Scene graphs in the new millennium

Hardware 3D graphics accelerators will be ubiquitous in the new millennium. The great majority of 3D graphics programs will, almost exclusively, use scene graphs. Rarely will graphics programs use immediate mode-if at all-and then only for very special effects, and scene graphs will grow to support new modalities such as sound and haptics. Outrageous? Probably. Predicting the future is never easy. By looking at where we are today and analyzing technology trends, these predictions may seem even more outrageous, outrageously mundane. The author considers how graphics technologies, hardware and software, are evolving at exponential rates