It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Lake Tahoe for the 2005 Int- national Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC). ISVC provides a common umbrella for the four main areas of visual computing: vision, graphics, visu- ization, and virtual reality. The goal of ISVC is to provide a common forum for researchers, scientists, engineers, and practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research ?ndings, ideas, developments, and applications...