***MultiGen Unveils NT Strategy
by Rob Glidden
MultiGen, the leading SGI real-time 3D tool company, this week took the
wraps off its plan to move to the NT platform. The unveiling took place
in a showy partner-studded extravaganza in SF introduced by a hooded
piano-player who turned out to be CEO Joe Fantuzzi (Encore! Encore!).
The news: GameGen II will be available on NT in September (an X-Motif
UI). Price: $7500, with $2500 each for ModelMaker and BSPMaker add-ons.
MultiGen has indicated that future pricing is undecided, but likely to
move lower. Sales will be through authorized MultiGen distributors and
VARs.
Featured partners included Mike Ryder of game developer SingleTrac and
Intel Sr VP Ron Whittier. Also attending, to show support, were 3Dfx,
Viewpoint, Evans & Sutherland, Lightscape, and Kinetix. Kinetix, at least
for now, sees MultiGen as a realtime authoring tool that is more
complementary than competitive to Max. Noticeably absent was Microsoft,
whose Direct3D could benefit from realtime authoring tools.
MultiGen's move to NT, though expected as a follow-on to last year's move
to NT by Softimage and other high-end 3D modelers, is nonetheless
significant as a potential bellwether shift of the traditional high-end
vis sim market away from SGI and towards NT.
However, MultiGen's success on SGI is linked to SGI's Performer, and on
the PC platform the company lacks a freely available playback tool like
Performer in which to load its OpenFlight database. MultiGen competitor
Coryphaeus's Bruce Sinclair asserted to WAVE that "you need an integrated
system".
Wave Issue 9603 7/19/96 Article 2-01