R4 Fast Preview
Fast Preview / Camera Control is cool stuff, but even on a fast PC it
has got to feel like a subliminal advertisement for SGI grade
hardware. Until R-? supports and we all get video boards with
something like open GL capable chips or an operating system for
workstation class graphics acceleration I doubt if PC's will be
capable of doing the kind of interactivity that Fast Preview / Camera
Control now only hints at. Meanwhile SGI stuff gets faster and
cheaper, while PC software gets so sophisticated and demanding that
we have to spend more and more on bigger drives, immense expanses of
RAM, etc.. The playing field is far from level yet but the bumps are
smoothing. It'll be a blast two or three years down the road when
programs like 3DS, Wavefront, Lightwave, Softimage, et. al., are all
battling it out on equal footing in the marketplace.