COGAIN concluded (for me at least) yesterday with the exhibits. There are some more meetings going on today, but they're mainly for internal COGAIN participants, generally restricted to European partners. Exhibits contained demonstrations of the best entries from a student gaming competition. All games had to have gaze control to some extent. I tried one of them, a kind of asteroids FPS (First Person Shooter) where you orient the spaceship with gaze. It worked fairly well. I also conducted a short experiment on myself on a new eye tracker to test whether it was sensitive to vergence eye movements. I ran myself through three trials: control (stare at the target), convergence (cross eyes inward), and divergence (cross eyes outward). The last one is a bit difficult to do, particularly with no stimulus, but can be done if you force yourself to focus beyond the monitor. The data confirmed my introspective assessment that I had difficulty getting my eyes to diverge until the last few seconds of my 10 second trial. The good news is that this eye tracker could detect vergence eye movements. I'm not sure whether my eye trackers at home can do the same. I'll have to rerun this quick and dirty experiment at home.
After COGAIN we were treated to dinner by the conference organizer and then a night out at The Musician pub. We happened to be there during a fundraiser for Dan, this guy on a drum walk across the British isle (lengthwise) in an effort to raise awareness for prostate cancer. He showed up (although he was really supposed to be in Preston, halfway across his journey) and gave a speech in his entire outfit, including the marching drum he had strapped on. To raise funds a bunch of single classic guitar acts went up on stage. They were ok, but really the highlight of the night was Crooked Line, the band that came on around 11pm. These guys weren't bad. Showing their range, they did a bit of blues, a bit of funk, some country, and closed with Neil Young's Keep on Rockin' in the Free World. Btw, I didn't know you could dance to Pink Floyd's Time — it wasn't going very well as this song's lyrics are somewhat somber, but it picked up when they launched into the last number.
On the way to the hotel we snapped a few pics of the clock tower in the center of Leicester's pedestrian shopping district. I think you can just make out 00:24 or so on the clock face. Today we're up early (06:00) so that we can partake of the free breakfast downstairs and then hop on the cab to the airport. Should be in Prague by this afternoon. Our first stop is going to be the EuroGraphics conference so that I can attend my colleague's presentation of our paper and help field questions should any be thrown up out of the audience. At least that's the plan...its timing is a bit tight, so we'll see how it turns out.
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