***QuickNews
Virtus Announces ConceptCAD
[May 7]
At Intel's launch of the Pentium(r) II ConceptCAD was shown as a rapid 3D
prototyping and presentation tool for architects. The product provides
high quality, full-screen, real-time "walk throughs" to support rapid 3D
prototyping and output for architects and design professionals.
www.virtus.com
3Dlabs Unveils Next Generation High End Chip - GLINT MX
[May 7]
3Dlabs raised the bar in the professional 3D accelerator market with
GLINT MX. Building on hardware and software compatibility with the 500TX
it has also moved to fully support AGP. The chip is scalable and will
support up to eight GLINT MX processors. A dual GLINT MX board can
display up to 2 million visible polygons per second and provides a
texturing rate of up to 55 million pixels per second. Up to 70Mbytes of
texture and frame buffer memory may be used of either VRAM or EDO RAM.
Resolutions of 1600x1200 can be supported when 16Mbytes of frame buffer
memory are used. This enables 32 bit true-color, double-buffered displays
with true per-pixel mip-mapping and full tri-linear filtering. In
addition, the chip supports HDTV at 1920 pixels horizontal resolution.
GLINT MX supports OpenGL 1.1 in hardware, including the new texturing
modes. Viewperf results using a single GLINT MX when measured on a 266MHz
Pentium II with 32Mbytes of system memory were 29.21 for CDRS-03, 7.65
for Advanced Visualizer and 6.39 for Data Explorer. Driver support
includes: an OpenGL Installable Client Driver and Heidi for Windows NT
3.51, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95 and Direct 3D for Windows 95. Drivers
for Windows NT 5.0 and Memphis drivers are under development. Used with
GLINT Gamma 3Dlabs sees that GLINT MX will be high performance solution
for AGP systems. 3Dlabs has improved the 2D engine with faster blits, 2D
fill rates and advanced blit functionality. Boards and systems using
GLINT MX will ship in volume H2 1997.
Design wins were simultaneously announced with AccelGraphics, Canopus
Corporation, Diamond Multimedia, ELSA, Omnicomp Graphics Corporation,
Radius and Symmetric (an STB Company) and system vendors such as Dell,
Digital Equipment Corporation, NeTpower and TriStar.
www.3dlabs.com
Intergraph - Attacking the SGI Octane Market
Using its CDRS and DRV-04 benchmark results, which it claimed showed near
parity with SGI's Octane/SI system, Intergraph claimed that it could ship
4 systems for the price of SGI's one. Its new TDZ(TM) 3D Graphics
Workstation models powered by Intel's 266 MHz Pentium II processors are
able to achieve a CDRS composite score of 34.68 with an overall
performance increase of 25% to 50% over previous generation TDZs. The
entry level pricing is $6,995.
Intergraph also announced a new line of personal workstations. The TDZ-
320 with a 200 MHz Pentium Pro processor starts at $6,995; the TDZ-325
with a 266 MHz Pentium II processor starts at $8,395; the TDZ-425 with
dual 266 MHz Pentium II processors starts at $9,995; and the TDZ-610 with
quad 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors starts at $21,600. All systems
include RealiZm 3D graphics, 32-512 MB of memory (128 MB-1 GB in TDZ-
610), and a 2, 4, or 9 GB disk, monitors optional. All configurations
come with Windows NT preloaded.
www.intergraph.com/ics
Xing Technology Releases new MPEG Encoder Software
[May 6]
Xing Technology Corporation released XingMPEG•Encoder2 which has been
optimized for Intel's MMX. The company claims that it is 2X as fast as
non-MMX implementations. The software will also support low-bit rate
stream encoding. Rates of 45 seconds to encode 1 minute of video are
claimed in this application.
XingMPEG•Encoder2 is available for a limited time for $89.
www.xingtech.com/.
Dynamic Pictures Products to be Distributed in Japan by Nissho
Electronics
Dynamic Pictures, Inc. announced that Nissho Electronics will be the
exclusive distributor for Oxygen(TM) 3D graphics acceleration technology
in Japan. In addition, Nissho Electronics has made an undisclosed equity
investment in Dynamic Pictures.
www.dynamicpictures.com
Kinetix Unveils 3D Studio VIZ
[May 5]
Kintex has introduced 3D Studio VIZ, a new design visualization product.
Designed to be an easy-to-use all-inclusive package, 3D Studio VIZ is
targeted at the professional design market, including architecture and
automotive. Based on the 3D Studio MAX modeling and animation program, 3D
Studio VIZ has replaced most of the animation and special effects
features with capabilities developed for design visualization. It still
uses the 3D Studio plug-in architecture and delivers a host of new
features, as well as offering full compatibility with the AutoCAD r14
file format. 3D Studio VIZ is priced at $1,995 ($1,495 for users that
purchase AutoCAD r14) and will be available in May.
www.ktx.com
MetaTools and Fractal - Shareholder Meeting on Merger
[April 28]
MetaTools Inc. and Fractal Design Corp. have announced that a shareholder
meeting will be held on May 29. The meeting will focus on the proposed
merger between the two companies, after which the combined corporation
will be known as MetaCreations Corp.
www.metatools.com
www.fractal.com
Computer Associates Gains Stake in 3NAME3D
[April 30]
CA has announced that they have gained an equity stake in the model
production company 3NAME3D. 3NAME3D's capabilities, which have been
utilized by major film and television studios, will be used for CA's
development efforts in their Unicenter TNG (The Next Generation) project.
Unicenter TNG is an enterprise management tool for TCP/IP, SNA, IPX/SPX
and DECnet networks as well as 40 different computing platforms. The
agreement brings 3NAME3D to the forefront of 3D business-oriented
applications. Sandeep Divekar, the President and CEO of 3DNAME3D, told
WAVE that he feels the marriage of 3D and business applications is
important for several reasons. "The use of 3D in business applications is
endless - it can be used to help visualize the interrelations of the
complex international economies, for example." He also feels that the
market for 3D business applications is potentially much larger than the
entertainment and military markets.
www.ywd.com
www.ca.com
$5000 Benchmark Contest from SPEC
The Standard Performance Evaluation Committee (SPEC) has announced the
SPEC CPU98 Benchmark Search Program, which is designed to encourage and
recognize achievements of the academic and industrial community in
providing and developing application code and datasets that could be used
as components of the next revision of the SPEC CPU benchmark suites. They
are taking submissions from the public, and for each step of the SPEC
process that a submission passes, SPEC will compensate the program
submitter. A submission that passes all of the steps and is included in
the next SPEC CPU benchmark suite will, overall, receive $5000 and a
license for the released benchmark suite. For more details see:
www.specbench.org/osg/cpu98/search.html
Electric Café Announces ModelShop VR
Electric Café, Inc., a multimedia startup, announced ModelShop VR for
Power Macintosh to create 3D content for the Internet. Features included:
modeling which includes nine shape tools, lathes, cross-sections, and
Boolean subtraction, TrueType and PostScript 3D text; 3D shape libraries;
VRML 1.0 and VRML 2.0 support; WWW bookmark management, so that shapes
can be linked to other resources on the WWW and that URL links can be
dragged directly onto 3D shapes from Netscape Navigator and Adobe
PageMill; QuickDraw 3D plug-in renderers and hardware acceleration.
Public betas of ModelShop VR will be available on Electric Café's WWW
site.
Users who need advanced modeling, rendering, and animation power can
upgrade to ModelShop 3.0, which will also be released this summer. Since
ModelShop 3.0 and MODELSHOP VR share a common file format, both programs
can open the same 3D model. The upgrade price from ModelShop VR to
ModelShop 3.0 will be $199.00.
The release of ModelShop VR follows the January, 1997 release of
ModelShop 2.5, Electric Café's first upgrade to the product since
acquiring it from Macromedia.
www.eleccafe.com
Superscape & Britek Bundling Deal
[April 21]
Superscape VR has announced an $850,000 bundling deal with Taiwan-based
Britek Electronics Co. Ltd. Under the terms of the deal, Britek will
bundle Superscape's Viscape 3D Web browser and Visualizer VR viewer with
their graphics boards.
www.superscape.com
vwww.com
Cirrus Logic And Microsoft To Host Internet Game Tournament
[April 28]
Cirrus Logic has announced plans to co-host with Microsoft the "Laguna3D
Monster Truck Madness Challenge," a tournament held on the Internet and
based on Microsoft's Monster Truck Madness game. To enter the game,
participants will need to own both a copy of Microsoft's game and a
graphics board based on Cirrus' Laguna3D accelerators (including Creative
Labs' Graphics Blaster 3D and VideoLogic's GrafixStar 550. The tournament
will run from May 15 - August 24, with a grand prize of a new Ford
Explorer.
www.microsoft.com/games/monster
Intervista - WorldView 2.0 Released
[April 5]
Intervista Software, Inc., has released WorldView 2.0 and claims that it
is the only complete VRML browser for the PC which includes full Java
support, adherence to the VRML standard, extended font support and native
interfaces for both Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer. In
addition, there is support for the Microsoft DirectX platform, including
Direct3D hardware acceleration, DirectInput and DirectSound. WorldView
has an External Authoring Interface (EAI) and support for Java in Script
Node (JIS).
www.intervista.com
3Dize Brings out 3Dfotos
[March 2]
3Dfotos are claimed to be 3D models that look indistinguishable from
photos of real objects. 3DFotos models are seamless, uniformly lit, 100%
closed, 24-bit photo textured on all surfaces, and realistically
smoothed. The photo texture is taken from the exact real subject modeled.
Near pixel level perspective correct photo texture is claimed which
further reduces any texture warping and seams, especially during
animation. Multiple texture resolutions are provided to support efficient
rendering for each specific use. 3DFotos Collection 1 is available now
and can be previewed and downloaded at the web site. Pricing for the
collection is $30.
www.3dize.com/~shelbymoore3.
Cirrus Logic Announces Loss and Lays off 400+
[April 24]
Cirrus Logic announced that it had losses of $51.6m while the revenue
fell over the corresponding quarter a year ago by 8.6% to $212.9m. One
factor cited for the losses was Intel's delay (described as an industry
delay) in ramping AGP based systems. The company simultaneously
restructured into four product divisions (PC, Communications, Mass
Storage and Crystal Semiconductor).
www.cirrus.com
RTIME Correction
In WAVE #709, we erroneously reported that Edmark, Creative Multimedia,
and Proxim had previously invested in RTIME. These companies have not
invested in RTIME and are not in any way related to or involved with
RTIME.
3Dlabs Reports Q1 Results
[April 30]
3Dlabs has reported the financial results from the first quarter ending
March 31, 1997:
1997 Q1 Revenues: $15.76 million
Net Income: $5.38 million
1996 Q1 Revenues: $1.81 million
Net Income: ($1.01 million)
1996 Q4 Revenues: $8.61 million
Net Income: $2.15 million
VRML Adventure Game Featured at SGI VRML Site
The current feature story on SGI's vrml.sig.com VRML site/online-magazine
is Bill McClosky's article in which he takes a look at how VRML is
evolving the game development industry and relates bringing to fruition
"The Cave of Madness," a VRML adventure game. SGI's VRML site features
up-to-date VRML news and stories and can be found at:
vrml.sgi.com
Wave Issue 9710 5/8/97 Article 1-01