Dennis Defensor, President and CEO, TerraGlyph Interactive Studios.

Dennis Defensor, President and CEO, TerraGlyph Interactive Studios, Schaumburg, Illinois: The bar has been raised, and expectations are changing. Pixellated graphics or low quality animation will no longer appeal to the mainstream consumer market. The animation for an interactive entertainment product must be film-feature quality, otherwise it will risk being stigmatized as an inferior product. In the near future, we will see the seamless integration of 2D and 3D animation to capture the smooth motion of 2D motion and the depth of 3D. Due to new hardware developments as the PC moves from the home office to the living room, products must be developed that will be compelling from 1-1/2 feet to 10 feet away from the monitor.

Steve Halpern, Publishing Operations/Development, GTE Interactive, Carlsbad, California: Here at GTE Entertainment we continually strive to push the envelope with regard to engineering, graphics and design to directly support realism and game play. We see the momentous changes in technical advancements quickly reaching a critical mass which will ultimately enable us to create environments that reflect reality and thereby enable us to focus our energy on great game experiences.

Faster processors and accelerator boards will enable us to create a sense of realism that will elicit the level of emotional response that can be equated to real life action based experiences. Coupled with SGI graphics and highly tuned AI and 3D engines we can provide the audience with real time PC based interactive experiences that totally immerse the consumer.

Concurrently we see advancement on the horizon focusing on bandwidth and latency issues that ultimately will enable the Internet to host forums of multiplayer gaming experiences, demonstrating the realism described above. We ate GTE Entertainment plan to participate in the forefront of those developments. However, it is our firm belief that it is the game play that must be our primary focus and that it is the consumer that will ultimately decide the success or failure of our creations.

Steve Crane, Vice President Technology, Activision Studios.

Steve Crane, Vice President Technology, Activision Studios, Los Angeles: Today's animation technology is already fairly sophisticated. However, the area in which animation technology for game development will continue to change will be in the types of computers used and the technology features that will convey a greater sense of character realism.

The ultimate goal for game developers is to have the ability to create virtual characters with realistic movement and personalities that allow players complete character control. This is being achieved through the combination of having animators develop on the target machine for the user end product and creating new animation tools that will convey the subtleties of human realism.

Currently, game developers in particular are moving away from Silicon Graphics Workstations to PC computers. One of the reasons for this shift is that PCs are more cost effective and more financially accessible. They are also familiar to a greater number of animators. Additionally, PCs offer greater compatibility for game developers because it is the target machine for the end product.

In the area of character animation, current technology is pushing the envelope in allowing animators to create characters with real personalities while giving players complete character control. However, there are still a few computer constructs preventing character motion from seeming human. To overcome these obstacles, game developers are building there own interactive animation tables and additional tools.