3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
Published by 4th WAVE, Inc.
Issue #611 10/25/96
CONTENTS
3D Labs, the perennial leader in 3D silicon, yesterday announced its IPO as registered with the SEC. 2,500,000 shares of common stock are being made available, 2,145,833 of which are being sold by the Company and 354,167 of which are being sold by Selling Shareholders, with an estimated initial offering price between $11 and $13. The co-managers of the proposed underwriting group, from whom a prospectus may be obtained, are Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (212)667-7000 and UBS Securities LLC (212)821-4000.
In the next issue of WAVE we will be profiling what to look for and where at COMDEX. Please contact us so we can provide a complete pre-show 3D alert. Wave contacts: (703)799-1010; FAX (703)360-2311; e-mail: wave@fourthwave.com. WAVE will have complete COMDEX coverage after the show.
Seybold's World Movers Conference Postponed
This week, SGI announced that the World Movers Conference, originally scheduled for December 3 and 4 in San Francisco, will be postponed until early 1997. According to SOFTBANK, the parent company of Seybold, the postponement was not due to lack of attendance or interest, but instead as they told WAVE, "[SGI] wanted to make sure they were ready. They felt the conference was not yet up to the level they wanted." Although the new date for the conference has not yet been decided, SOFTBANK told us that the new dates would be announced within the next 3-4 weeks.
http://www.seyboldseminars.com/
Virtual Environments Conference
Due in part to the emergence of VRML, virtual environments on the Internet has become an increasingly hot topic. The British Computer Society Computer Graphics & Displays Group will be holding a conference entitled "Virtual Environments on the Internet, WWW and Networks" from April 15-17, 1997. The conference is being held at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, UK. Those wishing to present a paper at the conference (as well as possible publication in the follow-up book) must have their abstracts in by November 1; papers selected for the conference must be received by April 1. For more information check out:
http://graphics.ed.ac.uk/BCS_Displays
Veronis, Suhler & Associates Releases the 1996 Communications Industry Forecast
The bible of communications industry market numbers including the online and interactive digital media has been published. The categories covered include: television, radio, subscription video, film, recorded music, newspapers, books, magazines, business information services and interactive digital media. For anyone wanting the complete spectrum of market assessment data including tables with numbers this is the best source in the industry. At $995 it is a bargain. (212)935-4990
More on Microsoft's Game Sampler 2
In response to questions about the availability of Microsoft's Game Sampler 2 (reported in WAVE #610):
When: Available within the next couple of weeks Where: Will be available on retail shelves or directly from Microsoft What: 20 playable game demos for upcoming games for the Windows 95 platform Cost: $9.95 Contact: 1-800-519-8531 to order or The Game Sampler 2 Website at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/games/sampler
Real 3D Receives First R3D/100 Silicon
Real 3D, a Lockheed Martin Company, has received its first R3D/100 chips from fab. Although still in testing this chip is showing its capabilities by running the popular "Dome City" demo in real time. It was this same demo which gained Real 3D Byte Magazine's Best New Technology Award at Spring COMDEX in Atlanta. The R3D/100 is a high end fully textured OpenGL accelerator for the professional market. This chip is designed to satisfy the needs for real time 3D which are not being met by any chip on the market today. Real 3D will be showing this card and more at COMDEX.
Microsoft Licenses Interactive Music Technology
On Oct. 22, Microsoft announced that they had licensed Roland Corp's Sound Canvas technology for inclusion in the next DirectX API and ActiveX APIs (DirectMusic and ActiveMusic), Internet Explorer and the MSN. The technology includes a collection of Sound Canvas instruments, GS extensions to general MIDI and the Microsoft Synthesizer.
Roland: http://www.rolandus.com/and http://www.edirol.com/
MIPS Announces Multimedia Extensions
At the Microprocessor Forum MIPS announced a set of Application Specific Extensions to its core architecture. The multimedia instructions, MDMX, provide new signal processing functions, which it describes as more complete that Intel's MMX and Sun's VIS. Applications supported include: MPEG2 decode, Motion JPEG and desktop video conferencing. These extensions will first be available in the MIPS V series. Performance benchmarks will be released in approximately 2 months. The announcement, however, did not include schedules and this will come when MIPS announces its roadmap for future products by the end of the year. Support for 3D functions will be supported in the core logic of the MIPS V, and this emphasis reflects the ownership of MIPS by Silicon Graphics.
611.2 A Message to the Readers of WAVE by John Latta
WAVE has a following of 3,200 readers, however, we estimate that the actual readership approaches 10,000 based on its reposting on sites and being passed around. We continue to tune the content and style of WAVE and over the last several issues the readers should have noticed some changes. WAVE covers News, Views, Reviews and Events in the 3D and developing media industries. An area of recent emphasis are Views from key individuals. This issue includes a summary of WAVE's meeting with Eric Hautemont, President, Fractal Design. It is our intent to seek stories beyond the flood of press releases and bring information and news which is unique to WAVE. We will also be doing more reviews (very short) of products and books. The style of WAVE remains the same - short and to the point. As always your feedback, both positive and negative, is sought.
As readers you can help us by making sure we get press releases and company information either via e-mail (wave@fourthwave.com) or FAX (703)360-2311.
611.3 Macromedia: Extreme 3D by David Lohse
Sitting squarely in the mid-range of PC 3D modeling and animation products, Extreme 3D 1.0 was released in January of this year. It was an important entry into the market due to its developer, Macromedia, a long- standing front-runner in the desktop graphics markets with its heavy- hitters Freehand and Director (as well as its more recent push into the Internet market with Shockwave).
Under both Macromedia's reputation in the desktop graphics market, as well as through bundling with their other products, Macromedia claims a top spot in PC 3D authoring software. According to WAVE's contact with Rix Kramlich, the Senior Product Manager for 3D Products at Macromedia, "Between standalone, FreeHand Graphics Studio & Director Multimedia Studio bundles we have seeded the market with over 100K+ units." Although 100,000 units is an impressive figure, it should be taken in context: many of those units are through bundling deals with Macromedia's very popular graphics and editing packages, and it is likely that some of the copies of Extreme 3D are waiting to be used.
Extreme 3D 1.0 fits within middle of the mid-range of PC 3D modeling and animation products, with a price tag around $500, and competing with products such as Caligari's trueSpace2 and Byte by Byte's SoftF/X. Now, only 10 months after the release of version 1.0, they have announced the next generation product Extreme 3D 2.0. Along with several important new features, as well as tight integration with both Freehand and Director, Extreme 3D has been elevated into the upper tier of the mid-range market on the PC, brining it almost up to par with products such as NewTek's LightWave 3D. Lacking only integration with a video editing system (Macromedia's long-coming video editing product is still in development), Extreme 3D 2.0 stands poised to enter the production-quality modeling and animation arena.
Extreme 3D 2.0 offers a slew of new features. Primary among these are two new features, which according to Macromedia are unique in the industry: the Metaform Tool, which extends the metaballs tools found in other programs to allow the use of arbitrary blobs rather than being confined to spherical ones; and the Particle Tool, which allows any 3D shape to act as a particle emitter. Other features include VRML 1.0 and 2.0 support, extensibility through the MIX and MOA architectures, and hardware acceleration through Direct3D and QuickDraw 3D. Pricing has not been announced. Extreme 3D 2.0 is scheduled for release in November.
http://www.macromedia.com/software/extreme3d/quicktour/
611.4 Texture Libraries by Jonathan Sunberg
Textures, as bit map images, have many applications from backgrounds on Web pages to desktop screens on PCs to an emulation of real surfaces in 3D models. At 4th Wave, parent to Wave, we set out to find what texture resources are available on the Web and found 30 sites. The sites range from small collections of 6-12 textures, to large collections up to 600. GIF and JPEG are the most popular formats, but a few sites also offer TIFF, RLA, RGB, Targa, etc. Almost all of the libraries are free, but most do put disclaimers on their web pages to combat royalty-free use.
Although most sites offer textures that can be incorporated into 3D applications, only one site, 'Texture Library", is primarily 3D oriented. This site was built for use with Pov-Ray and offers a superb assortment of textures, all with descriptive titles that can be clicked, in order to view.
After speaking to 6 different texture web site managers, they each stated that their textures were meant for web page design, but have been taken into the field of 3D. Greg Schorno, of Texture Tiles explained how some of his wall textures (bricks, wood, etc.) and floor and landscape tiles were being used for a Doom style clone. These types of textures can already be seen in games like Quake (which uses texture tiles to create skin on its characters) and Virtual Worlds (which use texture for landscapes, walls, etc.).
The collections we found were quite diverse. Files ranged in pixel size from 51x44 to 1396x700 and in byte size from 1 kilobyte to 50 kilobytes. The ease of use in the various sites also ranged greatly. Some sites were found to be difficult, because of a lack of descriptions or previews. While others like the ones we point out on our web site offer easier navigation.
We've decided to go a step further, though, and offer a ranking of the Top 5 sites that we found offer the most selection with the best navigation capabilities:
1. BAX - Background: 118 Images that contain title descriptions and a color editing application which allows over 16 million possible color combinations for each image. They are also placed categorically by content type.
2. Texture Station: 391 images, contained in categories by color family. Very realistic textures. Easy to navigate.
3. Realm Graphics: 338 images placed in 12 categorical themes. 10 pictures per level offers easy navigation through the site.
4. Net User Web Art: 4 categories (clouds, textures, patterns, weird). Navigation easier due to thumbnail imagery previews.
5. Texture Tiles: 4 categories (small, medium, large, extra large tiles). Over 300 images. Somewhat slower navigation due to category by size, not by content.
For those with more interest we have links to all the sites at the 4th Wave web site. Try visiting:
http://www.fourthwave.com/textures/
611.5 Book Review: Cutting-Edge 3D Game Programming with C++ by David Lohse
The new book, "Cutting Edge 3D Game Programming with C++," by John De Goes, is a fairly complete learning guide and reference book for those hardy enough to attempt writing their own 3D engine. Regardless, Cutting Edge provides for an excellent background in 3D concepts and techniques that will be valuable for any 3D developer. The first few chapters of the book focus on fundamental 3D concepts such as coordinate systems, translations, transformations, etc., and provide a basic overview of the math behind 3D without going into too much detail.
Cutting Edge focus completely on the PC platform, with sections and code devoted to both DOS and Windows programming. With a focus on the actual mechanics behind 3D programming, Direct3D is not even mentioned, and only a brief excerpt explains the benefits of DirectDraw. Although the title of the book indicates that the content revolves around game programming, in fact it seems to provide more general knowledge in 3D programming, and would be a useful tool for anyone wishing to learn the basics of creating a real-time 3D engine for any use.
Only a few chapters focus on platform-specific programming issues, including a section on Windows programming and one on Windows 95. Instead, the book concentrates on many of the important topics involved in 3D, including topics ranging from clipping and backface culling to shading (flat through Phong) and texture mapping. More game-specific topics are also covered, including collision detection, polygon morphing, and sprites.
Cutting Edge 3D Game Programming with C++ is available now for $39.99 at retail bookstores or direct from Coriolis (602/483-0193).
611.6 Benchmarking Fires by John Latta
Our reporting on the Gemini 3D benchmarks generated a response, to say the least.
Evans and Sutherland Responds
Rick Maule Vice President and General Manager Desktop Graphics Evans & Sutherland
The graphics market has been traditionally divided into two arenas: design automation and like applications (for which OpenGL has emerged as the current standard API) and simulation and game applications (for which OpenGL has been seldom used). The reason is that the former typically uses large numbers of small polygons and the latter, small numbers of large polygons (an oversimplification to address this issue).
To address the design automation and OpenGL market, the E&S Freedom Series hardware renders large numbers of small polygons at a very high rate by utilizing the parallelism of the graphics processors. The gvf and gvr are simulation benchmarks performed by Gemini that use a small number of larger polygons, which does not take advantage of the Freedom Series parallelism. The Freedom Series is better suited for OpenGL applications which are more geometry-intensive.
When benchmark results are made public later this quarter, products based on the REALimage technology (demonstrated by Evans & Sutherland at SIGGRAPH) will combine the best of both these world's with performance metrics comparable to the traditional professional UNIX workstation products (such as SGI's High Impact) and the newest gaming boards (such as 3Dfx).
Real 3D Responds
The Real 3D Pro-1000 performance shown in the benchmarks is not fully representative of its performance. Since the design is based on a double frame buffer there is no need to have a frame rate above 60Hz. Thus, when a benchmark is based on updating at a faster rate than what the eye can see this has little meaning as a measure of performance, especially when Image Quality plays such an important role and is not discussed in these tests.
The impact of using features which dominate high quality image generators was not fully reflected in the benchmarks. For example, it has been Real 3D's experience that features such as: anti-aliasing, large databases, high depth complexity, special effects such as fog, microtexture, shading and translucency when combined will place a significant load on a system. The benchmarking puts little emphasis here. A more discernible test would use a dense area of database with a large model count and high fill rate. i.e. Any car can drive 60 mph down a straight level road, but throw in some curves, hills and bad weather and most of those cars will be forced to slow down.
Another important factor in evaluating the performance of systems is the variation in update rate as a function of the scene. The Pro-1000 maintains a 60Hz update rate in the hardware by using advanced load management algorithms. This is possible through the use of a proprietary parallel architecture which can handle very complex database culling structures. The load balancing of the geometry processing is also handled automatically in the hardware. This design limits the load on the host CPU to merely updating model positions where other architectures often load the CPU down with translations, culling and clipping. A further performance test would be to increase the number of models in the scene until the hardware being tested drops to a frame rate below 60Hz.
The Pro-1000 uses a patent pending S-Buffer method of anti-aliasing which provides the same image quality level as the "full scene" method associated with SGI. Although image quality is not something that can be readily quantified, by applying our patented tri-linear MIP-mapped texture, anti-aliasing, shading, fogging, illumination, and translucency to all the polygons, all the time, the Pro-1000 is able to produce an image of the highest quality with no impact on performance.
Gemini Responds
John Archdeacon stood by the benchmarks as reasonable tests of 3D performance. One area which could be made more evident - the 3Dfx cards used 16 bit color depth while the others were full 24 bit. In addition, there needs to be more education on the role and value of anti-aliasing. In spite of the pressures for an Image Quality measure his response is "If we knew how to measure it we would do it."
Gemini recently received the Power Storm 3D accelerator from DEC, Permedia and 500TX cards from 3DLabs and an O2 (new Indy replacement) from SGI. It is expected that benchmarking results will be reported by the end of November.
Reflecting the need to measure CPU utilization accurately as part of the benchmarks John sees a hole in Windows NT. In UNIX they can call system level function to get the CPU utilization but see no equivalent function in NT. If WAVE readers have suggestions you are encouraged to communicate with John directly at jarch@gemtech.com.
611.7 DEC's PowerStorm by David Lohse
The latest additions to DEC's PowerStorm line of accelerators came last month with the introduction of the 4D40T, 4D50T, and 4D60T. Each of these products, which are aimed at the Digital Unix and Windows NT workstation markets, are OpenGL-compliant, and according to DEC are designed for animation, vis-sim, scientific visualization and 3D GIS applications.
The cards, which are dual-PCI-based and sport SDRAM memory, offer an impressive feature list including:
Resolution: Up to 1600x1200 Buffering: Multi-buffering with 4 or 8 double- buffered overlay planes Z-buffer: 24- or 32-bit Frame buffer: 128 or 102 bpp Texture mapping: Up to 32 MB texture memory; bi-linear and trilinear interpolation; MIP-mapping
The performance, as cited by DEC:
-Up to 2.3 million 3D vectors/sec -Up to 1 million Gouraud shaded polygons/sec -Up to 30 million pixels/sec (tri-linear interpolated, MIP-mapped)
The pricing for the PowerStorm line delegates it to the high end of the market:
4D40T - $3,995 - 16 MB memory, 1280x1024 resolution, 24- bit frame and 24-bit Z-buffers 4D50T - $7,995 - 16 MB memory, 1280x1024 resolution, 24- bit frame and 24-bit Z-buffers 4D60T - $11,995 - 32 MB memory, 1600x1200 resolution, 24- bit frame and 32-bit Z-buffer
4 MB texture memory module - $595 16 MB texture memory module - $2,495 32 MB texture memory module - $4,995
http://www.dec.com/info/lists/key-graphics_WN.HTM
611.8 Company Profile - Fractal Design - Eric Hautemont, President by John Latta
WAVE visited with Eric Hautemont to gain Fractal's view on the professional tools market.
Fractal Design is focusing on suites, but in marked contrast to that taken in office suites and by Macromedia. Eric stated that a high degree of product integration is essential and graphics programs provide for a level of data integration not seen in other products. An implementation of this richness comes with their interchange file format which has not only RGB and Alpha but also includes an extensive geometry description. For example, it is possible to apply a visual depth-of-field filter to an image across various suite applications.
Fractal sees four parts to the suite: Drawing (Expression), Painting (Painter 4), 3D (Ray Dream Studio) and Image Manipulation (Adobe Photoshop). Eric believes just plugging any program in the suite bin is unacceptable and that each program must stand on its own merits in the professional community. Painter is an excellent example of a product which meets this criteria. Painter has come to dominate its own niche as the paint package of choice by professionals because of its focus on natural media. The company believes that Expression will reach that same position in the drawing tool market. In response to the observation that the drawing market is already dominated by Adobe Illustration and Macromedia Freehand, Eric states that these programs have gone away from the needs of professionals and are more production oriented. A retort is that "spell checkers have nothing to do with drawing."
It may seem as if Photoshop is misplaced here but Eric responds that Fractal has implemented the deepest file format integration for Photoshop of any professional program. They support layers, floaters, shapes, paths object channels and object tagging. Rather than build a suite with one component which is weak, as a competitor to Photoshop, Fractal has elected to provide for a rich integration with Photoshop to take maximum advantage of its strengths as part of the Fractal suite.
A key to the suite philosophy is that Fractal's professional programs must have creative expressiveness and that if we do the integration well customers will want to buy suites from us. Eric sees the suite concept going well beyond just the four components. Built on the rich file formats the 4 part suite can be enlarged and the first example is Detailer which lets one paint on 3D surfaces. It was hinted that Detailer is one of many products to come which integrate into Fractal's suite approach.
Fractal's view of the 3D product space is that there are three criteria for market success: market share, market share and market share. The time to gather market share is now. Although it may seem odd for a product which is street priced at $299 and with sidegrade offer of $199, that Fractal sees as it closest competitor 3D Studio and the company is even less concerned about the impact of 3D Studio MAX.
The 3D software market is a unique one compared to the other professional packages in the suite. Having a low cost version of the 3D software, i.e., Ray Dream Designer for $99, makes sense while a low cost painting or drawing program does not fit their market space. A key reason being the what Fractal calls the Sunday user or Hobbyist in 3D who will readily buy the low cost version. This is the fastest growing segment of the market and in a prior interview Eric indicated this was as large as 40% of their 3D sales.
Where does Eric see as the future of the market?
First, he sees a new from of media which is the aggregation of (in Apple terms) QuickTime VR; Real Time 3D and VRML 2.0; and 2D Texture Mapped Polygons. This will all happen in the next year. DVD plays a very important role in this market in that it is the only medium which can store all the data to create rich content. At the same time Eric asks the question - is a real time media engine (an accelerator for this content) necessary? Eric is not so sure.
His second observation is about the direction of technology. Eric noted from SIGGRAPH, especially in the last two years, a shift from 3D to exciting developments in 2D. Because 3D has become so competitive he feels that innovation, at least that which can be discerned from the publications, has come to a halt. An example, which fits the increasing role of 2D in a 3D space is Talisman. With this Microsoft has shown its ability to take a different approach and against conventional 3D wisdom.
Lastly, Eric expects that the Net will move to worlds (3D environments) and there will be major opportunities for those who create worlds. At the same time bandwidth will continue to be a major limitation. This means that worlds will not get downloaded but come from content on Hybrid DVD. With such local storage of the world the only requirements for communications are characters.
Some interesting statistics:
In the last quarter, Fractal showed a 20% growth in the Mac market (while most were down) and a 80% growth in the Windows market.
The installed base of purchased (not bundled) Ray Dream Studio and Ray Dream Designer is 100,000+.
It is estimated that there are 0.5m creative professionals and 5m hobbyists.
Fractal: http://www.fractal.com