CompuServe Messages

I think the most important point is that Hastings has ripped out LightWave's rendering code and created a standalone renderer. Theoretically, this renderer could be running on other Toaster-less Amigas, or the Mac, or Unix boxes, or 32-bit DOS PCs, or WinNT on the Intel chips, which are certainly more accessible than MIPS boxes. (Not that MIPS hardware isn't nice.) In my opinion, WinNT is not the most cost-effective OS to run a "soft Screamer". I'd say that 32-bit DOS *is*. WinNT, under MIPS or Intel, requires 12 meg minimum, 16 megs useful, and then you can add memory necessary for doing any rendering whatsoever. With 32-bit DOS, NewTek could make a LightWave render engine that actually used more than 90 percent of RAM for LightWave and rendering scenes. They could leverage off the price of cheap DOS boxes, cheap Ethernet cards, cheap hard disks, etc. brought by the economies of scale in the MS-DOS market.