***Opinion: 3D Graphics and Its Mythical Killer Application
by Brian Hook
Since the advent of the personal computer industry, analysts and
historians have pointed to the numerous killer applications that have
transformed platforms such as the Apple II, IBM PC, and Apple Macintosh
from novelties of questionable value into massive successes, often in a
very short time span. Because of this analysts have a natural tendency
now to look at emerging technologies and attempt to identify their
killer apps, the fundamental assumption being that new technologies
MUST have a killer application to champion their merits and thus
irresistibly force their acceptance in the market place.
So what exactly is a killer application? Since the term is not
technical the answer largely depends on who you ask, but in general
most people agree that a killer app is a single easily identifiable
technology (not necessarily just a program) that makes another
technology (CPU, operating system, computer architecture) so useful
that it cannot be ignored, or at the very least makes a platform useful
enough that it survives when the market makes a platform compelling
enough to some target demographic that it manages to survive far longer
than the market would otherwise allow without that killer app.
A famous and oft-cited example from history is Visicalc for the
original Apple. We've all heard the legendary stories today of
businessmen walking into local computer stores "to buy that VisiCalc
thing" and finding out they needed an Apple to run it, so they bought
that too. The appeal of Visicalc was so great that it was responsible
for the widespread success of the platform that happened to run it.
Similar, albeit less dramatic, examples exist -- Aldus PageMaker for
the Macintosh (some may say the Macintosh GUI was the killer app, but
without applications a GUI is pretty useless), Lotus 1-2-3 or
WordPerfect (take your pick) for the IBM PC, the World Wide Web and
high-speed modems, and WordStar for the CP/M OS. From a slightly
different perspective it is highly likely that Microsoft Windows made
the mouse a requirement for all new computers.
It's easy to believe that to qualify as a killer application that a
program or technology must transform a particular platform into a
household appliance overnight. However, this isn't necessarily true --
many times a killer application is what allows a platform to survive
far longer than what the market would have normally allowed. The
development tools for NextStep allowed it to attain immense popularity
in various vertical market industries such as the financial sector.
The built-in MIDI capability made the Atari ST stay afloat in the face
of an arguably vastly superior competitor, the Commodore Amiga.
We've established a mostly single-ended dependency for killer
applications -- without Microsoft Windows, the mouse would not have
likely achieved acceptance so rapidly. The same can be said for
Visicalc and the Apple. But the relationship between a burgeoning
technology and its killer application is often, but not always,
symbiotic. To be viable, Microsoft Windows needed the mouse almost as
much as the mouse needed Microsoft Windows.
In some cases the relationship can be entirely symbiotic and no clear
distinction between killer app and emerging technology can be made.
Which was more important to the other -- Microsoft Windows or the
Windows graphics accelerator? Without Windows it's obvious that the 2D
graphics accelerator would have questionable value (although 2D
accelerator chips from Texas Instrument did, in fact, exist before
Windows 3.x), but would Windows be as popular today if it did not have
the dramatic, some would say ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED, performance boost
that a 2D accelerator provides?
Finally, we have situations where an emerging technology succeeds
without a single killer application. There were no specific killer
applications for the 3.5" floppy disk, hard drive, CD-ROM drive,
Creative SoundBlaster, or the LAN. These were all evolutionary
technologies -- the 3.5" floppy held more data and more robustly than
the 5.25" floppy; the hard drive was fast, big, and convenient; the CD-
ROM was a better (and cheaper!) way of distributing large amounts of
data; the SoundBlaster sounded better than a PC speaker; and networking
just makes sense -- it's just much more convenient than throwing floppy
discs around an office.
The point of all this is that many new technologies, while new and
interesting, are NOT necessarily so radical or costly that they must
have a champion in order to become successful. Or, as in the case of
the CD-ROM, they are so obviously a part of the future that they are
simply absorbed into the mainstream of computing quietly and without
fanfare, just like new CPUs and larger displays. This seems to be
common sense, yet we have many industry analysts lose sight of this and
see each new technology in light of its as-yet-unknown killer
application.
And this is the case with 3D computer graphics. It's obvious that 3D
graphics, and by association 3D graphics acceleration, has its place in
computing. It's useful for many different types of applications,
including CAD/CAM, modeling and animation, home design, education, and,
most importantly, games. No *single* application is going to make 3D
graphics acceleration a part of everyday life -- THIS IS GOING TO
HAPPEN ANYWAY.
The fact of the matter is that 3D graphics is an evolutionary step in
computing, not a revolutionary new technology. The world of computing
has simply been waiting for the cost to come down so that everyone can
have fast and pretty 3D graphics on their desktop.
In our eagerness to identify new killer applications for each new
technology that emerges we lose track of the fact that new technologies
are often just necessary or desirable for computing. To truly qualify
as "killer" an application or technology must save AN OTHERWISE DOOMED
piece of technology from drifting into obscurity or obsolescence. If
you can look at a technological advance and point out half a dozen or
more "killer apps" for it, in all likelihood that technology doesn't
have a single killer app -- because it never NEEDED a killer app.
So while we sit around waiting for a killer application for 3D
graphics, fast 3D graphics is just going to become a part of day-to-day
computing. Then one day we'll realize that 3D graphics is just a part
of computing, and historians will try and figure out what its killer
app was. And no matter what they say, they'll be wrong, because 3D
graphics will never have a killer app.
Sometimes a new technology just makes sense.
But as Dennis Miller says -- that's just my opinion and I could be
wrong.
Brian Hook is a 3D software and hardware consulting engineer
specializing in real-time 3D graphics programming, training, and
documentation. He is also a contributing editor for Game Developer
magazine, the author of a book on programming 3D graphics for the PC,
and writes the occasional article for The Wave Report in his copious
spare time. He can be reached at http://www.wksoftware.com or
bwh@wksoftware.com.
Wave Issue 9707 4/14/97 Article 3-01