The 1995 Leon Hoffman Urban Technology Symposium URBAN SIMULATION: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Moderator: Professor Robin Liggett Panelists: Peter Kamnitzer, Professor of Urban Planning Bill Jepson, Director, UCLA Urban Simulation Team UCLA has long been a leader in three-dimensional computer modeling, beginning with the work of Peter Kamnitzer and his early work using the NASA moon landing simulator for real-time city navigation in the late 1960s. In the early 1980s, Bill Jepson began applying computer modeling to large scale urban environments. In 1994, UCLA was honored with the Computerworld/Smithsonian award for developing a 3D virtual world system that responds to the unique collaborative and problem solving requirements of cities and communities. This system was the springboard for the creation of the Urban Simulation Team under the direction of Bill Jepson, one of the principal researchers on the proposal. The Team's primary focus is on the creation of a real-time virtual model of the entire Los Angeles basin. This symposium takes a retrospective look at urban simulation starting with Peter Kamnitzer’s film City-Scape, where a hypothetical urban environment has been created using the NASA moon landing simulator. This hypothetical urban environment allows the user to interactively travel within the urban setting in real time. Then Bill Jepson demonstrates the state-of-the-art in virtual reality techniques 20 years later with the UCLA Urban Simulation Model that has been applied to urban Los Angeles.  Back to “Previous Programs” pagePrevious%20Programs.htmlshapeimage_2_link_0