NEWTON, Mass., Aug. 13, 2001 (PRIMEZONE) -- LifeFX, Inc. (Nasdaq:LEFX), the leading developer of Stand-In (tm) virtual people for the Internet, announced today that Dr. Keith Waters, LifeFX Senior Technology Officer, has accepted an invitation to participate on the SIGGRAPH panel, titled "VIPs: Virtually Invented People," to discuss the next generation of life-like virtual humans for personal interaction. The panel will be held on Aug. 16 from 10:30 a.m. PST to 12:15 p.m. PST, in Hall B at the Los Angeles Convention Center, as part of the SIGGRAPH Conference.
"The SIGGRAPH 2001 Special Sessions line up provides a unique look at various digital technologies, their implementations, as well as their implications. In particular, the panel, V.I.P., Virtually Invented People, will offer a view of where we are today and a glimpse into a future," said Kathryn Saunders, Public Domain Experience Design and SIGGRAPH 2001 Panels chair. "We are very excited to have LifeFX participate. Its exclusive biologically based facial modeling software is highly regarded as today's leader in creating virtual faces closely indistinguishable from real faces."
LifeFX will share the VIP Panel with renowned researcher, Thomas Vetter, Andrew Burgess from Ananova, R.U. Sirius, Former Editor in Chief of Mondo 2000, Barbara Hayes-Roth from Extempo, and the creators of Final Fantasy.
LifeFX also announced that it has been selected for the 3rd year in a row by SIGGRAPH to showcase its exclusive biologically based facial modeling system. Previous demonstrations were the milestone-setting work by LifeFX in their creative digital shorts, the "Jester" in 1999, and "Young at Heart" in 2000. This year, LifeFX offers the creative short, "The Turing Test," referring to computer pioneer Alan Turing's famous proposed test for artificial intelligence.
This year, LifeFX will demonstrate new milestone achievements with their film-quality, high-resolution photo-realistic model being displayed in real-time 3D as part of ATI Technologies demonstration at ATI's booth No. 617, at SIGGRAPH, Aug. 14-16, in the Los Angeles Convention Center. LifeFX is providing a custom Stand-In virtual person as the front-end interface to demonstrate ATI Technologies' state-of-the-art capabilities of rendering high-resolution graphics.
About Siggraph
SIGGRAPH 2001 will bring more than 40,000 computer graphics and interactive technology professionals from six continents to Los Angeles for the week-long conference. A comprehensive technical program and special events focusing on research, art, animation, and interactive technologies are planned. SIGGRAPH 2001 includes a three-day exhibition of products and services for the computer graphics and interactive marketplace from Aug. 14-16, 2001 in Los Angeles. ACM SIGGRAPH, the leading professional society for computer graphics and interactive techniques, sponsors SIGGRAPH 2001. Information on ACM SIGGRAPH membership and other conferences and activities can be found at www.siggraph.org.
About LifeFX
Lifef/x, Inc., a Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE) partner company, is creating the face of the Internet by developing photo-realistic, digital human faces, or LifeFX Stand-In (tm) virtual people, that can interact in real time. LifeFX Stand-In (tm) virtual people will be used by Web businesses as life-like customer-service and sales representatives, guides, teachers and entertainers, while consumer applications will include e-mail, instant messaging and chat rooms. The LifeFX technology was originally developed for professional medical applications by the University of Auckland, with which LifeFX has an exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, paid-up license. LifeFX holds three patents and has five pending. For more information about LifeFX, visit http://www.lifefx.com. For application ideas and demos, visit http://www.facemail.com
Statements made in this news release, other than those concerning historical information, should be considered forward-looking and subject to various risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are made based on management's belief as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management, pursuant to the "safe-harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. LifeFX Inc.'s future results may differ materially from the results anticipated in these forward-looking statements because of a variety of factors, including the ability of the company to implement its business strategy; the ability of the company to achieve the intended benefits of this strategy; the ability of the company to complete development of its technology; the ability of the company to achieve success in forging strategic relationships; adoption of the technology by major consumer and commercial Websites; the ability of the company to commercialize the technology before competitors; the ability of the company to retain key employees; and those factors identified in Lifef/x, Inc.'s annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2000, and its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.