3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
Published by 4th WAVE, Inc.
Issue #609 9/27/96
CONTENTS
On Sept. 25, just in time for the holiday season, Microsoft officially released version 3.0 of DirectX, their high-profile multimedia development platform and API set. With growing support for the initiative, over 300 game titles powered by DirectX are already in development, as well as numerous DirectX-based hardware accelerators. New additions in version 3.0 include DirectPlay 3 (for online multiplayer games), DirectInput (for supporting a wide variety of input devices), DirectSound3D (for positional audio) and Direct3D MMX acceleration.
3D Architectural CADD Shoot-Out
On November 25 from noon until 5pm, a unique competition for 3D CADD systems will be held in NYC at the World Trade Center Amphitheater: ten teams of architects, each using one of the ten most powerful CADD software packages for architectural design, will have 3 hours to complete schematic design with varying design criteria. The competition will offer a good comparison of the various packages, including their ability to handle parametric changes and Boolean 3D solid modeling capabilities. The event is being sponsored by a number of organizations, including Architectural CADD Consultants, CAD Direct, The BSA AutoCAD Group, The BSA ArchiCAD Group, The AllPlan Designers Forum, and The Boston Computer Society CAD Group.
http://members.aol.com/ShootOut3D/event.html
"Ultimate 3D Objects CDROM Collection"
Yet another entry into the growing 3D "clip art" market, International Computer Graphics has announced the release of their "Ultimate 3D Objects CDROM Collection." The collection consists of 2 CDs, each with 250 3D objects in 5 popular formats including 3ds, pov, wrl, obj, and cob. The content consists of biological, mechanical, and architectural objects. Each CD retails for $39.95 or both for $69.95.
http://www.portraits.com/web/3d/cdinfo.htm
S-MOS & Psygnosis Partner for PIX
Last week, UK-based game developer, Pysgnosis announced a partnership with S-MOS Systems to use S-MOS' new PIX 3D rendering engine to enhance their future titles, including Destruction Derby 2, WipeOut XL and Formula 1. The PIX engine is being marketed as a low-cost 3D engine for consumers by utilizing an existing 2D subsystem's frame buffer rather than it own. PIX offers performance of up to 66M pixels/sec, and offers support for Direct3D, RenderWave, BRender, and Apple's QuickDraw 3D RAVE.
http://www.smos.com http://www.psygnosis.com
Contact, Culture, and Community in Digital Space (the Contact Consortium) is holding a two day conference on Saturday and Sunday, October 26 and 27, 1996 at the ANA Hotel in San Francisco. The conference will focus on creating a sense of community for the arriving wave of online games and social forums. More than 200 press and industry attendees are expected, as well as more than 200 attendees from the general virtual worlds/gaming public. Keynotes from Mark Pesce and Tony Parisi are featured, as well as more than 15 exhibitors including 3D Labs, America OnLine, Black Sun Interactive, Chaco, Microsoft, OnLive, OZ Interactive and Paragraph, among others.
Avid Technology has introduced the latest release of its MCXpress for Windows NT digital video editing system. Version 1.5, which has been optimized for Windows NT 4.0, features broadcast-quality images with 2:1 compression levels, batch-digitize and enhanced compositing features, and real-time effects capabilities. The software will be available in Q4 1996 from Avid's worldwide reseller network.
GEO: Emlaze Creator for Macintosh
GEO Interactive Multimedia has announced Emblaze Creator version 1.6 for Macintosh, an Internet authoring tool for creating interactive multimedia. The version 1.6 Beta, which is available for free download, provides tools for creating animation, painting and sound, in addition to import facilities for vector-based graphics programs such as Illustrator and Freehand. The company also produces the Emblaze Player plug-in (for which the Java-based version 2.0 was also just announced); the complete commercial package of Emblaze Creator and Player will be released Q1 1997.
609.2 Specular Bows to Windows by David Lohse
Following in the footsteps of Strata, Specular has finally submitted to the wave of Windows 3D applications. Previously only available for the Macintosh, version 1.5 of Infini-D 3.5 for Windows 95 and NT has been announced for availability on November 29 for $649.
Already a leading 3D package on the Mac, the Windows version of Infini-D 3.5 (which was just released for the Mac in August) will offer the same feature set, along with a number of new features including Animated SuperFlares, Animated Boolean rendering, a ray-tracing speed-up of up to 500%, as well as many user interface enhancements.
Although there appears to be a shift away from the Mac as a 3D development platform, due to the ubiquity of the PC, the emergence of lower-cost 3D acceleration, and the burgeoning number of tools in the Windows/PC space, the release of Infini-D for Windows does offer one (potentially important) benefit to Apple: it is the first Windows-based app to support QuickDraw 3D under Windows. However, there are no currently shipping PC 3D accelerators that actually support the QuickDraw 3D API, and Specular has informed WAVE that Infini-D 3.5 does not support any other API sets (such as Direct3D), and has no immediate plans to do so. In addition to QuickDraw 3D rendering, Infini-D for Windows also offers the ability to import and export 3DMF files, as well as support for QuickTime for Windows.
609.3 3D Chips and Cards - Recent Events by John Latta
S3 continues to dominate the 3D landscape in terms of marketing, design wins and volume. The Virge chip has been criticized as representing the low end of the market but in spite of such comments S3 is defining 3D on the PC with its volume. On July 18 S3 was the first company to announce shipment of a million units and other volume announcements are expected. S3's OEM wins include: Compaq, Packard Bell, Dell, HP, AST and Toshiba. S3 is on both low and high end Compaq computers and has a substantial part of the Packard Bell motherboard business.
An outstanding aspect of S3's efforts are its marketing of which $8m has been spent in developer relations. This goes well beyond just OEMs and includes the retail channel to build brand identity through advertising. S3 characterizes this as a first for the semiconductor companies in 3D. They cite that there will be from 60 - 70 titles this Christmas (which they define from November to February) which support S3D, the S3 3D API.
Yet, there is still weakness in the market when it is cited that virtually all of S3 customers are using bundling. Again S3 leads here in developing with 3D content producers pre set bundling packages which Virge buyers can select "off-the-shelf." AGP is seen as strategic to the development of 3D on PCs, however, they see that its roll out will take some time as game developers will have to specifically write games to take advantage of acceleration - that is AGP specific titles. It is not expected that AGP will achieve volume support until late 1997 or early 1998. S3 was so bold to claim that all mainstream PCs would have 3D acceleration by Mid-1997. Not to rest on its ability to shape the market with volume today S3 will likely announce its next generation products at or before COMDEX.
609.3.2 ATI Begins Production of Rage II
ATI's Rage product continues to win OEM designs. These include: IBM Aptiva, NEC, Acer New Aspire Line and Sony VAIO. In fact, 70% of the Rage business is with OEMs. In order to avoid conflicts with other board vendors ATI either makes its own cards or sells its chips to OEMs - no chips are sold to 3rd party board companies. Volume shipments of Rage II begin as this issue is being released (last week in September). According to ATI, the current pace of the 3D chips developments are driving performance to double every 9 months.
609.3.3 Matrox Ships Mystique and Bundles Games
Matrox has moved to the mass market with its Mystique product - now shipping. The chip (MGA-1064SG) supports up to 1600 X 1200 (8bit color), integrated RAMDAC, 25Mtexels/sec pixel fill rate and a digital video engine which supports up to 1024 X 768 at 30f/s. Its card is priced at $179 for 2MB and $229 for 4MB. Although the company states it feels that Direct3D will be the most widespread API it is bundling 3 titles: MechWarrier 2 from Activison; Destruction Derby 2 from Sony/Psygnosis and Scorched Planet from Virgin Interactive and Criterion. Also included from Vream is Wirl a 3D viewer which plugs in to both Navigator by Netscape and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Matrox is also seeing a strong retail market in France in addition to the U.S. Matrox also sells the MGA chip to OEMs but not to other board companies. The OEMs can either create a card based on the Matrox reference design for inclusion into the OEMs systems or incorporate the chip into motherboards. It expects that 2 or 3 OEMs will be announced by the end of October. Traditionally up to 60% of the chip sales are to OEMs and it is likely that Mystique will follow the same pattern.
609.3.4 3Dfx is a Vacuum for High Quality 3D Games
Building on its reputation for the best quality 3D at mass market price points, 3Dfx Interactive has attracted some of the major upcoming titles which promise to shape the 3D game play experience. As of July, 46 titles were to be released by November which take advantage of the Voodoo chip set. It is interesting that 14 are written for Microsoft's Direct3D and the rest for 3Dfx's Glide API. In spite of this preponderance of Glide support by developers 3Dfx is devoting significant effort internally to make its implementation of Direct 3D one of the best. It has been 3Dfx's experience that Direct3D works best in simulation type situations where the scene does not have a high level of complex, i.e., high polygon count, objects. Looking forward we should expect more information from 3Dfx by COMDEX on the results of its relation with Alliance to bring its technology to the mass market.
3Dfx was interviewed by WAVE at AMOA and supportive of the Microsoft coin-op initiative. The company described the movement to the coin-op industry to the PC platform as inevitable. Of the 3D chip companies 3Dfx has been the most aggressive in developing the coin-op market and has achieved some major design wins including Atari Interactive (now a part of Williams Bally Midway) which is showing San Francisco Rush on the show floor. The Microsoft initiative is important to the game industry because coin-op is at the cutting edge of 3D technology. A challenge which Microsoft faces is to keep its 3D API technology up to date with chip developments and the demands for 3D content developers. In 3Dfx's view the initiative in coin-op may support the need for Microsoft to move more quickly in having its 3D API track the demands of cutting edge 3D entertainment.
3Dfx is also moving into the professional content development market with its Obsidian Pro 3DS product. This is an accelerator specifically geared to the high end of the market and especially 3D game developers on 3D Studio and other products. Priced aggressively at $995 with 4MB of texture memory it competes directly against the 3DLabs 500TX based cards. In October the card will ship with a plug-in for 3D Studio R4 and a MAX version will come by November. This strategy has the dual advantage of not only broadening the market for Voodoo by going up market but also providing game developers with a platform which makes development easier and at the same time is a target for game development.
609.3.5 Intergraph - Reaches Out
Intergraph is moving from a workstation centric company to one aggressively competing on the PC platform. They have two 3D products of their own design which are used in a PCI equipped PC (Intense 3D) or within their own workstations (RealiZm Z13 or Z25). Shipping in quantity now the Intense 3D card has drivers for OpenGL and Heidi, operates at 810K (25 pixel triangles) with a pixel fill rate of 22Mp/s. It comes with a 16MB frame buffer which will support 1280 X 1024 display at 24 bits (double buffer) and with alpha. The OEM price is $2499 with the texture memory (4MB) an additional $495. The first OEM announcement is with Compaq and others are expected to follow. Although Intergraph has not announced any intent to sell Intense 3D at retail at WAVE we feel this is only a matter of time. For example, Intergraph compares this card with 3DLabs 500TX with a Delta processor.
Positioned against SGI in the workstation market is RealiZm which can only be bought bundled with Intergraph systems (TDZ). RealiZm Z13 also has 16MB of frame buffer and with increased performance of 1.2M (50 pixel) triangles/sec and 38Mp/sec fill rate. The differential card price is $3,600 with texture memory priced separately: 4MB = $595; 8MB = $1095 and 32MB = $4995. The RealiZm Z25 is approximately $7,200 but has 32MB of frame buffer and supports displays up to 1824 X 1368.
Intergraph is taking a significant step in proposing yet another API - RenderGL. This API is specifically designed for high quality animation rendering (non-real time) and an obvious strike against the position which SGI holds in the high end animation market. To date RenderGL has been adopted by New Tek (beta version now) and Softimage (announced but no release date stated).
609.4 Microsoft's NetShow by David Lohse
On Sept. 16, Microsoft entered the streaming video market in a big way with the unveiling of its NetShow technology, which provides multicasting streaming capabilities to be integrated with their Internet Information Server (IIS). Although several companies have already positioned themselves as leading in audio and video streaming technologies, such as Progressive Networks (responsible for the popular RealAudio software), Xing Technologies and VDOnet, Microsoft claims that their NetShow technology will be complementary rather than competitive: Microsoft will provide the basic infrastructure and standards for streaming, while companies such as Progressive Networks and Xing will provide value-added technology such as codecs, compression technology, servers and authoring and management tools.
NetShow includes the two core components for online multimedia: NetShow On-Demand, which provides multimedia streaming, and NetShow Live, which provides multicasting capabilities (using the IP multicasting and RTP open standards). Billed as an "open software platform," NetShow stores and streams audio, video and "illustrated audio" (audio synched with images). The NetShow platform consists of a server component for Windows NT, along with client components for Windows 95 and Windows NT Workstation, as well as authoring tools and administration utilities. Although it provides its own programming interfaces, NetShow of course also supports Microsoft's ActiveX technology.
A number of companies have already announced they are developing products for the NetShow platform, including, among others: Progressive Networks, Xing Technologies, VDOnet, Eastman Kodak, Cisco Systems, Checkpoint Software, Bay Networks, 3Com, and Ascend Communications.
A beta release of NetShow is now available from Microsoft's Web site (with Beta 2 to be released in October), with a final release scheduled before the end of the year to be included in future version of IIS and Windows NT Server.
http://www.microsoft.com/netshow
609.5 Cirrus Logic's Laguna by David Lohse
Just this week Cirrus Logic finally burst onto the 3D scene when it introduced its Laguna3D family of 3D accelerators, upping the ante in the exploding 3D accelerator market. On Sept. 24 they introduced the first two members of the consumer-oriented family, including the CL-GD5464 chip, as well as the Laguna3D-AGP version of the chip.
Here are the chip characteristics:
Performance: >50M perspectively-correct texels/sec Memory: Rambus RDRAM (600 MHz and 667 MHz versions) Color Depth: 8 or 16 bpp Z-Buffer: 16-bit API Support: Direct3D (optimized), CGL, OpenGL Resolution: up to 1600x1200 at 85 MHz Features: Bilinear/trilinear filtering; alpha blending, fog and transparency; mip-mapping; texture decompression; display list processing; sub-pixel accuracy Other: 64-bit GUI (2D) acceleration; video playback acceleration; integrated 230 MHz palette DAC; PCI bus mastering
The CL-GD5464 is now available in volume for $29.50; the AGP version will begin volume production in Q1 97.
609.6 Internet Regulation? by Malisa L. Burkeen
This past week, The Cato Institute held a conference entitled "Regulation or Private Ordering? The Future of the Internet." WAVE was on hand to assess the thoughts of this group of (primarily) law school professors. The consensus: (1) the Internet should not be regulated because users do have a choice about what they will receive or choose to view and thus can avoid items or topics they consider offensive; (2) the Internet is ungovernable because it lacks physical boundaries and thus negates the legal principles of "law of place" and "law of jurisdiction."
Even with this general agreement and tone throughout the conference, none of the speakers offered to provide an insight into what action the courts would take regarding the Communications Decency Act. In fact, one admitted he really had no idea what the ruling would be. Several speakers suggested that the whole act could be avoided by simply instituting a labeling system. This solution would have different organizations, the Christian Coalition was given as an example, label sites on the Net and users can access those labels to set up their browser to block access to certain types of online material, making users "self-governed" so to speak.
Danny Weitzner of the Center for Democracy and Technology predicted that issues regarding Internet regulation will continue to grow between the states and also in the international arena. The outcome is uncertain, but all agree any action will be far reaching and will require a radical rethinking of government and laws.
609.7 Microsoft Proposes a Bold Arcade Initiative at AMOA by John Latta
On 26 September Microsoft gave a 3 hour seminar in a packed auditorium to recast the video coin-op industry. James Plamondon, coin-op evangelist at Microsoft presented a concept for building the industry around a Universal Coin-Op platform, obviously based on Windows (actually NT). In order to differentiate between home games and the coin op it was stated that this platform would provide better quality and play than most home systems.
The proposal is based on the adoption of three standards: an open Windows NT standard platform, standard control panels and standard cabinets. In support of the need for change Microsoft outlined the current state of the industry in grim terms using charts showing downturns in all segments. James described the situation which an operator faces one year after buying a dedicated coin-op game - "you have a coffin-sized door stop."
WAVE spoke with a number of attendees and the response from the operators was uniform - right on. In fact, one stated that the state of the industry James laid out looked just like his current cash flow. A business model proposed was to base coin-op on theatrical release which would build name and play reputation in the arcades and to use this as the basis for home release - once the arcade play rate subsides.
Microsoft intends to hold a design review within 3 months where key industry leaders will participate to defined the standards in more detail. A key to recasting the coin-op industry is the role which the major players such as Sega and Namco will take in supporting the standards and this is too early to judge.
609.8 Konami Shows Cutting Edge 3D by John Latta
At AMOA, Konami was showing off a preview of its Cobra technology based on 3D developments by IBM Japan. Clearly spurred by the impact of the Lockheed-Martin Model 3 technology used by Sega, Konami is seeking to leap to the next generation of 3D for arcade games. Using a scalable architecture based on Power PC microprocessors and custom ASICs, the system has the following stats:
- 1-5M polygons/sec - 50-200M pixels/sec - 640x480 to 1280x1024 resolution - 144 bits/pixel - 8 bit alpha channel - Bilinear and trilinear filtering - Real time texture management - 8 lighting sources - Particle emulation
A fighting game based on Cobra will be released in the spring of 1997. Although pricing has not been announced it is expected to be competetive with Sega's Virtua Fighter 3, based on the Model 3 (50" display in a deluxe cabinet $16,000 to $17,000; 33" mini-deluxe $10,000).
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.