THE WAVE REPORT ON DIGITAL MEDIA
3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
Published by 4th Wave, Inc.
Issue #601 6/23/96
CONTENTS
Well, in case you're wondering whatever happened to Tess, 3D Artist Magazine's weekly free online 3D newsletter, here is your answer: it cut out general 3D news and analysis and got scaled back into a subscriber-only complement to 3DA. I know a lot of readers had come to rely on Tess in its short life as their major source of 3D news, so there seemed to be a hole in the marketplace.
601.2 Hello Wave by Rob Glidden
So enter 4th Wave, run by Dr. John Latta. John (Dr. Latta to me) is one of a small circle of top next-gen business and technology consultants, an analyst's analyst, his insights widely quoted in the media. Not breathless ATT commercial You-Will boosterism, but a tough brand of non-cynical realism that spans markets and technologies.
Hopefully, you are getting the business model picture. 4th Wave wants to expand its consulting and reports business and is looking for a promotional vehicle. They bought the Tess mailing list, and with the blessing of 3DA publisher Bill Allen and have set out to pick up and extend the 3D news beat in a way that will be complementary to and supportive of 3D Artist Magazine.
I'll be doing some writing for Wave, and so will John Latta and others. The goal is to keep Wave free and widely distributed.
BTW--Please write! Let us know what you think.
601.3 So What's Wave About? by Rob Glidden
Every dog has its day, and every mag has its manifesto. I was starting to whip one out--all about the PC's 2nd revolution (visual supercomputing is essential to handle the coming great Internet digital fire hose), about the Net (you'll be able to buy low latency before high bandwidth), about interactive media (interacting with media is a bore; people want to interact with people, and yes, Mickey Mouse is a person too), about art, entertainment and technology, about the business of NBTs, about net journalism.
But let's cut to the chase. Wave is about:
3D: the computer's first and only native media type. Real-time, render-time, from wireframe to photorealism, 3D GUIs to the Next Big Toy Story. If its 3D, its on the Wave beat.
Media Creation: Media convergence is in the details--3D, 2D, video, film, sound -- putting them together is the backbone of content and communication.
Shared Space: "Two years out, the percentage of PC games that will have a multiplayer aspect will be 70% or 80%" Bill Gates in Next Generation Magazine, June 1996. (thanks for the well-timed quote, Bill). Want the coolest Web site? Be home when people visit.
Digital Opporunity: The Internet, cable modems, electronic commerce and the PC as a media appliance are all digital opportunities. Our interest is in what technologies will shape the digital future.
But enough pontificating. On to the news.
Santa in June? Microsoft has announced the long awaited release of Direct3D, its 3D API and hardware acceleration architecture. "The infrastructure for a 3-D holiday season is in place" according to MS vp John Ludwig.
Announced support:
80 hw and sw supporters (virtually every 3D chip) 30 D3D titles by Xmas (is 30 enough to build an industry?) 150 DirectX titles shipping, 300 more by Q4.
Direct3D is a part of the DirectX II SDK, available in the July release of the Microsoft Developer Network Development Platform.
But for many developers, the important news will be that Microsoft has put the entire DirectX II SDK on the net for free download and use. Check the web site below and get ready for a 34 megabyte download.
Expect more on D3D in coming issues of Wave.
Contact: 800 759-5474, http://www.microsoft.com/mediadev/ or http://www.microsoft.com/gamesdev/.
601.42 Fractal Completes Ray Dream Acquisition by Rob Glidden
Fractal Design (NASDAQ: FRAQ) completed its acquisition of Ray Dream on 5/28. Stats:
3,250,00 shares of Fractal stock ($52 million at purchase). Ray Dream: $9 mil revs year ending 3/31/96. Fractal: $21.8 mil revs, $2.9 mil net year ending 3/31/96 No profit numbers were released for acquired Ray Dream.
Fractal's Mark Zimmer will be chairman/CEO, Ray Dream's Eric Hautemont will be president. Ray Dream brings 3D modeler Ray Dream Designer/Studio family to Fractal's Painter, Poser, Dabbler, and AddDepth. Question: will the media suite be integrated, or simply be a set of products from the same company?
Kinetix has announced 3D Studio Max plugin that reads and writes AutoCAD DWG files. http://www.kinetix.com
Kinetix sr product mgr will be pres/CEO of Axial systems, a recently funded VRML company with big plans.
3D book goes #1: Peter Plantec's Caligari trueSpace2 bible in prerelease has hit number one on Ingram's High Demand Index.
A new association of computer game artist is being launched. First meeting was June 8 in SF (75 attendees), organizers are Josh White of Vector Graphics and Heater Capelli of Accolade. Contact: http://www.vectororg.com/cga; 510 420-0328.
Rumor mill: is the VRML VAG about to disband?
601.44 The Roncarelli Report Out
The total computer animation industry production (US) grew 32% from 1993 to 1994 to $6.91b. This is one fact of many contained in the just released "The RONCARELLI REPORT ON THE COMPUTER ANIMATION INDUSTRY - 1995." AT $1,295 it is a serious read and provides the most complete overview of the animation industry
PIXEL 109 Vanderhoff Ave. Suite Two Toronto, Ontario Canada, M4G-2H7 (416)424-4657 (416)424-1812 FAX
601.5 SIGGRAPH PREVIEW: Digital Bayou
Online games: a hot topic for SIGGRAPH? Hoping for a SIGGRAPH buzz marketing coup ala last year's VRML SIGGRAPH debut, a group of 15+ companies are pushing a DIS-based Bayou Sauvage multiuser 3D game as a key showpiece project.
Early buzz is that Bayou Sauvage is positioning to be the most visible of the numerous networked 3D projects that will be on display in the Digital Bayou exhibit area.
Bayou Sauvage participants: MaK (multiuser DIS connectivity), Viewpoint (repurposed realtime military models--look for the UFO), Lockheed Martin (SE Asia military terrain converted to LA bayou), Evans & Sutherland, Intergraph, and 3Dfx. Some 12-15 other companies may contribute and/or have a client station in their booth.
DIS, or Distributed Interactive Simulation, is the DOD standard for military 3D simulation. Some within the DIS community are lobbying to bring convert DIS to consumer use, and are hoping that Bayou Sauvage will kickstart an effort in this direction (watch for DIS Lite). Bayou Sauvage will be the first non-DOD funded demo of DIS technology.
DIS supporters are hoping to end run VRML 2.0, which has postponed multi-user issues for now.
Digital Bayou is coproduced by Clark Dodsworth of Osage and Brian Blau of Intervista.
Contact: http://www.mak.com
601.6 AGP: Can Intel save PCs from grainy 3D? by Rob Glidden
It a rare day when a new bus pulls into town, and some 400 systems engineers came to kick the tires of the PC's new bus at Intel's AGP conference (Santa Clara 5/30-31).
AGP, for Accelerated Graphics Port, is Intel's new bus standard to bring "arcade quality 3D to the volume price-point PC" according to Intel vp Mike Aymar. For this crowd, AGP is 3D's official coming out as a technology that will drive PC hardware design.
Initial support seemed strong. Given Intel's success with PCI, its motherboard share and recently announced 3D chip deal with Lockheed Martin, other motherboard and chip makers seemed eager to implement AGP quickly (scheduled to ship in volume 2H 97).
Intel bills AGP as a special purpose supplement to the PCI bus, specifically to handle 3D texture bandwidth. AGP is superset of a 66MHz PCI bus, implemented as a special purpose point-to-point (1 AGP to 1 CPU per system) connection between the CPU and graphics chip.
So what is AGP for? Intel pitched that the main purpose is to offload 3D textures from graphics memory to systems memory. The pitch is that 2 megs of graphics memory has too little room for the amount 3D games are demanding (a 2 meg board at 640*480*16 resolution with z buffer has little or no room left for textures).
But there were skeptics that AGP would be limited to special purpose texture swapping. Microsoft's Jay Torborg made a presentation that pointedly emphasized using AGP to eliminate the geometry, rather than texture, bottleneck (vertex data of 50 bytes per vertex puts a 3D ceiling on a 40MB/sec PCI system of 800K vertices per sec).
Note that AGP will access only physical, not virtual memory, so will not in itself solve the megatexture plans of some coming 3D games.
Contact: http://www.intel.com
601.8 3D Christmas 96 by John Latta
Expectations hang on 1996 being a great 3D Christmas. 4th Wave's estimate is that 5 million 3D chips will be sold in 1996 and by every indication a vast majority of these will be sold in Q4. 1995 saw only about 140,000 units. Yet, at E3 there was considerable anticipation and some anxiety about Christmas 1996. Both S3 and ATI are pushing to be #1 and #2 in units shipped and our estimates are that they are planning on 9m and 5m respectively. S3 has a simple strategy: System OEMs will have no financial issues if they decide to use 3D. The reason is simple - price the chips at the same level as their high end 2D products and make the chip plug compatible with existing designs. The OEM's can then add 3D to the product line at virtually no additional cost. Companies such as Rendition, 3D fx, and 3D Labs are at a distinct disadvantage because adopting their chips means a new design. Yet, many in the industry scoff at the thought that the S3 and ATI chips, as Jon Peddie calls them "Free- D," are serious 3D solutions. Yet, both S3 and ATI must attack the increasing penetration of 3D which can overtake their existing markets in 2D acceleration. If there is cannibalism you better be the cannibal of your own markets.
The quality leader today is 3D fx and they were very effective in showing the impact of their design on the show floor. At their trailer across from E3 one could pick up a list of companies showing titles using the chip. We asked both S3 and ATI for such a list and they seem surprised at the request. There is an important take away from this - quality reigns both with users and game companies. Ross Smith of 3D fx describes the emergence of a class of users - the "Pixel Fill Junkies." We see Christmas 1996 as a important battle ground.
Fab orders for chips need to be placed by mid-July for quantities to be ready for sales in November and December. The actions taken in the next few weeks will determine how many chips will be on hand. Right now this is a gamble.
The cloud over 3D is the lack of compelling content. Given the late shipment of Direct3D, we picked up that from 50 - 100 titles could be shipped by Christmas at E3, and it is likely that the number of high quality titles will be significantly less than this. If game titles drive the market one of the few ways the market will get driven is bundling. In 1995 this was not effective in stimulating mass unit volumes. We believe that the critical market dynamic will be quality in both the 3D images and quality of play. There is a lure to low cost 3D but even in 1996 consumers will be critical buyers and we remain convinced that the unit volumes and impact of 3D will be less than many expect. We still feel that the sell through will be in the 5 - 7 million unit range. A good 3D Christmas but not a great one.
E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (LA, mid May) is old news in Wave Time. But the Tess to Wave transition took a little longer than expected, and these reports may help to fill the gaps. RG
601.91 E3: Walking the Floor by John Latta
Walking the Floor at E3
One of the best examples of 3D was shown by Microprose with Falcon 4.0 under Windows 95. The terrain was excellent. Microprose used an unreleased version of Intel's 3DR which runs with Microsoft's Direct Draw. Microprose sees Direct 3D as not being ready and the only game in town is 3DR because it works. At the same time Microprose was very optimistic about Windows 95 and how this will enable better games. The impact of the 3D fx accelerator, with no other changes in the game, was to go from 10f/s to 40f/s - based on only 8 days to do the conversion.
We took notice of the no-shows: Cirrus Logic; Panasonic/M2; 3DO; Atari; Autodesk and Apple.
Throughout E3 it was clear the home entertainment market is under assault. Microsoft is being successful in building the image that the PC is the game platform of choice - it was impossible to miss its lavish booth. The PC has the inherent advantage of its flexibility - add on expansion via cards, superior image quality due to larger screen area and non-interlaced displays, a host processor and O/S based on industry standards and variety of content. This latter factor will be responsible for making the PC a much more appealing platform for more than just the 12 - 18 male age group. Thus, the PC industry is seeking to decimate the home video game business while this same business spends lavishly on advertising, image building and product development. The best example of the dilemma which the home video industry faces is the quandary which Nintendo is in. Its business model is out-of-date. Cartridge based games are over. As Sony said at the press conference announcing the price cuts to $199 - 'If it does not spin it does not win." Developers are increasingly reluctant to embrace a platform, no matter what its 3D engine is, where they carry the financial burden of expensive cartridges. At the Computer Game Developers Conference it was stated by an industry analysis - "I know of no company who feels they can make money writing for Nintendo 64."
While the PC is encroaching from the top of the market Sony, Sega and Nintendo are engaged in a money losing blood bath. Sony began the conference announcing that it had lowered the price of the Playstation to $199. The next day Sega matched the price. Nintendo resisted and remained at $249. Sega was touting its under $400 Internet solution. We came away with the sinking feeling that this is a game of who can lose the most the fastest. Our scan of the platforms on the floor provided a significantly different view. In terms of machines in booths showing titles it was a hands down win for Sony Playstation. PCs were present but no where near the numbers of the Playstation. We could hardly find a Sega Saturn except in the Sega booth. Nintendo, in spite of a massive booth, was only showing a few titles, many of which seemed to have been quickly brought over from Japan, Kanji characters and all. Tucked away in the Nintendo booth was Virtual Boy and we played a number of the games. We cannot fathom how this platform will go anywhere. Thus, in spite of a major shakeout in the market, where Atari and 3DO have left, we feel that what was at E3 is very transitory. Specifically, unless Sega makes major strides in upgrading its platform it stands to continue to lose significant market share. Sony is riding the crest of its popularity but when compared side-by-side with even the early PC 3D capabilities the Playstation image quality seems crude. Nintendo, does break new ground in 3D but again 3D on the PC is moving very quickly into the same quality and better territory in terms of selection of titles. The business model at Nintendo is under assault and highly problematical. Out of all of this we only see the PC as having an ever increasing role in home entertainment. If the Simply Interactive PC (SIPC) catches on this only spells more problems for the home video game industry.
One of the reasons for this turmoil is the rapid change in the home media market. All the current players - Sony, Nintendo and Sega are Japanese companies. As the PC begins to dominate the home entertainment market product cycles the time frame goes from 2 - 3 years in the video game market to 6 - 12 months in the PC market. Note that this is especially the case with the product cycles in the Internet market which are now running at 3 - 4 months. As a result, these Japanese companies are not effective in rapidly changing markets. Nintendo clings to its proprietary storage technology, cartridges, and Sega to its brand identity, while the computer industry seeks to surpass the video game business. We are seeing early signs that the home video game market is being absorbed into the mainstream of personal computing. Thus, for Sega, Sony and Nintendo to play a strong role in the long term they must respond to market changes driven by the competition, that is, their product cycles must approach 6 months. To date, the Japanese companies have not been agile enough. What we saw in the price wars is really the last battle they can fight - competition for market share in a declining market defined by their own players.
601.92 E3: 3D Playsets by Rob Glidden
Can branded 3D worlds slay the tired 2D kid's storybook genre? The latest and largest effort could be Mindscape's Lego project announced at E3. Due out Spring 97, only a pre-rendered clip was shown at E3. Producer is Scott Anderson, D3D is the engine.
The idea is that you can use 3D bricks identical in shape to regular Lego bricks and built a set of pre-designed houses, cars and so forth. The cars drive, and when the crash Lego police and ambulance come to help.
You may be able to share Lego objects over the Net, but it seems there are open issues about just how flexible the product should be. Will kids want to do free form building, or just play with prebuilt objects? Is 3D world composing, even from Lego bricks, too hard on the computer for a consumer product?
And there is still life in the 2D storybook. The Disney/Pixar Toy Story storybook showed the best image quality on the E3 show floor. Pre-rendered 3D, 8 bit color, antialiased animation cut to look like moving sprites on a fixed background. The 8-bit color surpassed any 16 real-time rendering seen at E3--perhaps shows that palette management will continue to be an important art form. Also, unaliased real-time 3D sprites will have trouble matching the Toy Story rendered-on-background look.
601.93 Barbie Goes 3D by Rob Glidden
Barbie, the Babe of Babes, made her first 3D appearance at E3, a venue otherwise better known for 3D babes of a more pumped variety (check Sega's latest fight games).
Barbie is making a decidedly non-interactive 3D debut. You choose her clothes from a 2D panel (blouse, skirt, cape). You then see a pre- rendered sequence of her taking a few steps on a fashion runway. Very nice 3D renderings--the clothes and cape sway with her walk.
Copyright 1996 4th Wave, Inc.
May be redistributed in full for individual readership and posted to newsgroups, Web, and FTP sites. May not be reprinted or redistributed for profit. Short quotes are permitted but must be attributed to the WAVE Report on Digital Media.