3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space
Published by 4th WAVE, Inc.
Issue #612 11/8/96
CONTENTS
This week at the Video Toaster User Expo '96, Intergraph gained a further foothold in the professional authoring market when they released a joint announcement with NewTek, in which it was revealed that future versions of LightWave 3D will incorporate Intergraph's RenderGL (see WAVE #609, 9/27/96) as a standard feature. RenderGL is layered on top of the OpenGL API and uses many of the OpenGL's functions, as well as offering more advanced options not present in OpenGL such as Phong shading, bump maps, procedural 3D textures and shadows. The announcement is not only an important step for the two companies, but also for the burgeoning PC market, which continues to encroach on the workstation market for professional 3D authoring.
http://www.intergraph.com and http://www.newtek.com
Microsoft has announced that Judgment Day II has been postponed from its original date of November 22-23, 1996 to April 1997. It will coincide with the Computer Game Developer Conference being held in Santa Clara, CA. No other information is available at this time.
On October 31, Hitachi America announced the SPHERIX 3D graphics sub- system for Windows NT (Intel and Alpha) systems. It is an external tower cabinet that can be configured with 1-4 rendering engines and 1-4 geometry engines. SPHERIX will be available in Q1 1997 through Hitachi's OEM channels (pricing not yet decided). The system has these specifications:
Performance: Up to 3M polygons/sec Up to 320M pixels/sec Features: Trilinear texture filtering, perspective correction, alpha blending, fog, up to 64 light sources API: OpenGL Output: Up to HDTV non-interlaced Target: Professional NT workstation market, including animators, mechanical designers and simulation developers
Derwent & Microsoft Patents Technology
Derwent, one of the world's leading patent information providers, announced an agreement with Microsoft to develop international patent database solutions based on technology using Windows NT. This technology will allow patent searchers to access a full patent database including text and images through client-server technology. Products are expected to be announced in Dec. of 1996.
http://www.derwent.com and http://www.microsoft.com
On October 14, Trident announced their latest entry to the 3D accelerator market, the 3DImage. With capabilities including not only 3D (with an on- chip setup engine), but DVD, TV-out, 2D graphics and video acceleration, the chip is being touted as more of a "media processor" rather than as just a 3D accelerator. The 3D Image 975 will sell for $25 in volume and the 3DImage 975DVD will sell for $32.50 in volume, beginning production in Q1 1997. Here's the performance parameters:
Performance: Up to 1.2M polygons/sec Up to 60M pixels/sec 3D: Bi-linear filtered texture mapping, OpenGL support, Gouraud shading DVD: (3DImage 975DVD only) full-motion 30 fps w/ AC-3 Surround Sound, works with MMX Video: MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, TrueVideo image enhancement hardware 2D: 24-bit packed True Color acceleration, 265 ROPS Resolutions: Up to 1600x1200 x256
The prototype R3D/100 chipset from Real 3D will be first shown at COMDEX Fall '96. Real 3D is currently tuning its OpenGL installable client driver for Windows NT. To support the R3D/100, Real 3D and Chips and Technologies have reached an agreement were Chips and Technologies will sell and distribute the chipset. Chips and Technologies will be responsible for sales and first tier customer support, through its 120 person worldwide sales network, and Real 3D will be responsible for sales promotion activities and second tier technical support. Real 3D will retain responsibility for sales of the R3D/100 to other markets, such as traditional workstation OEMS, while Chips will focus on sales in the PC marketplace including PC manufacturers, PC graphics card vendors, and PC OEM's.
612.2 Company Profile - Computer Graphics Systems Development Corp. by John Latta
Often lost in the rush to bring 3D to the PC is the fact that there has been and still exists an industrial base in real time 3D technology. Originally coming from the flight simulator industry, largely funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, this base has moved to distributed simulation, of which SIMNET was an early DoD initiative. However, moving the expertise and technology as a defense contractor to commercial markets, the so called defense conversion, is difficult to do. Computer Graphics Systems Development Corp.(CGSD), headed by Roy Latham, was founded in 1990 and now has 15 full time employees. It straddles both the DoD and commercial worlds with two business areas: engineering services for the design and integration of simulation systems and data base development.
CGSD is near completion of a virtual cockpit with TOPIT (tm) technology (Touched Objects Positioned in Time). The user wears a HMD (helmet mounted display) with a stereo view of a cockpit and out-of-window imagery generated by an SGI computer. The objective of the system is to generate a cockpit completely with software while the user has accurate tactile feedback of the controls. To do this a "payload" made up of a panel of various types of controls, including switches and knobs, is moved about a 3' by 4' surface. The system accurately tracks the position of the user's hand using both magnetic tracking and innovative CGSD technology using an inertial platform strapped to the back of the hand. The result is accurate and real time position information on the hand.
As the hand reaches a particular position in virtual space the panel of switches and knobs slew to the correct position so that the fingers grasp the correct type of control. The positions of the respective controls are also set to the last setting based on the respective location in virtual space. The technical details behind this system are likewise impressive: the 40 lb. panel can move up to 4G's and 100'/sec and with a positional accuracy of .01". Three computers are required: SGI RE2, Pentium based PC for tracking and a VME based servo control computer. The system was designed and implemented under a $600K contract, of which $300K was required for just the hardware. CGSD expects to commercialize this technology and hopes to have a demonstration system in time for SIGGRAPH 1997.
One outgrowth of its work in developing data bases for visual simulation are two commercial products, the Real Texture Tools and Library. High quality texture maps are critical to creating realistic looking images in real time, and the impact of this was very evident at the SIGGRAPH Digital Bayou Savage. CGSD's tools are a collection of 6 Adobe Photoshop plugins for Windows which take photographs and modify them for use as textures. Some of the functions include: AutoTile to make images tilable, Perspective to perspective correct images for tiling, color correction to create color correct images. The tools cost $495.
The Real Texture library is a CD-ROM with 1,300 high resolution images for use as texture patterns. Images include: vegetation, obstacles, camouflage, symbols, transportation, architecture, explosions and natural surfaces. Given the unique requirements for collection, close to the ground aerial photography, many of these were collected using kite aerial photography. The complete CD-ROM sells for $2,395. Samples of the textures are on the home page.
WAVE spoke with Roy Latham to get his views of the industry. He feels 3D critically needs applications beyond games. Part of the task of going beyond entertainment will require the construction of rich visual data bases. This is a difficult task which much of the today's 3D industry has ignored. Significant investments will be required to build useful data bases. Roy also feels that Christmas 1996 will not be a 3D Christmas - it is heading for a repeat of Christmas 1995. Location Based Entertainment is a business in which he is optimistic. There are a few examples of companies making money including the Magic Edge facility, Virtual World Entertainment (VWE) and he cited signs that Walt Disney appears to be entering this business. HMD's seem to always be 2 - 3 years away but Roy is hopeful that the needed 1024 X 768 color HMD is approximately 2 years away. However, at a projected price of $20K it will only be present in high end systems.
Check out our links to CD-ROM texture libraries at http://www.fourthwave.com/textures/cd-rom.htm
612.3 Dynamic Pictures' Oxygen by David Lohse
This week, Dynamic Pictures announced several new products in their high- end Oxygen line of 3D accelerators, following the introduction in August of the Oxygen 102. The Oxygen 202 and Oxygen 402, which deliver roughly two times and four times (respectively) the performance of the Oxygen 102, round out the product family based on Dynamic Pictures' Oxygen chip.
Aimed at the CAD/CAM, 3D design and animation markets, the accelerators support both the OpenGL and Heidi APIs, and are targeted at applications such as SolidWorks, Pro/ENGINEER, and I-DEAS (Oxygen 202); 3D Studio MAX, SoftImage and LightWave 3D (Oxygen 402).
The new Oxygen cards achieve their performance by utilizing multiple Oxygen chips in parallel: the Oxygen 202 uses two Oxygen chips, while the Oxygen 402 uses four. The Oxygen 202 is equipped with 16 MB SDRAM, with a 24-bit double-buffered frame buffer and a 24-bit Z-buffer for a target resolution of 1280x1024, while the Oxygen 402 uses 32 MB SDRAM for resolutions up to 1600x1200.
| Card | # of Oxygen chips | Memory (SDRAM) | Price | Availability |
| Oxygen 102 | 1 | 8 MB | $1,495 | Now |
| Oxygen 202 | 2 | 16 MB | $2,795 | December 1996 |
| Oxygen 402 | 4 | 32 MB | $4,995 | Q1 1997 |
http://www.dypic.com or (408) 327-9000
612.4 Digital Video on the PC and Pinnacle by David Lohse
In the past, all professional digital video editing was done on either a workstation or a Mac, but as with most applications, the PC is quickly gaining ground as the platform of choice. Here at WAVE we spoke with Amir Majidimehr, Vice President, Product Engineering at Pinnacle Systems Inc., a leader in Macintosh and PC DVE products, in order to asses his views on the PC VE market.
Founded in 1986, Pinnacle has been a leader in the 3D digital effects market. They entered the desktop market in 1994 with the introduction of Alladin, a stand-alone product that provides video switching, real-time digital video effects, character generation, electronic paint, 3D modeling, animation, and still storage, starting at $10,000, and has been used in conjunction with a variety of software suites, including Pinnacle's close ties with Avid on the Macintosh. This last April at NAB '96, Pinnacle introduced the Genie line of PCI-based VE products, making an important push into the PC market.
While Pinnacle remains "100% committed to the Mac," they also strongly believe in the PC. According to Mr. Majidimehr, although they still see the Mac as a good VE platform, they see the market as inevitably going to Windows, and are planning their product line in accordance: "... the momentum of Wintel is so strong, we must go to Windows." They also have no doubts as to the shift away from the workstation to the PC; while Mr. Majidimehr feels that the workstation market (re: SGI) will hold on to the high end of the compositing and editing market, at least for now, the PC is destined to dominate all other segments of the market.
Although he sees the PC as the future of professional VE, Mr. Majidimehr feels that the PC still has several areas in which it is lacking. Primary among these is the current standard PCI bus, which he feels is the PC's largest limiting factor for use as a VE platform: the PCI bandwidth is not adequate for VE applications, and the 3 or 4 PCI slots available on most PCs are not enough to support all of the auxiliary functionality required. Another area in need of improvement is the current state of 3D acceleration available. Most 3D companies are still focusing almost entirely on the gaming market, with an emphasis on high-speed 3D over high-quality: "VE needs higher quality - outside of pure polygon rendering, [current 3D accelerators] just fall apart," especially with respect to all-important texture mapping.
Pinnacle also strongly believes in the importance of standards. Although they continue to back the OpenDML standard led by Matrox, they see the future as being Microsoft's ActiveMovie technology. Although ActiveMovie has in the past been used primarily for movie playback, a new push by Microsoft's ActiveMovie team is attempting to bring the technology up to the level required by professional VE, and Mr. Majidimehr feels that it will be a fully viable solution by mid-1997, with professional-level ActiveMovie-based products beginning to appear at next year's NAB.
Although Pinnacle won't be attending COMDEX this year (they plan to next year), check out their Web site for information on their Genie, Alladin and FlashFile product lines for digital video and 3D editing and compositing.
612.5 Online World by Jonathan Sunberg
In keeping with our coverage of events in new media WAVE attended the ONLINE WORLD Conference & Expo in Washington, DC from Oct. 28-30. This is the premier show for information based products. Among the numerous new products announced, 9 stood out as industry newsmakers:
EBSCO Publishing has announced Collectanea, an easy-to-use, inexpensive Web-based access to a large pool of information via the Internet or corporate intranets.
The collection is divided into Collectanea Corporate and Collectanea Consumer. Corporate contains articles from 1,000 publications hyperlinked to extensive information on more than 30,000 companies, and can be searched by topic, company name, or plain-English queries. Corporate contains 50 special interest areas and costs $1 per user per year (a $10,000 minimum). Consumer is $5.95 per month for unlimited searching or $49.95 per year. This collection has six reference collections, which include over 1,600 puclications and over 380 full text journals and magazines.
Knight-Ridder Information, Inc. the largest information provider, has created a product for the web. The announcement of Dialog Web shows the impact the Internet has had on the traditional online industry by making Dialog searchable on the Web. Dialog Web, expected to be available in Feb. of 1997, will have full HTML output and copyright compliancy for e- mail redistribution, it will also contain an easy to use database directory with hyperlinks to complete bluesheets.
Dialog Web will be available for the same price as Dialog and has an automatic log-off mechanism after 10 minutes of inactivity in order to prevent any unncessary charges. Current customers will be able to use their existing password, while new customers only need to fill out a simple online Service Agreement.
Dow Jones has continued its focus on the business market with DowVision. This web based service provides customized company folders and portfolios (up to 100 stocks), major newspapers, and personalized folders. It is the exclusive electronic source for the combined current day's editions of the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Financial Times, as well as the Dow Jones News Service and Barron's. Consistent with DowVision's current Intranet pricing model, Dow Vision offers discounts as the number of users grows. For as little as $2 per seat, per month, corporate customers can receive business news, info. and quotes directly on their desktops.
Amulet has introduced InfoWizard. The online research agent analyzes data from authoritative industry sources and the Web, and delivers personalized, pre-formatted reports containing 20-30 documents for $5- $10.
This service eliminates downtime by doing the search work for you. By going to the InfoWizard page one can inquire about a search, then let the software, located back at Amulet's headquarters, gather and sort through data from thousands of authoritative sources including on-line databases, premier publications, news wires, and WWW sites. All the request processing is done offline, which allows the user to work on other tasks, while waiting for the report. In about 20 to 30 minutes a message is then e-mailed notifying the user that the report is ready. Then for $5 to $15 you can purchase the report, which is ranked in relevance and organized in subsections directly on your PC.
Information Access Company's IAC InSite is a family of daily-updated, flat-fee services offering access via the Web to 2500 of the world's leading trade and business publications, industry newsletters, and popular magazines.
The site covers 65 industries and contains over 7 million articles. This release has added about 30,000 international company directory records to the 170,000 US directory records already available. The subscription price is based on a flat fee per seat. For consumer use it is $16.95 per seat and for business use it is $39.95 per seat.
LEXIS-NEXIS announced improvements to its Market Research Library. To promote these enhancements, the company has waived the $6 to $9 search fee in the Market Research Library (MKTRES) through Dec. 31, 1996. The library allows customers to purchase report information online by subsection, eliminating the cost of buying an entire report. Users may browse the entire table of contents and study the methodology of most reports, as well as the actual tables, minus the data, before purchasing the information. The subsections are $18 each, with a table it is $20.
The library also gives users a description and table of contents of over 1500 articles not in Nexis, which may be obtained elsewhere.
http://www.lexis-nexis.com/marketing/
Paracel's second major release in the past six months, is the first Web- based enterprise wide news service which incorporates data fusion, called Paracel TODAY. The product contains four unique features:
Data Fusion - hotlinks to company information on a highly customizable platform.
PT Alert! - a non-intrusive floating ticker bar which headlines news and business intelligence right on your desktop throughout the day.
Sources- 2500 national and international business and trade sources from Dow Vision
Intuitive User Interface - The Front Page, Today's News, and A Week in Review, are all customizable and easy to use.
612.5.1 Major Information Providers by Jonathan Sunberg
At Online World we did a short survey of the major information providers. We found that although all of their databases are quite large, Dialog leads with 7 terabytes of information. Lexis-Nexis has the second largest database with 4.5 terabytes of information. Dow Jones decided it was better not to divulge this information, making us think that they lag a good distance behind the first two.
Provider Size Documents Growth
Dialog 7t-bytes 4,000(FT) 40%/year 14Mill.(CP)
Lexis-Nexis 4.5t-bytes 11,000(FT) 30%/year 1 Billion(TD)
Dow-Jones * 60 Million(FT) 23%/year
(FT) Full Text Articles (CP) Company Profiles (TD) Total Documents * Not Available
This table shows that each provider has strength in different areas. Dialog's strength is in its database of over 14 million companies. Lexis- Nexis has the most documents of the three providers, with over 1 billion. But Dow Jones has the most full text articles, with over 60 million.
612.5.2 15th Annual Information Authorship Award by Jonathan Sunberg
The Information Authorship Awards recently presented at Online World include the following:
Ralph Protsik won for Best Article in a CD-ROM professional magazine, for "How Book Publishers are Staffing for Multimedia" in July, 1995 issue.
Judith A. Copler won for Best Column appearing in a ONLINE, DATABASE, or CD-ROM Professional magazine, for her column, "Hardcopy" in DATABASE magazine.
Andrew Levinson won for Best Article in a DATABASE or ONLINE Professional Magazine, for "Consumer Online Services Making the Transition from Computer Hobby to Serious Business" in July/August, 1995 ONLINE.
612.6 Living Worlds by David Lohse
On October 31 at the "Earth to Avatars" conference, a consortium of leading VRML and Internet companies announced Living Worlds, an avatar standardization initiative for VRML 2.0. The proposed spec, which was developed by ParaGraph International, Sony Corp. and Black Sun Interactive, has been endorsed by more than 30 companies including:
3Name3D, 3D Labs, Acuris, 3rd Dimension Technologies, Aereal Inc., Apple Computer, Archite X, Axial Systems, Barnegat Communications, Black Sun Interactive, Boxoffice.net, Chaco Communications, CyberPuppy, CyberTown, Extempo Systems, Fijitsu Laboratories LTD, First Virtual Holdings, GrR HomeNet, IBM, Integrated Data Systems, Intel Corporation, Intervista, Media Authoring Center - George Mason University, Netcarta, Neuromedia Studios, Onlive Technologies, Oracle Corp., OZ Interactive, Paragraph International, PeopleWorld, Planet 9 Studios, Sense 8, Silicon Graphics, Sony Corporation, Velocity,vivid studios, VREAM, VRMLSite, Worlds Inc.
By offering a standard for avatars, the proposal would allow users to visit any VRML 2.0 world using the same avatar, an important advancement for the widespread use of online 3D worlds as well as giving VRML another advantage as the open standard of choice. Bernie Roehl, a co-author of the spec and a leading contributor in the VRML community best described to us how the technology will operate:
"The idea is that Living Worlds will provide a level playing field, and that companies will compete by providing multi-user technologies (or 'MUTechs') that run underneath the Living Worlds interface.
The companies that collaborated on the initial proposal all have MUTechs, and some of them are making them public (notably Black Sun's CyberSockets). The Open Community proposal (formerly called Universal Worlds) is another public MUTech specification. CyberSockets and Open Community are roughly analogous to each other, in that each provides a multi-user API over top of the underlying network (e.g. TCP/IP) infrastructure."
The Living Worlds proposal, which is now open to public review (although the adoption process has not yet been decided), can be found at: http://www.livingworlds.com
612.7 Dave & Buster's - Bringing High Tech Entertainment to the Public by Malisa Burkeen and Jonathan Sunberg
Dave and Buster's is a unique entertainment center concept which combines food, beverage and entertainment. While Sega and many other companies seek to define and implement new out-of-home entertainment venues, Dave and Buster's has delivered it at selected locations in the U.S. for 14 years. Headquartered in Dallas, it opened its first complex in Dallas in December 1982 and next, also in Dallas in January 1988. Houston opened in 1991, while Atlanta, one of the most successful, opened in October 1992. The largest location is in Philadelphia (70,000 sq. ft.) which opened February 1994. In 1995 the company opened two facilities in Chicago (Addison, IL and downtown) and will open in November a facility in the Washington, D.C. area. The company is opening sites at the rate of 3 per year, with new sites scheduled for Ontario, CA, Rockland County, NY, Denver and potential overseas sites in London, Australia, South America, and Mexico. The company went public on 5 October 1995 when it raised $27m. The company recently reported its 2nd quarter revenues which rose 78% over the previous quarter to $21.1m. 45% of its income in the quarter came from Amusement and other revenue. Dave and Buster's has and continues to lead in high technology entertainment - it was one of the first sites to provide public VR with the Virtuality equipment. WAVE had an opportunity to meet up with Gary Duffy, Corporate Director of Amusements, at the soon to be opened location in North Bethesda, MD in the White Flint Mall. Given that this is the latest location and one which will again bring cutting edge 3D based games to the public WAVE sought Dave and Buster's views and plans. The White Flint location will be filled with simulators and top of the line video games, including: simulated golf, an Iwerks theater, Tokyo Wars (in a specially themed area) and Daytona Special. This location will have the new Virtua Fighter III (as reported in WAVE 609). When asked if he really thought they would recoup their investment on the Virtua Fighter III, all we got was a chuckle. It seems Dave & Buster's is faced with a lack of alternatives to the Sega 3D image generation technology (the Lockheed-Martin Model 3 system). There is nothing else which can compete with it right now, even at the outrageous price Sega is asking. Dave & Buster's has updated their arcade entertainment area in the White Flint location. They will be using a debit card system rather than tokens. This system was introduced in Dallas about six weeks ago, but to their surprise there was no drop in entertainment spending. Mr. Duffy attributed this to the fact that because their facility is more adult oriented and adults are accustomed to ATM and debit cards, there was no significant difference between tokens and debit cards. A benefit to Dave & Buster's is lower labor costs which eliminates the need to handle tokens. In addition, there is a new tracking system which keeps track of all the action on every machine. This will allow them to come up with special deals to encourage play during slow times or on slow machines.
WAVE has observed a number of the Dave and Buster's locations and it is unique in its ability to provide a safe and wholesome atmosphere for adults. A typical facility includes pocket billiard, shuffleboard, interactive simulators, card games (not gambling), televised sporting, multiple bars and dining areas. The arcade amusement area is an example of what makes them different - women are as equally attracted to play as men. Although Gary does not have an explanation for this, he felt that a "comfort factor," could be one reason. Dave & Buster's has created a unique, safe, and attractive environment. The arcade is not over crowded or too dark, this helps create the "comfort factor." In addition, even in the arcade areas a food area is typically embedded into the facility which also creates a more relaxed atmosphere. Whatever it is, Dave & Buster's has developed a sophisticated facility that screams fun.
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.