***QuickNews
Number Nine Unveils 3rd Generation Chip
[May 15]
Number Nine Visual Technologies has announced the availability of working
samples of its third generation, 128-bit graphics accelerator chip, "Ticket
to Ride." It integrates 128-bit 3D, 2D and MPEG playback and sports the
following features:
Memory: up to 48 MB of WRAM, SGRAM or EDO VRAM / DRAM
up to 32-bit Z-buffer
8 KB on-chip texture cache
Effects: Atmospheric effects for Specular Lighting, Interpolated Fogging
and Alpha Blending
APIs: Direct3D, OpenGL
2D: 128-bit 2D drawing engine
3D: Built-in 3D rendering engine and 3D Floating Point Setup Engine
Video: Full-screen, full-motion MPEG playback
Other: AGP support
"Ticket to Ride" is already sampling, with prices of $125 per chip set for
quantities of 10K+.
www.nine.com
SGI Announces a Major Move for OpenGL into Games
Based on feedback from game developers at the CGDC, SGI has decided to
release a software-only renderer, OpenGL-PC. This software will allow
developers to create games written in OpenGL that will operate without
hardware acceleration. If an ICD or MCD is present the software will
default to hardware acceleration. A developer kit will be released in 2-3
weeks and it can be requested by going to the OpenGL web site The developer
kit will include sample code and other documentation.
www.opengl.org/
3Dlabs - More Details on GLINT MX
3Dlabs has provided the WAVE Report with more details on the GLINT MX. This
new chip will support up to 8 chips running in parallel. The target for
highly parallel implementations is the Visual Simulation market and
companies such as DataPath intend to take advantage of this scalability.
The MX is designed to support output line interleaving. For PC
implementations the best solution is with 2 MX chips outputting to a shared
frame buffer.
3Dlabs will have a roll out of its new family of chips at SIGGRAPH in
August.
www.3dlabs.com/
3Dlabs - Permedia 2 Announced
[May 20]
In a matter of weeks 3Dlabs has announced 3 new chips: Gamma, GLINT MX and
now Permedia 2. This latest chip is focused at the corporate market and
entry level professional markets. The chip incorporates the Delta set-up
processor which enables up to 1M polygons/sec. SGRAM memory is supported in
2,4,6, and 8 MB sizes. The chip also has full 2D support including MPEG-2
and a 230MHz RAMDAC. It will support both PCI and AGP buses. Impressive
performance figures were also announced:
Winmarks (Business Graphics) 110
3D Winbench 130
ViewPerf (initial) 20+
A strength of this chip is its leverage into the extensive driver
experience at 3Dlabs. This includes an OpenGL ICD, Heidi and Direct3D.
Drivers for Memphis and Windows NT 5.0 are under development.
In what has become a fact of life - when parts are announced so are the
OEMs - 3Dlabs has lined up an impressive list of buyers: AccelGraphics,
Canopus, Diamond, DEC, ELSA, Hercules, IO Data, Melco, Newer Technologies,
NeTPower, Number Nine, Radius, STB, Symmetric and TriStar.
Parts are being sampled now with volume in H2 1997. Pricing is $35 in
10K/month quantities.
SGI Acquires ParaGraph International
SGI has purchased ParaGraph International and folded it into a new
division, Cosmo Software. Headed by Kai-Fu Lee, Cosmo Software will focus
exclusively on software including the WebFORCE and Cosmo families of
products. It will be managed in a manner similar to Alias|Wavefront. The
initial staffing will be at 250 and the operating entity from ParaGraph in
Russia will become an operating unit of SGI.
www.sgi.com/
www.paragraph.com/
HP Licenses DirectX, COM and DCOM
In a little noticed statement on the March 19th, an HP and Microsoft joint
press release stated that HP would be involved with DirectX. Now it is
clear that it will port DirectX to its HP-UX operating system. HP puts its
relationship with Microsoft on the same footing as its microprocessor
arrangement with Intel. DirectX is described as part of what is becoming a
fabric of alignment between itself and Microsoft. HP sees considerable
opportunity to leverage the strength of Microsoft's APIs into the technical
computing market which has not used multimedia technology. An example cited
is in Large Scale Collaborative Virtual Engineering where visual and audio
results are shared across many locations. They also see where this
technology and scalability of systems could also fit the entertainment
markets. The migration of DirectX to HP-UX is work in process and schedules
are being developed for its release.
www.hp.com
SensAble's GHOST 3D Touch SDK Available
At the Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics in Providence, SensAble
Technologies announced that the GHOST (General Haptics Open Software
Toolkit) SDK is now generally available. GHOST SDK allows developers to
created 3D Graphics applications integrated with 3D Touch applications.
GHOST SDK is an object-oriented, C++ toolkit with built-in capabilities,
external model libraries and an architecture that allows developers to add
their own extensions. Primitive objects, polyhedral models and spatial
effects are all supported in Version 1.0. Pricing is $495 for the Windows
NT version and $995 for the Silicon Graphics IRIX version.
www.sensable.com
Quark To Buy mFactory
[May 6]
Quark Inc. and mFactory Inc. have announced that they have signed an
agreement for a Quark-affiliated company to purchase substantially all of
the assets of mFactory, pending approval of mFactory shareholders. Quark's
products include the popular desktop publishing application QuarkXPress as
well as QuarkImmedia, an Internet and multimedia design and viewing
program. mFactory's cornerstone product is mTropolis, an open-architecture,
multimedia programming application geared to commercial multimedia title
developers.
www.mfactory.com
www.quark.com
TEN Licenses Technology From MaK
[May 19]
Total Entertainment Network (TEN) has licensed MaK Technology's military
networking technology to co-develop an on-line space exploration and combat
game. The space combat game, scheduled to debut this September, will be an
online-only title and exclusive to TEN. It will feature a persistent
environment and will initially offer simultaneous play for 100 players,
with potential expansion to 1,000 players.
www.ten.com
www.mak.com
New PowerVR Ports
NEC and VideoLogic's PowerVR 3D graphics accelerator has won several new
game ports recently, including:
- Sierra On-Line's "CyberGladiators" will be available as a PowerVR Ready
Accelerated version in June
- Looking Glass Technologies' "Flight Unlimited," availability unknown
- "Resident Evil," available later this summer
- Eidos' "Flying Nightmares 2," "Terracide," and "Team Apache," all
available later this summer
www.nec.com
www.videologic.com
New Pricing for Diamond Fire GL Cards
[April 29]
Diamond Multimedia has announced new pricing for their Fire GL 1000 and
Fire GL 3000 accelerators:
Product Old Price New Price
Fire GL 1000, 4 MB SGRAM $399.95 $299.95
Fire GL 1000, 8 MB SGRAM $499.95 $399.95
Fire GL 3000, 8 MB VRAM/8 MB DRAM $1,995 $1,699
Fire GL 3000, 8 MB VRAM/16 MB DRAM $2,095 $1,799
Fire GL 3000, 8 MB VRAM/32 MB DRAM $2,295 $1,999
www.diamondmm.com
Diamond Releases Faster Drivers for Monster 3D
[April 29]
Diamond has also announced new driver software for their Monster 3D gaming
accelerator. The new driver software (version 1.07) reportedly is up to 20%
faster. Using ZD-BOP's 3D WinBench 97, the Diamond Monster 3D achieved a
score of 131 (tests run internally by Diamond on a 200 MHz Pentium PC). The
new driver is available from Diamond's Web site.
Design Wins for S3
[May 9]
S3 has announced several new design wins for their 3D accelerator chip. New
Pentium II-based PCs from AST, Dell, Gateway 2000 and IBM will all be
powered by S3's ViRGE and Trio multimedia accelerators. The new Gateway
2000 PC uses the ViRGE/GX-based Nitro 3D graphics card from STB.
www.s3.com
IDS Ships V-Realm Builder 2.0
[May 12]
Integrated Data Systems has begun shipping V-Realm Builder 2.0, their
second-generation VRML 2.0 authoring tool. Features include optimization
tools (e.g. polygon reduction), drag & drop editing and scripting
capabilities. It comes bundled with SGI's Cosmo Player and Intervista's
WorldView. Introductory pricing is $495 and will go up to $595 after the
introductory period ends.
www.ids-net.com
NEC To Sell Oxygen Cards in Japan
[May 19]
Dynamic Pictures has announced that they have entered an OEM agreement with
NEC, in which NEC will market and sell the Dynamic Pictures Oxygen 202
graphics accelerator card throughout Japan with the NEC Express5800
workstation line.
www.dynamicpictures.com
3D Urban Simulation From Coryphaeus
[May 5]
Coryphaeus Software has unveiled MetroSim, which they claim is the "first
comprehensive 3D urban simulation solution for interactively visualizing
entire architectural concepts, structural designs, or land use proposals."
MetroSim allows users to interactively navigate within the simulation as
well as the ability to make changes. MetroSim runs on the SGI platform and
is available now for $15,000 for a single-user license. An optional model,
EastT (a terrain and feature generation system), is also available for
$15,000.
www.coryphaeus.com
Ray Dream Studio 5 Announced
[May 19]
Fractal Design Corporation has announced Ray Dream Studio 5 for Windows and
Macintosh. New features include object creation tools such as the precise
Mesh Form modeler; new animation tools with physically based behaviors
including collision detection, gravity and more; and new rendering effects
including visible lights, depth of field, and lens flares. Ray Dream Studio
5 is expected to be available in Q3 1997 for a SRP of $449.
www.fractal.com
SingleTrac To Develop for Nintendo 64
[April 19]
SingleTrac has announced that it has signed an agreement with Nintendo
allowing them to develop for the Nintendo 64 console. Specific games have
not been announced.
www.nintendo.com
www.singletrac.com
Wave Issue 9712 5/21/97 Article -01