| Testimonials Some Words From Our Sponsors: "You guys are having too much fun." -- Bob Colwell, Intel Chief Architect, referring to the Alice production team. "What is so remarkable about Alice is the degree to which it brings 3D graphics programming down from on high and puts it in the hands of non-computer scientists. With very little assistance, my 7 year-old son created programs in hours that would have taken me, a professional 3D graphics programmer, days to write using OpenGL. The technical press has made much about 3D as a "new medium," but for a true new medium to take hold, it must proliferate in the arms of the artists and others who are interested in it for its creative, rather than technical potential. To that end, Alice is the "Brownie Instamatic (tm)" of 3D, a landmark step along the path to ubiquitous, all-day, every-day 3D graphics, where virtually anyone can tell an animated, 3D story as easily as creating a web page. To make something that hard so easy is nothing short of brilliant." -- John David Miller, Intel Architecture Labs, Hillsboro, OR Quotes From Alice Users:
"I develop 3D systems for educational applications. Alice has been tremendously valuable to us in helping us to quickly prototype our designs and get a feeling for how things might work. Randy Pausch has succeeded in creating a very accessible 3D tool--more accessible than any other I've seen. -- Amy Bruckman, Assistant Professor, College of
Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA "I used Alice for one assignment in the course I taught last spring here in the Computer Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The course was "Exploring Virtual Worlds" (Comp239), which is UNC's course on virtual reality and related topics. The Alice software worked well, and Randy's lectures on it were valuable to the course. As you may know, creating 3D computer graphics animations or interactive applications using 3D graphics usually requires the programmer to be fluent with 3D vectors, transformation matrices, texture coordinates, and a number of related mathematical topics. This dependence on "difficult" math (difficult for the population at large) prevents many potential authors from creating an intuitive programmer's interface to 3D graphics so that it can be accessible to the "programmer on the street." Alice has several good ideas in it, which I believe originated with Randy and his team. My favorite is giving objects a front, side, and top (rather than X, Y, and Z axes) so that you can tell the object to go backward or turn left (rather than translate in the minus-X direction or rotate around the Z-axis). This may sound trivial, but it is a major conceptual simplification. Randy is smart, knowledgeable, energetic, and has good ideas. He should be a full professor, if you want my opinion. In saying this, I am comparing him to the graphics faculty at the UNC-Chapel Hill Computer Science Department, with whom I am in daily contact." -- Warren Robinett, Computer Science Department,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC "I just wanted to let you know that we were considering purchasing a product very similar to Alice (S8 WU) that was much more expensive and it took them 3-4 days to respond to any e-mail message sent to their "help" desk. I really didn't expect to hear from you since the product is being developed on an "as is" basis. Just wanted to say that I think you guys have a great product! I have posted a link to your page to try and promote your product (http://vision.psych.umn.edu/www/people/brian/software.html). Keep up the good work!" -- Brian Stankiewicz, Professor, Psychology Department,
University of Minnesota "Since the days of the first compiler, the most revolutionary software systems have been those that enable new sets of users to take full advantage of powerful new hardware. Their new viewpoints and problem sets inevitably lead to new worlds of previously undreamt-of applications. In Alice I see this potential. Alice makes high powered 3D animation and graphics available to users who may have never considered becoming programmers. It shows them new worlds, one easy step at a time. Who can predict the fruit of the seeds that Alice sews?" -- Tom Neuendorffer, Senior Systems Developer and Head
of Prototype Development, Claritech Corp. "We at the University of Central Florida are engaged in an extended and in-depth analysis of the educational possibilities of virtual environments. We have built several virtual world systems of our own, and used most of the ones available from other sources. The Alice system from Carnegie Mellon University is one of the most important of these environments. In the course CAP4021, Building Virtual Worlds, we usually have students use Alice for one of the early required projects, and then allow students to choose one of several systems for their capstone project. The distinguishing features of Alice for this purpose are its ease of use and very rapid learnability. We have seen a steady increase in the number of students who choose Alice for their main project, and some of the projects have been very creative. Alice has served as a flexible and powerful testbed for a number of important research studies at CMU which are often cited and admired in the VR community. Alice's reliability and elegance of design make it one of the cornerstones of VR for education and research, and we expect to make increased use of it in future years." -- Michael Moshell, Professor of Computer Science,
University of Central Florida "At UVA I led a research group of (on average) eight students doing research on computer vision and robot planning. My group shared lab space and facilities with Randy's HCI group, and we frequently attended each other's lab meetings and discussed problems of mutual interest. In 1994 my student Frank Brill and I developed a theory of how intelligent agents might represent visual information and use it to control the behavior of simple reactive agents. Because Randy Pausch's students were building the "Alice" system in our shared lab space, it seemed natural to us to use Alice to explore our ideas. Over the course of a year, Frank used Alice to build a simulated environment containing obstacles, food sources, and predators. The simulation produced video output representing the point of view of an agent trying to use visual information to find food and avoid being eaten. An asynchronous process on another machine processed this video output and used it to generate control signals for the agent. This work was the basis of Frank's PhD thesis and led to several publications. The Alice system was critical to the success of our project. Because we needed a rich yet tightly controlled environment, it would not have been practical to perform the experiments with real robots. Other simulation tools available to us were too low-level, too inflexible, and too slow to be useful. Alice allowed us to change predator behavior and other aspects of the environment interactively, so that we could very quickly explore the impact of changes in our control algorithms. Alice also made it easy to instrument the simulation and gather statistics about agent performance under different environmental conditions. Finally, Randy and his group of dynamic, creative students were unfailing sources of ideas and energy." -- Dr. Thomas J. Olson, Texas Instruments, Inc., DSP
Research and Development Center, Dallas, Texas "Alice was a really fantastic software to be using for Building Virtual Worlds. It was extremely easy to learn and use, and produced such amazing virtual reality worlds. More important than it's ease of use, however, is how effective a learning tool it turned out to be. I was a painter for the course, so going into the course I already knew how to draw and paint. However, I didn't know anything about CAD modeling or programming. Over the semester I took BVW, I learned to model and have become quite proficient at it. I even learned a little programming; While I didn't realize I was learning any programming at the time, when I started taking 15-125 this semester, I was already familiar with all of the basic concepts. While obviously I didn't learn to model using Alice (Alice isn't used for that) it was definitely why I learned that skill." -- Joe Hocking,
Building Virtual Worlds student The simple, clear design, as well as the speed with which one can make changes and just "experiment" are what makes Alice unique and valuable in an academic setting. I also applaud Randy and his students for the effort they've invested in teaching people to use the system at locations like the SIGGRAPH conference." -- Anselmo Lastra, Research Associate Professor, University of North
Carolina "I'm honored to have this opportunity to comment on Dr. Randy Pausch in general and his project Alice in particular. Alice is simply the most effective and influential authoring tool for virtual worlds that has appeared thus far. As Lead Scientist for the National Tele-immersion Initiative of Internet 2, I have been a minor funder of Dr. Pausch's work in this area in the past, so I have had an occasion to get to know it rather well. Authoring tools are key to the future of advanced computing applications for the simple reason that users will require richer media experiences to keep track of increased complexity, and those experiences will have to be continuously redesigned on an ongoing basis. No one yet knows how to accomplish the design process as quickly cheaply as will be required. This is a profound bottleneck that must be overcome. Dr. Pausch has probably come closer than anyone else to demonstrating solutions in this area. Alice has been tested with a wider variety of users than any other authoring tool and has produced a wider variety of output. I have had the privilege of speaking to Dr. Pausch's Alice design class at CMU, and I was simply thrilled by the level of energy and productivity.I believe that support of Dr. Pausch's work is vital to the future of advanced computing interfaces, and I hope circumstances arise in the future that will allow me to once again contribute to that support.Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any service." -- Jaron Lanier, Virtual Reality Pioneer, coined the term
"Virtual Reality", Advanced Networks & Services, Inc. "I've known of Randy and his work for many years, and admire his insight and his boundless energy. The Alice project was both well executed and well promoted. The fact that it is free software aimed at the web creates a large pool of potential users, and provides a distribution model that is quite maintainable by an academic research group. Note that the Alice work predates the revolution of the WWW--Randy had the insight to redirect Alice to this form as the web became more ubiquitous. Alice has been recognized by the graphics community, and is a very interesting example of a system that makes procedural graphics accessible. The decision to focus on interaction for the novice, rather than modeling, gives it a special position in the interactive graphics research world." -- Maureen Stone, StoneSoup Consulting, (formerly of Xerox
PARC) "Let me say how impressed I am by the Alice engine and how joyous I am at finding your pages. Alice is a stellar accomplishment."
"Just wanted to thank you folks for putting out such a great, free product for educational use. I have just been using Alice with a group of gifted and talented sixth graders. After going through the Alice help document step-by-step and letting the students practice the different parts of the program, I let them loose and WOW! The user interface is so intuitive that in 20 minutes we had kids with 30 or 40 lines of code! Thanks so much for creating a powerful interface which is so easy to use that it almost obviates the need for teaching!
"For me, Alice is a tool for stagging modelization. It is very quick to made a story, [and] tell with it. I think that children can also learn the base of programming on. With Alice99, I'm on the way to realize a CD-ROM for kids (12 to 15), I'm just waiting for the last release. At least, Alice is a very good tools to make a story board for important 3D games or animations. Indeeed even if a different software is used for the final creation and the final rendering, with Alice you can put ideas and change them easily in order to make up the final scenario on 3D-Studio or Lighteweave for example. Those are the reasons why I think Alice must be completly and contantly developped." -- Richard Jocelyn, Programmer and technical artist "I am a researcher into CAAD methodology and a part-time professor to industrial design students. Unfortunately, I can not speak about Alice with first hand experience as it stops with the tutorials. Nevertheless, my interest in Alice is growing. The reasons: my students design objects with the dynamic form, the programme is freely available, it is more or less understandable to the non-programmers, and applicable on our PC hardware platforms. Now we have several Max models that I hope to import into the programme next semester. As I require from the students the illustration of the object behaviour, so far we have been using GIF animation. Hopefully, we shall be able to use Alice in future. I any case, I find Alice Project worthy and promising for both, research and school environments. It would be pitty if it were stopped or curtailed in any way." -- Prof Dr Ivan Petrovic, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, "Not only was Alice an eye-opening experience into the applications of graphic design and the uses of a highly interactive media, the class was an interdisciplinary bridge between me and other CMU students, most of whose viewpoints I would have never otherwise experienced in the entirety of my college career. I currently have a job working with cutting edge VR technology, thanks to the background Alice has given me." -- Michael Rankin, Building Virtual Worlds student and T.A; Entertainment Technology Center Masters student "Using Alice I, along with a group of other people, managed to create a number of really cool and interesting worlds, learning a lot in the process. One world had a gypsy fortune teller who drew a tarot card reading for the guest. In another world the guest was immersed into a bumper car type ride around the CMU campus with three other car drivers, in the Moonlight van or a Police Car or one of the small mules that is driven all over campus. In yet one more world, the guest jumps into the middle of one of Van Gogh's most famous painting -- sitting down at "The Night Cafe" and being served a drink, and looking around a scene previously only seen in two dimensions... However, the work that I felt had the most potential and testing work was a sample of life in Kosovo as a refugee being driven out of the house. I've never seen the VR medium tried to protray a reality and a drama of a world that is acutally out there. It was a look "Through a Child's Eyes" into something that people didn't expect to see. It's something that only Alice and Randy Pausch would have sparked the creativity for." -- Aaron Powers, Building
Virtual Worlds student "My connection with the Alice project has been as an observer and admirer. I have followed the project, and its team members (many of which are now former team members) over the past six years. To me, the most significant result of the Alice project is how it demonstrates that good software engineering can enable good social engineering. Through Alice, Prof. Pausch has created a system that allows a diversity of users to work together, leading to great things. The same system supports the work of computer science PhD research and architecture undergrad classes, and allows them to share their results. Another significant fact about Alice is that it has successfully assisted research in the state of the art of user interfaces. Novel and important interface ideas have come from its users, such as the world-in-minature interfaces. While many user interface tools claim to support rapid prototyping of new interfaces, few systems truly deliver on helping the invention of techniques. I consider these two successes so important that I am basing aspects of the redesign of my animation system on Alice so it can better support the range of users." -- Michael Gleicher, Assistant Professor, Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin "I've been doing 2D graphics design for 10 years, but Alice is my first venture into 3D and/or animation. I've only been using Alice for 2 weeks but I love it/her! Thanks, again!" -- Ray George "I downloaded your software and I have to say, "It is the best thing I have ever seen!" I'm a college student at Glenville Stage College and I'm majoring in Computer Science. I think this software is awesome for various reasons. One, I'm amazed at the kind of graphics you can use. Two, I'm glad with the use of the C programming language." "This has got to be the best program I've ever seen or worked with. I am extremely impressed with how user-friendly it is. It's simple, to the point, and most of all, it's impressively fun. Thanks for all your efforts in putting this program together." "I just had to write a letter to you to tell you how COOL this program is. It is rare that I will spend the time downloading a large file, especially a 10MB file, but this download is wonderful. I just love how your program works and how it can create such a cool world. I would like to compliment the crew that created this program, and say that is the BEST program I have seen." "My kids are 13 and 11, both girls, and we are a homeschooling family. I downloaded Alice thinking it might be "fun" for them, it is; but has also turned into a serious learning tool for all of us, and a great introduction to programming, scripts, etc. So Mom and daughters build virtual worlds on the computer, and become far more than end users." "Alice is the killer app! Why? It will finally enable me to teach programming to my 10 year old daughter in non-boring context." "Alice was better than Cats"
"As a VR programmer who's been interested in virtual worlds for over 14 years, Alice looks like a great tool for building the kind of character interaction that I have been planning on being able to do "real soon now". I'd much rather use someone else's wheel than build my own (my interest is in world building, not tool building)." "Just finished going through the tutorial booklet for Alice and wanted to commend you and your team on an excellent job. Writing manuals and tutorials that are fun to use and easy to understand is a difficult chore and the little Alice booklet is both. This is cool software with a great interface. Alice is a very tight production."
"Wow! Super cool. My twelve-year-old daughter picked it up and had stuff flying all over the place. I had to demand that she stop playing with it and get back to studying for her middle school exams. I also informed here that she had just learned how to program." -
"Thanks for putting out a great program that is educational, entertaining, and totally-radical-awesome-cool!!! I'm very impressed with your Alice program. The demo features cool examples of what you can do with it. . . which is excellent! I do a lot of game editing. . . Diablo, Quake and Duke Nukem. . .so I love to spend my time with editors. I know this one will soon be my favorite! I sent a copy to my girlfriend too. . .and her son loves it! Thanks for making this wonderful program accessible to all! Well Done! "I have looked for months for an environment just like this where I could learn and grow. Thank you for providing an invaluable resource for furthering my knowledge and skills with computers. I am not a programmer, so this is a dual learning experience." "My wife and I have been very pleasantly surprised by the speed of your viewer/environment. VRML was a big disappointment to us -- I'm glad to see that fast 3D still lives!"
"I used Alice to create fun, ambitious virtual reality worlds in interdisciplinary student teams. I am from a writing and design background, not a computer science background, so Alice was useful to me because it was very easy to learn. The intuitive way it worked allowed me to help the programmers write the code for our projects after going through just a couple of short Alice tutorials. Because of my limited programming background, it is unlikely that I would have been able to have this type of experience with virtual reality without Alice and my interdiciplinary teammates. Alice allowed us to work together in the exciting area where the arts and technology meet." -- Kelly Bowles, Student, Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute "Andy Beall has used Alice and its Python scripting language as one of the inspirations for his development of his VR Utilities (VRUT) programming environment. VRUT is widely used by researchers at UCSB for developing virtual environments that are used in the study of human behavior." -- Jack Loomis "I have to say that I have really enjoyed the Alice amulet because it showed me how interesting programming 3D animations really is. It never caused me any trouble, and it always worked perfectly." -- Pedro Huitema The Alice Interactive 3D Graphics Programming System is
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