art. Then, through another friend that I met there, I found another job in Canada. I worked 2 years there at a 3D software company. Then I got the job at Sony so I moved to Silicon Valley. You had a very long stint at Sony. Yes - I was there for about 15 years until I realized that I wanted to be my own boss. How is it to be a software engineer at Sony? This sounds like a dream job to many. It had its ups and downs. Initially, it was very exciting. I was hired when they just started working on the PlayStation 2. It was a big secret. We had hand scanners at the doors with high security. I was responsible for developing photorealistic real-time graphics on somewhat limited hardware. Basically, we had a lot of freedom. It was very exciting in the beginning. It continued with the PlayStation 3. Eventually, Sony was kind of alternating between a research and a development phase. For a while, you could just go wild and just do research, but at some point we had to develop tools. We did not directly develop games. We got the first hardware prototypes from Japan, and it was our job to figure out how to program them, create demos, and then teach game developers. I gave talks. We put together manuals. I gave them source code. Were you aware that you were creating the next real thing in that market? We had a pretty good idea after the earlier PlayStation’s success. You could see it building from the PlayStation 2 to the 3 and now the 4. When did you get a passion for virtual reality and the next generation technologies? I was always into 3D graphics. Some of the very first code samples that I was playing with when I was a teenager were wireframe 3D models. Virtual reality is sort of a natural progression from there, from the screen to a full immersion. Which part of this science fascinates you the most? I’m a bit of a jack of all trades so I like to alternate. I’m actually a computer science and electrical engineering double major. I am just as happy designing circui t boards as writing “ PlayStation 2 was a big secret. We had hand scanners at the doors with high security ” Computer Vision News Guest 5 Guest A 1996 image of Gabor working in Tokyo on an early prototype of a VR arcade game, with a (very expensive) prototype VR headset, flying around a large space station