Restoring the Machine that Destroyed the Death Star | VCFMW 2019

In 1974, Steve Heminover became a part of the Circle Graphics Habitat at UIC, an early pioneer of computer graphics modeling and animation. One of the most famous outputs of this group was the use of the Vector General Graphics Display to display the 3-D wireframe animation for Star Wars, featuring Larry Cuba's groundbreaking work. In this talk, Steve goes over that history, how he obtained the original Vector General Graphics Display used for Star Wars, how the restoration process progressed, and the final result: Viewing the Death Star on the very screen it was filmed from. Q&A: Q: How was the original animation created? A: If you want to see how the original animation was created by Larry Cuba back in 1977, here's a short film that shows how he did it:    • Making of the Computer Graphics for Star W...   Q: Is the high-res video of the animation, or the animation data available? A: As the animation data and its original presentation is still under copyright, these items are not available to the general public at this time. --- Vintage Computer Festival Midwest is a free, volunteer-run show for the vintage computer hobbyist community. For more information about Vintage Computer Festival Midwest, visit http://www.vcfmw.org/