CompuServe Thread

Well, this may not be exactly "on your desk"<g>, but let me take this opportunity to make a little "NAB Report" for anyone who's interested, here on CIS. Just got in this afternoon from a quick two-day visit to Vegas and NAB95. Notable forum attendees included PaulL, GregP, MikeM, WadeS, PhilM, and probably others whom I am forgeting (please go easy on me) due to post-Vegas frazzle syndrome! The Adesk booth (once I found it in a dark corner :-() was being manned by famous X-Desker JamieC. among others. Jamie was showing 3DS to folks who seemed very interested by the latest 3DS stuff. Right next door, SGI "partners" Alias and Wavefront were showing their wares, with no real sign of any new "togetherness", keeping with what is being said by the SGI suits who have commented on the recent move. It was great to see Brick Eksten and Dave White showing off the new SCSI-based PVR (Perception Video Recorder) from a decidedly larger (and more "interestingly" staffed — who *was* that Candy person??) DPS booth. Keeping with their philosophy of bringing great-looking video animation to the masses for a reasonable price, this PCI-based seemingly lossless solution looked brilliant, and all for the same price as the PAR! Able to command 7 SCSI devices (9 GIGs apiece!) at a compression ratio of 3:1 (depending on the frame characteristics and software settings), the PVR can be a real NLE workhorse for a fraction of the cost of systems that are mis-guided enough to depend on a EISA bus for throughput! The Windows software seemed to perform flawlessly, and, of course, the audio support is complete with full time-code support. I only wished they had used more 3DS animation to show it off, though. LightWave's Low (super-sampled) A-A settings only ruined the edges and scintilated the texture maps so artifact-hunting wasn't anywhere near as much fun as it should have been. I did *not* see any artifacts, however. I'm hoping to secure a board soon and an in-depth article in 3DA should be forthcoming. Back on the 3DS front, DavidA, LaVinaL. and the rest of the Digimation crew had a small but extremely exciting booth on the Multimedia floor. David was showing the NEW Bones Pro (complete with exclusion for errant vertice influence, G-shading, etc.) along with a great, new Smooth interface. Also there was a positively brilliant lens and *Refraction* (Yup, you heard right!) routine from Alec and the boys from Moscow that had us drooling, along with a preview of the Landscape Generator that has TONS of promise. Killer explosions and other fractal-based fun is also coming from the Digimation camp, making for an extremely exciting near-future from our friends in LA! The Adesk press-party/blow-out (*open bar!!!* and, yes, a whole bottle of JD!) was lots of fun. JoeF, BobB, KevinB, and other Adesker's looked like they were having great fun hob-nobbing about with who-knows-who while DavidA showed his stuff on one machine, while KiethS from Schreiber showed Key Factory, a very cool collision-detection routine on another. A very interesting observation I had was that LightWave NT was being shown at no less than *4* booths. Micro/Soft/Image had it (evidently entry-level positioned with their own 3D stuff to come), Nu-Tek, of course, and there were a couple of other appearances. All-in-all, it was a great time and VERY interesting. If NAB was this good, Siggraph should be absolutely KILLER! See ya there, and, as always, thanks for listening, -Alan