3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
Published by 4th WAVE, Inc.
Issue #610 10/11/96
CONTENTS
Just yesterday, Microsoft announced the shipment of the Games Sampler 2 for Windows 95. With 20 titles from top developers such as Activision, Blizzard Entertainment, DreamWorks Interactive, Electronic Arts, Inscape, and Looking Glass Technologies, among others, the Sampler shows the broad industry support for both the Windows 95 platform and the DirectX initiative. Overall, an estimated 300 Windows 95-based games titles are expected to ship for the Christmas season: the day of the DOS-based game is over.
ATI Ships One Millionth 3D RAGE
On Sept. 30, ATI Technologies announced the shipment of their one millionth 3D RAGE accelerator chip. Previously, only S3 could make this claim: they announced on July 18 that their ViRGE 3D chip had reached the one million mark. Although S3 and ATI currently lead the pack, more than 10 other companies are already competing in the accelerator market, with more coming on board continuously. Increasing competition from other key players such as 3Dfx and now Cirrus Logic, as well as ATI's own recent announcement of their second-generation RAGE II chip (WAVE #609, 9/27), will quickly heat up the race in the consumer space, reducing both price and product cycle time.
Correction: 3D Architectural CADD Shoot-Out
This event will take place at the World Trade Center in *Boston*, not NYC as was reported in WAVE #609. The shoot-out will be on November 25 at noon. More information can be found at: http://members.aol.com/ShootOut3D/event.html.
On October 10 Intergraph began the sales of its Intense 3D card to the open market via Intergraph resellers. The card has drivers for Windows NT 3.51, 4.0 and Heidi (3D Studio MAX). An add-on geometry accelerator with 480 MFLOPS of performance is priced at $2400.
MultiGen's GameGen II, the leading 3D authoring tool for entertainment applications (PC and arcade), and previously only available on the SGI platform, began shipping for Windows NT on Sept. 30, in yet another move towards NT as a professional development environment. The NT version is optimized to create applications for the PC, Macintosh, Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation. In addition to 3D modeling, rendering and animation, GameGen II offers additional features specific to creating interactive entertainment titles, including LOD model creation, drawing priority and binary separating planes. Available through MultiGen's distributors and VARs, GameGen II for Windows NT has an MSRP of $7,500 (SGI version: $20,000).
OLiVR Corp., a Massachusetts start-up company, announced several weeks ago that it was developing an authoring environment, client software and a server platform for enabling real-time online 3D interaction. The technology offers the same functionality as VRML 2.0, but with the addition of streaming (unlike VRML worlds which must be downloaded). The company feels their technology is superior to VRML due to this as well as its ease-of-use which doesn't require programming skills; but with the comming onslaught of user-friend VRML world builders from many established companies, as well as the large amount of industry momentum behind VRML, it's unlikely that OLiVR will pose a serious threat.
610.2 3DLabs Charts the Future by John Latta
3D Labs has had a leadership position in 3D acceleration since its days within DuPont in England. WAVE recently visited 3DLabs to seek its views. Although the company has had its impact in the upper end of the market it is planning on how it will do the same across the total market including the consumer space. Its planning is being shaped by how rapidly moving markets evolve and one of the best descriptions is like a Tornado. A good resource on this analogy is Geoffrey Moore's book "Inside the Tornado."
In spite of over 2.5 million 3D chips having been shipped already in 1996, 3DLabs has not seen where 3D is consumer market hit. 3D is being pushed into the market and there has yet to be a buyer pull. Voicing a view not often heard in much of the 3D community they see where VRML may be the first 3D software technology to get wide spread use and thus create buyer demand. It could well be that the Web will accelerate the adoption of 3D. When this happens the industry will be subject to "Web Time," that is, product cycles of 3 - 4 months will push the industry both in hardware and software. 3DLabs believes that in order for 3D to reach the mainstream there must be another ISV software development cycle for high quality 3D applications and content to surface. This implies another 12 - 18 months before 3D is a mass market Tornado.
In their view achieving mass market effectiveness with 3D will not be easy. For example, the lower the price of 3D, especially in add-on products, the more the consumers will expect in terms of functionality, flexibility and integration. This is just the opposite from the high end of the market where 3D acceleration typically has a very focused use and typically with only one application. In its planning for the future the company sees a traditional market pyramid with the upper market at the top and the consumer space at the bottom and the width of the pyramid representing the size of the market. At the top are its GLiNT products along with Intergraph, for example, and its workstations. In the mid- band, which has not yet been well addressed, is its Permedia NT product. The best example of a 2D product today is Matrox Millennium but it has not addressed the 3D market.3DLabs sees this market as being largely under served and it feels that this will emerge in 1stH 1997.
The consumer market today is being driven by S3 and ATI, yet, the Tornado of this market has not begun. The key reason being the lack of consumer demand, in part, based on immature software products. 3DLabs sees this market emerging in 1998 and it intends to be a strong player with its next generation products based on Permedia technology and its relationship with TI. Yet, today the company has its focus on the high end of the market which it shaped in 1995 with the 300SX product and now is based on its 500TX products. Winning OEM designs is also critical in this market and 3DLabs has landed Compaq, HP, DEC and Siemens. An area which 3DLabs has also led the industry is in the role of set-up engines and 3D geometry acceleration as a critical element in 3D performance. Based on its own tests some acceleration is required to keep the rasterizaton pipeline full, even with Pentium Pro 200MHz processors. Today this need is being fulfilled by the Delta set up processor but coming in Q1 1997 will be a full geometry engine called Gamma. (See the article below on the Gemini benchmarking for more background on the importance of geometry acceleration in hardware.)
610.3 Video Editing on the PC by David Lohse
As with many aspects of the professional multimedia industry, video editing seems to be gaining momentum in a move from the workstation (and Mac to some extent) to the PC; the evangilists pushing this move citing the lower price point of the PC as the prime motivater. However, PCs have traditionally not had the processing power and enabling technologies available for performing professional-quality video editing. Video on the PC has been mostly confined to playback, in most cases based on Microsoft's Video for Windows.
Seeing these shortcomings, Matrox decided to lead the way for professional video editing on the PC, and as such created OpenDML as a possible open standard for enabling VE on the PC. However, earlier this year Microsoft unveiled ActiveMovie as part of its ActiveX platform, as the successor to both Video for Windows, AVI and any other video technologies floating around, and with the hopes of eventually using it to enable professional VE on the PC. In its first release of ActiveMovie, Microsoft claimed that over 80% of the needs of OpenDML were incorporated, but WAVE's interviews with both ISVs and IHVs in the professional video space revealed that the actual industry opinions were that ActiveMovie was still only good for playback and did not meet the needs of the professional VE community.
In response, Microsoft has been collaborating with Matrox on improving ActiveMovie's capabilities to meet the needs of the professional video editor. Indications are that ActiveMovie will move to replace OpenDML eventually (most likely within the next 6-12 months), and according to Janet Matey of Matrox's Video Products Group, they "hope at one point that OpenDML will just go away." On behalf of OpenDML, Alain Legault and Janet Matey visited the Microsoft ActiveMovie team in Redmond, WA on August 22, from which they reported that Microsoft had in response increased their ActiveMovie development team from 5 to 20 people, and has made the improvement of ActiveMovie a top priority. They also reported on the status of ActiveMovie's development and current schedule:
ActiveMovie 1.0 runtime version: Released to the Web (RTW) in August ActiveMovie 1.0 SDK: Sept. 96 ActiveMovie 2.0 Beta: Nov. 96 ActiveMovie 2.0 RTM: Mar. 97 or before -- in time for NAB ActiveMovie 2.0 w/ MAC support: 3 months following 2.0 release ActiveMovie 3.0: Oct. 97
With ActiveMovie 2.0 currently under development, Microsoft is addressing many of the shortcomings in the current version as felt by the video editing community. The features felt by most in the community to be missing from ActiveMovie that will most likely be integrated into ActiveMovie 2.0 include:
Capture filter File writing (sink filter) Cut list support VFW codec support Codec performance testing at 5 MB/sec. minimum throughput on legacy hardware A/V sync and slewing audio clocks DV file format support Support for the MAC
At this point, the future for the PC (re: Windows NT) as the video platform of choice seems inevitable. While in the past the Macintosh has been the platform of choice for some video editors, it also looks like the move will be away from the Mac to Windows NT. Avid, a leading provider for digital video editing software for the Mac, recently (Sept. 12) announced the availability of MCXpress for Windows NT, signaling an important shift in the industry. Much of the professional content development seems to be shifting away from the beleaguered Macintosh, as does industry support: asked about the future of the Mac for DVE, Janet Matey replied, "I wouldn't buy one at this point," (although it should be noted that Matrox does focus exclusively on PC products and technologies).
http://www.microsoft.com/imedia/activemovie/activem.htm
610.4 Quake: Bringing 3D to the Masses by David Lohse
Traditionally, 3D has been the domain of professional animators and CAD designers, but with the widespread availability of Pentium PCs, 3D has been enabled for the consumer. The encroaching consumer 3D storm began by most accounts last year, but it was in 1996 that the movement has gathered most of its momentum. Although typical consumer PCs now have the processing power and display capabilities to handle 3D, the question remains: what will consumer use it for? What will entice the typical consumer to invest in 3D accelerator hardware? The answer is obviously not CAD or modeling/animation capabilities, but two possibilities (not necessarily exclusive) are mostly pointed to by industry-watchers: VRML and entertainment applications/games. Although VRML may play a role in the consumer adoption of 3D, it lies further on the horizon than the wave of 3D-enabled games already entering the marketplace.
Of all the 3D games already on or soon entering the market, id Software's Quake is the only one with the status of blockbuster-to-be, following in the footsteps of its widely successful predecessor, the ubiquitous DOOM. As Quake finds its way into millions of homes, it brings with it the need for 3D; although Quake alone certainly can't be credited with ushering in the era of 3D, it will play an important role as one of the seminal products for consumer 3D.
An important indicator of the industry movement was shown recently when id Software announced that a Direct3D version of Quake was under development and would be available by the end of the year, adding further support to the push for Direct3D as an industry standard. Two other important announcements were made recently: 3Dfx has announced that the Direct3D version of Quake would be optimized for their Voodoo Graphics chipset, and Rendition has also announced that Quake would be optimized for their Verite chip; clearly, hardware companies have seen the importance of important games like Quake as well as Direct3D in enabling 3D for the masses.
id Software: http://206.86.0.31/ 3Dfx: http://www.3dfx.com Rendition: http://www.rendition.com
610.5 Softimage Shapes 3D Acceleration Market with Certification by John Latta
3D acceleration is essential to the use of Softimage 3D on Windows NT systems. To make sure that its product worked well with accelerators and integration problems were not being passed to users Softimage created its Hardware Certification Tests (HCT), now in version 2.1. The suite of tests is really a benchmark which tests parameters important to the production use of Softimage and some specialized feature tests.
There are two separate tests: Softcomp, which are script based and focused on determining that the combination of the hardware and accelerator will properly drive the Softimage product, and Regression Tests, which are run by Softimage personnel to determine the compatibility of the accelerator. The HCT process has a number of steps which is split between what the IHV does first within the IHV's own facility and then a trip to Softimage in Montreal at its certification lab. This latter step usually requires an experienced engineer for 2 weeks on site. The IHV must also supply an OpenGL driver. When the process has been complete an official certification is issued.
The Softcomp test has 8 sections which are run with two separate batch files. Areas which are tested include: NURBS, Bezier curves, keyframing, lighting, textures and wireframe handling including animation. A factor often ignored by many 3D accelerator companies is that most of the processes in Softimage are done on wireframes. Thus, the performance of the accelerator in handling meshes may be more important than the polygonal performance. In addition, Softimage takes the view that the OpenGL driver, the display driver, must focus not on blitting bits but on the processing of pixels. The process of certification has benefited the manufacturers: one found a bug in the hardware and most ended up tuning their drivers. Companies currently certified include:
3Dlabs 300SX 500TX Accel Graphics AG500 Densan (For NEC) 300DX/A Digital Equipment Corp. Powerstorm Series Dynamic Pictures Inc V192 Intergraph GLZ1 GLZ2 Realizm Series NeTpower Elite2 Omnicomp Pro8 DTX88
Note that these certification results do not apply to all combinations of operating system versions and the Softimage software versions. For example, only the Intergraph Realizm Series is certified for Softimage 3D 3.51 and NT 4.0. Check with Softimage for the detailed list not only for the current combinations but also additional companies which gain certification.
The Softimage HCT is an excellent example of how benchmarking is shaping 3D accelerator development and the market. Passing the tests is a gate to the reseller channel and those with the best integrated and performing platform have an advantage.
http://www.microsoft.com/Softimage
610.6 Gemini Announces First Benchmarking Results by John Latta
The 3D industry has been looking for 3D benchmarking results with both anticipation and trepidation - and the first results have arrived courtesy of Gemini. Posted on their home page are a number of surprises with more to come. First we describe the tests and then summarize the results based on the posted results and an interview with John Archdeacon of Gemini. WAVE readers are encouraged to visit the home page for more details.
There are two tests: gvr and gvf. Each of these tests determine the real- time frame rate performance of two types of simulations. gvr is a race- car environment with medium pixel depth and scene complexity (depth complexity is greater than 2 but less than 4 on average and peak up to 8) while gvr is flight simulation-oriented which emphasizes a range of transformation loads (the depth complexity is greater than 1 but less than 3). All test results are referenced to SGI Onyx Reality2 system which Gemini calls an re2stone (TM) of 1.0. Performance is based on frame rate and most tests are in single frame buffer mode. Thus, for systems which have a higher average frame rate the reference platform will rank proportionally faster relative to the reference platform. A common output format was chosen of 640 X 480 VGA mode. In general, those features which provide the best image quality were turned on that was supported by the system under test. If anti-aliasing was available it was used and the best filtering was used (in all cases MIP Mapping except one which used bilinear). The benchmark binaries are available from the Gemini web site for Windows 95 and Windows NT OpenGL, Windows 95 3Dfx Glide, Windows NT Real 3D Pro and SGI IRIX OpenGL and DEC UNIX and Alpha OpenGL.
|
Graphics System SGI Onyx iReality 3Dfx 2220-SLI Real 3D Pro 1000 SGI Onyx RE2 SGI Maximum Impact SGI High Impact 3Dfx 2220 3Dfx 2200 Intergraph TDZ/GLZ5 E&S Freedom 3000 |
gvf re2stone rating 3.21 1.03 1.00 1.00 0.92 0.63 0.5 0.47 0.23 0.05 |
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Graphics System SGI Onyx iReality Real 3D Pro 1000 3Dfx 2220-SLI SGI Maximum Impact SGI Onyx RE2 3Dfx 2220 3Dfx 2200 SGI High Impact Intergraph TDZ/GLZ5 E&S Freedom 3000 |
gvr re2stone rating 2.52 1.82 1.51 1.30 1.00 0.67 0.57 0.56 0.47 0.11 |
The 3Dfx systems stand out. The 2220-SLI is actually two boards which uses 2 PCI slots. Each board does every other scan line and the effective pixel fill rate is 90Mp/s. The 2220 has two texture memories of 2MB each which allows this version to do MIP-mapping. The 2200 has only a single board with 2MB of texture and can only do bilinear filtering. An important caveat in the 3Dfx tests is that the host CPU is used for the geometry calculations because the chip does not have this capability. In the case of the 2220-SLI the host is a Pentium Pro 200 and it was nearly 100% utilized when running the tests.
It has been Gemini's observation that the primary bottlenecks in the image generation pipeline are pixel fill rate first and then geometry transformations. For example, the SGI InfiniteReality gains considerably over the older RE2 through its use of ASICs for geometry calculation as opposed to the Intel i860 processors in the RE2. These same considerations apply to the 3Dfx where this chip is totally dependent on the host CPU. Although not yet quantified Gemini has seen impacts of the performance of the OpenGL implementation in the ratings. For example, it appears that the software implementation of OpenGL on the E&S Freedom 3000 could be partially responsible for the poor performance (note the host CPU utilization was only 3% in these tests). Gemini cautions that the version of OpenGL used, including the versions being supported by Microsoft, may play a significant role in the ratings. In addition it has been Gemini's observation that 3Dfx's Glide API is quite fast and efficient. Although Gemini is not currently reporting on the version of OpenGL used in the tests this is likely to be added in the future.
One of the most difficult parts of the 3D benchmarking is an assessment of Image Quality (IQ). Gemini does not address this issue other than try to make the tests between the cards and the features which impact IQ as close as possible. For example, both the Infinite Reality and RE2 use what is described by Gemini as full scene anti-aliasing (sub-pixel processing). In the tests they use 2X2 sub-pixel matrix for each pixel. Only the Real3D Pro 1000 uses anti-aliasing which is described as "automatic polygon edges." Gemini claims that the impacts of turning on and off anti-aliasing would only be seen on the polygon edges, where there would be a major IQ difference, but on the interior of the polygons the IQ would be the same. In spite of the limitations of subjective assessments at WAVE we feel that a subjective evaluation of the IQ would be valuable.
Another interesting data point which would be valuable to report on would be the frame rate statistics during the tests such as max and min frame rates and a correlation with the pixel depth complexity. This would allow for a better assessment of the overall frame rate performance of the system. Gemini has observed that there appears to be a similar correspondence between the frame rate variations during the tests on each of the systems.
Many chips/cards are not present on the list. Benchmarking will get interesting when results from the Mitsubishi Pro 3D, Real 3D R3D/100, 3DLabs 500TX, and Intergraph Intense3D are posted.
Benchmarking in 3D will be a high stakes game - with the best results defining "winners." Many factors go into determining the system performance and as Gemini has seen that it is not only the host environment but the API which has a significant impact. And these tests the implementation of OpenGL apparently played a role in the rating also. To be addressed is how IQ can be factored into the test evaluation.
610.7 Online Developer's Conference: SFO September by David Lohse
Held in San Francisco from Sept. 18 - 20, Jupiter Communications' Online Developers III Conference explored issues and technologies in developing software for both the Internet and online services. The conference featured keynotes from industry giants such as Marc Andreeson and Trip Hawkins, as well as panelists from a number of companies involved with online development and infrastructure.
The first day of the conference was devoted to online games, with a focus on 3D games. The keynote was given by Trip Hawkins, the Chairman of 3DO and industry luminary, who stressed the importance of the Internet while displaying Meridian 59, 3DO's new online gaming environment.
Multiplayer online games will be _the next big thing_ , at least according to the companies at the conference pushing them. This may in fact be true; apply the incredible success of DOOM to the world-wide Internet. Two different approaches to online gaming exist: client-side and server-side. Client-side games provide all of the "world" content locally to the player, most likely on CD-ROM, with only relatively small messages passing back and forth over the network. This allows high- quality 3D graphics and detailed worlds along with high-speed gameplay, at the expense of flexibility: no permanent changes can be made in the world (i.e., only very little or no state can be maintained on a server) without distributing new CD-ROMs to all of the users. Another benefit of this architecture is that conventional consumer 3D games can be "enabled" to play over the Internet, an approach being taken by companies such as TEN and Mpath.
Server-side games, on the other hand, base all of their content on the server. They have the important benefit of allowing worlds to be altered and built on, and are (so far at least) primarily VRML-based. Client-side applications have more immediate potential for games, while server-side applications will better support social environments. Examples of server- side environments worlds from Black Sun and Oz Interactive.
610.8 VREAM Goes VRML by David Lohse
Founded in 1991 in the midst of the promising VR industry, VREAM's objectives were to "bring virtual reality to the mass market." Although there were no obvious inroads to achieve this objective for their first several years, 1995 saw the emergence of VRML. With the promise of bringing 3D/VR to the consumer, VRML was fully embraced by VREAM: they first released WIRL, a plug-in VRML 1.0 browser for Navigator or IE, in May of 1995, and have since concentrated on making all of their products fully VRML-compliant. Asked whether he thought VREAM could be considered a "VRML company," Ken Gaebler, VREAM's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, replied, "totally."
In the last issue of WAVE (#609, 9/27), we mentioned that WIRL is bundled with Matrox's consumer 3D cards; in addition, however, WIRL is also bundled with ATI's cards and according to Ken, VREAM is currently in negotiations with both Number 9 Technologies and Creative Labs, with similar bundling deals expected by November.
In addition to their WIRL browser, VREAM's cornerstone product is their VRCreator authoring software. With version 2.0, due for release in November, VRCReator ($99) will be one of the first VRML 2.0 authoring programs on the market. Although it boasts complete VRML 2.0 support and fully functional capabilities, VRCreator is targeted at the non- programmer developer, offering easy drag & drop management (including a library of over 1,000 items) and intuitive interfaces. Following in the trend arguably started by Paragraph, VRML tools are becoming increasingly user-friendly, especially compared to the early days of primitive and difficult hand-coding, and VRCreator provides yet another link in this chain.
VRCreator's most unique feature, however, is its adoption of VREAMScript, VREAM's proprietary scripting language. Although many in the industry bemoan proprietary extensions, prophesizing that they will be the downfall of VRML, VREAMScript does offer the important benefit of ease- of-use, allowing non-programmers and (fairly) typical consumers to integrate behaviors and self-styled animations into their VRML scenes. Unfortunately, currently only WIRL browsers can utilize VREAMScript-based scenes, which is exactly the type of fragmentation that VRML pundits fear from proprietary extensions. This will be remedied in March 1997 with the release of VRCreator 3.0, which promises to offer Java export capabilities for VRScipts, at which time the utility of VRScript will come into play as a further level of abstraction from the lower-level Java language.
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.