Turning twenty-five. (editor's note).(Editorial)

To celebrate Computer Graphics World's 25th anniversary, the editors originally planned to construct a standard timeline, maybe four to six pages in length, highlighting what we believed were the major milestones in the history of computer graphics. But soon after we started poring over the stacks of back issues, we realized that this approach wouldn't do justice to the many innovations that appeared in these pages over the last quarter century. Instead we decided to extend our celebration over the next several issues and present a visual retrospective of computer graphics in each key application, beginning this month with some of our favorite digital art images from hundreds of past Gallery and Portfolio sections of the magazine.

Of course, after looking backward, it seemed only natural to look forward as well. So we assembled a panel of experts from a variety of fields and asked them to envision the next major developments in computer graphics. To see the full text of their comments, visit our Web site at www.cgw.com, click on the Web Exclusives option in the left-hand column, then select Opinion. In the meantime, here are a couple of the most intriguing predictions to emerge from the discussion:

Intelligent simulation: One of the next big achievements will be to give intelligence to dynamic simulations, says Habib Zargarpour, a two-time Academy Award-nominated special effects animator at Industrial Light & Magic. This is already occurring to some extent. One example is the pod crash scene from Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, involving some 12,000 pieces of debris that had to fly off the pods and break apart. Because of the sheer complexity of how the pieces interacted with each other and the environment, a lot of the decisions about the simulation had to be left to procedural ...