Wave Issue 9702 2/3/97 Article 8-01

***Company Profile - Superscape
by John Latta

WAVE visited the U.S. offices of Superscape and spoke to its Group
Chief Executive, John Chiplin. Superscape has long been a pioneer in
real time 3D software for the PC.

John began by observing that the 3D industry is "going nuts right now."
It has long championed real time 3D and this is finally emerging. What
used to be a hard sell for 3D is no more. Their contacts are "clued up
in terms of why 3D is important. The market has been responsive. The
company went public in the UK in April 1994 with a market
capitalization of only $15m and it is now $60m. The challenge still
lies ahead for the company to be profitable.

Originally, Superscape was positioned as a VR software firm but that is
changing. John describes it as a Real Time 3D company. John repeated
Mike Bevan's, quote from VR News, "VR is at the end of the beginning."
John describes that no one wants to be seen as a VR pioneer today - "it
is like cold coffee."

Superscape has 10 years experience in real time PC software. There are
100 employees, split 50/50 between the US and England. Just 2 years ago
only 1% of the income was from the U.S. and in the last financial
statement this rose to 53%. In effect, John described the transition in
process now is from an "English technology boutique to a English style
Anglo-American corporation" The company has moved its sales, marketing
and business development efforts to the U.S. and in the process will
transition to a US software company. Yet, the core software development
talent will remain in England. One reason is to retain its product
development team of 20 in England is the relatively low cost and staff
stability. John sees such stability as a critical advantage in the
rapidly moving 3D software industry. England's disadvantage, for a
publicly traded technology company, is the poor analytical coverage by
the financial markets. According to John, England lacks both investment
sophistication and a history in technology investment. The result is a
market far inferior to NASDAQ.

Superscape's markets are ranked with the U.S. first, followed closely
by Asia and lastly Europe

Superscape is now focused on the 3D Web. According to John a major
advantage of 3D on the Internet is that it provides a "bigger bang for
the byte." A compressed picture takes 100K bytes while an interactive
3D world takes that much or less. The reason is that the 3D worlds are
calculated on the fly, thus, it is ideally suited in the bandwidth
constrained Internet. The importance of this comes from a forecast by
Intel which John cites "...by the year 2000 80% of all the Internet
access will still be at 28.8K."

Superscape has a dual strategy in its support of 3D standards on the
Web. The company is committed to VRML, its software outputs VRML2.0
compliant files and they are a founding member of the consortium.
Superscape is also committed to their own file formats. John expects
that there will be a series of standards for 3D on the Web and that
ultimately the market will decide what standards prevail.

When asked about the applications for real time 3D, John is emphatic
that it is training and Web presence (3D sites). In working with
companies seeking to use this technology, Superscape finds that its
clients are not bothered by VRML - "...it is what works that counts."
Applications cited for the 3D Web include data visualization, training,
fault diagnostics, and machine operator training. The importance of 3D
on the Web is cited enthusiastically by John for its Virtual World Wide
Web effort (at vwww.com). This was launched in November as the host for
3D sites. It is currently receiving 1 m hits/week. The Superscape site
sustains 1m hits/month.

When asked about what role 3D acceleration will play John responded
that their software is written so that it is not dependent on
acceleration. Direct3D is supported but this is not required to
operate. It is their concern that to write software which is dependent
on acceleration will only limit their ability to reach the largest
possible market. As John stated "...our goal is small and fast."

Superscape takes the same approach to HMD (helmet mounted displays).
They support such peripherals but are not dependent on them to reach
the largest possible market.

When asked about their business model John described it in ABC terms: A
= Authoring, B = Browsing, C = Content. Thus, Superscape follows a
trend established in early multimedia where the tool companies also did
production and content development. Two years ago Superscape did only
11% of its business in contract development, it now does to 35% and
expects this to decline to 10% to 15% in the next 2 years. John stated,
"The key issue is that we must get our customers up to speed with the
technology so that they can be effective on their own."

John disclosed that it will be significantly broadening its product
line by SIGGRAPH. This includes a $500 semi professional authoring tool
and a consumer version at $50. Thus, what Superscape wants to offer is
a full set of tools for all segments of the market.