#Games/New technologies
23 messages in this thread
I don't know what is going to happen with the Nintendo-SGI thing. Specially
when I think about the price. Look what is happening to 3DO.
Another thing to look at in the gaming industry is the new schemes developed by
MS and Intel to establish a game standard in the PC industry. WinG, the new
Windows graphics engine (which is going to be superfast) and the marketing of
GLiNT based boards by companies like Creative Labs for the low end market could
mean a revolution in the gaming industry as well. I am wondering if 3DLabs have
any deals with any of the videogame giants. It seems that Sega is playing with
MS to include a Windows like thing in their new generation machines (Martin
could know more about this) so it could not be krazy to see that company
standarizing on standard chips such as GLiNT rather to produce their own
specialized (expensive) chipsets. In the other side, Sega has an huge
investment in 3D I+D.
As for your game plans… like you say, I think that build a team to enter in
the gaming industry could be very very very hard 🙂 Moreover, is not clear how
this new super videogame machines will do. But entering the first in a totally
new market(machine) could give any company an edge and, eventually, if that
market go up quickly, a lot of money and, what is more, the image that could
make consumers to buy instantly more games from that company (a thing that
happened with LucasArts and their graphic adventures). A bad point of the game
market is that one day you could be at the top and the another you could be in
hell, making very difficult to mantain product sales. I think that only a few
companies (LucasArts is a good example) can mantain that image constantly over
a long period of time (their games are instant hits).
ana /krazy images
Ana,
All very good points.
As I said before, we're extremely afraid of the gaming industry. As with
everything we do, we try to research all aspects of a move before making it. I
like to play business the same way I do chess. 🙂
Gaming companies are springing up like weeds, and everyone with an extra dollar
is anxious to give it to anyone who'll undertake a project. So far we've stayed
far away from that market. I do however find it extremely interesting at the
phenomenal dollars that are being thrown into the gaming industry and the
seemingly endless supply of throwaway cash the general public has to spend on
games and gaming hardware. Where will it ever end?
Paul
Where will it ever end? Now that is the best question of the month! <g>
No matter we have the huge global crisis in history, there will be always
people trying to have a good time. It is like having a beer factory… do you
think that people will stop to drink beer whatever is happening out there? <g>
having a beer company is like having a a $100 dollar bills printer! 🙂
ana /krazy images
ps.And don't forget that there will be always dads and moms willing to have a
moment of piece while their little pirates enjoy the latest Sonic adventure!
<g>
*
And don't forget that there will be always dads and moms willing to have a
moment of >piece< while their little pirates enjoy the latest Sonic adventure!
<g>
*
That should be PEACE (I bet that everyone got the typo 🙂
BTW, do you play videogames with your girl? Me and Jesus both have plans to get
a three workstation network to play some simulators as soon as we get our
<first> kiddo (I have read that Microsoft is going to release the
Fisher-Price's My First Advanced Server sometime arround February 1996. And IBM
is making agreements with Lego to launch Dupplo for PowerPC <BG>)
ana /krazy images
When will spending on games end?
<<…huge global crisis…>>
I think the worse the crisis the more that people will seek diversion. During
the Great Depression of the '30's in the US, theaters stayed busy. People who
were scratching to buy food were still able to come up with the price of a
movie ticket to escape for a short time.
(My ol' Grandad tells the story of how he as a young man got a job choppiing
logs for a moviehouse boiler during the Depression. He and a friend split 40
cords of firewood over the summer. They were finally paid, but with rolls of
movie tickets instead of with cash. Boy, was he mad…!)
Jeff Eisel
Yes, people want to disappear when there are problems (Say drugs) Guess what
would happen to many people when virtual reality become a home appliance 🙂
When a war comes there is a rise in the consumption of pornography and
everything related with sex too (you can call that part of the fun and the
evasion, if you want). People have a desire. They also want to DO things.
Anxiety. Don't leave for tomorrow what you can do today and all that kind of
arguments 🙂 Also when there is situation of poverty, sex becomes the easiest
of the way to escape reality.
So when a war comes, buy companies stock related to babies' food, pampers, etc.
<g> (that's from Moore/Gibbons' Watchmen 🙂
ana /krazy images
>> When a war comes there is a rise in the consumption
>> of pornography and everything related with sex too
>> (you can call that part of the fun and the evasion,
>> if you want). People have a desire.
Yes, I have heard that one can buy cakes with very detailed pictures using a
kind of airbrush that sprays colored icing. By consumption, you did mean eating
dirty pictures, didn't you? <g>
There are times were there is no money for cakes. After a war, there is an
increase in births, no cakes involved <g>
ana /krazy images
Ana,
>> Sega is playing with MS to include a Windows like thing in their new
generation machines (Martin could know more about this) <<
that's news to me. Sega is making a large investment in new proprietary
32/64-bit hardware and is going to be ready for market a long time before
Nintendo is, so I'm not sure why they would be interested in Windows. They may
have some other plans, since most big companies like to diversify somewhat. The
next time the producer from Sega comes to LA I will buy him lots of tequila
shots and see what he'll tell me. Last time he got me drunk on tequila – then I
went back to work for a few hours until I felt I was OK to drive home <G>.
Actually, I just realised what you are probably referring to! It's an interface
for their cable box games machines. Sega is going to start a game system on the
TV cable system (the "Sega Channel"). You will pay by credit card or whatever
and get to play any of the games in the menu. Sorry, my mind went blank, for a
day or two <G>.
Yeah, I was talking about the strategic alliance to put Windows at Home in a
Sega set top box. However, I won't trust any of this "alliances" until I see
the final product working. The idea of having Windows embedded in my Sony TV
just makes me sick! (would I need a driver for the Laserdisk? 🙂
Did you play with Jupiter?
ana /krazy images
Ana,
>> Did you play with Jupiter? <<
No, it's much too far and much too big – ho ho ho <G>!
Actually, the "Jupiter" or 32-X is the _public_ name for the new 32-bit add-on,
plug-in, 32-bit adapter for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Should be $150 and
quite a bargain. FYI, at Sega internally and for developers the new machines's
name is the "Mars" (honestly).
No, I haven't played with one because we are not currently doing a game for it.
We have concentrated on the Saturn instead and have 2 Saturn development
systems in-house.
I have seen Virtua Racing (megadrive version) and is very poor. 3D Polygon on
the Megadrive (although VR has an special 3D chip on the cartridge) is a joke.
This is something strange, because Sega has the best 3D arcade machines out
there.
ana /krazy images
Martin, Maybe you can clarify something for me. What does SEGA know that PC
software & hardware manufacturors don't? i mean, have you seen Virtual
Fighter? Even though blocky, the 3D work is amazing. How can they get such
real-time graphics, full 3D, multiple cameras (even on the cart. games) with
such a limited amount of memory compared to the megabytes comparable FLIC
files, etc would take-up?
Ken,
how do they do it? Dedicated hardware basically and about 9 custom processors
all doing different stuff concurrently. Virtua fighter has limited poly people
(only ever 2 at a time) and uses motion capture libraries from martial arts
performers. I love it! It's rendered in real time and all written in assembler.
That way the data is small, the programs are small, and it's all very efficient
running in Video RAM. However, the Sega Saturn will have to use fighters with
less poly's than the arcade version to keep the framerate up.
PC games are usually written in high-level languages and machine resources are
not fully-dedicated to the game. It's a totally different kettle of fish.
Pretty images and animations streaming off a cd-rom don't make for fast
interaction, even when it's MPEG. The access time is just way too slow. "Tomcat
Alley" (a air combat game full of live video) on the Sega CD has found an
interesting way of circumventing this problem. The way the sequences are cut
seems to allow the machine time to access the next sequence. For example, you
fire a missile, the machine cuts to a missile firing sequence, then depending
on your accuracy when you fired, the machine cuts to a sequence of a hit or a
miss. The machine had about 5 seconds or more to determine which sequence to
play, but it seems quite fluid and seamless. The graphics are horrible, though
due to Sega CD's limited pallette (64 colours?) which just doesn't work well
for live video.
Sorry for the rambling <g>.
And you say you have played Comanche? 🙂
IMHO, there is no equal to PC games in the home videogames arena. Furthermore,
I think that no arcade machine will offer the same level of involvement as a
game on a PC, both action and adventure style type of game. Things like the 7th
Guest, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Strike Commander, X-Wing, FS5…
can't go to a coinop. Well, they certainly can be made and 400% better (imagine
something like Comanche in a VR machine) however they won't give a cent to the
manufacturer. They are way too complex to be used as arcades (arcade games must
be easy to learn and not require too much mental effort. Not strange when you
see some of the faces in front of Mortal Kombat type of games <bg>)
ana /krazy images
Ana,
I don't disagree with you. Most of my current favourite games are on
the PC platform and I own quite a few. I just bought "Megarace" (PC
cd-rom version of a racing game, also available on 3DO etc) which has
a ton of 3d "movies" on it. It's has spectacular producion values
even with a limited pallette and heavy compression. Very cinematic
and it was a big hit in Europe apparently.
Because a flic is a a lineal movie, not realtime 3D calculation. In the arcade
arena, maybe Sega (and Namco) has one of the best 3D technologies. LucasArts
also has something running based on military simulation technology. However,
when it comes to home videogames, the PC is always superior in 3D performance
(not in sprite). The quality and resolution, not to talk about the playability
of 3D PC games is far superior to anything in Nintendo/Sega land today. Maybe
that's not the case of Panasonic's 3DO and Atari's Jaguar.
ana /krazy images
Actually, the game machines gain their real-time 3D abilities from limited
hardware acceleration. You're right, they don't have the raw horsepower to
throw at the problem, if you examine their CPU. But both 3DO and Sega "Saturn"
have triangle- and quad- rendering accerlators – but can you name a PC card
that accelerates these?
Even on an SGI, the hardware rendering acceleration is typically used for the
GUI and preview renderings, not the final result. The game market is so huge,
it may drive the development of PC hardware rendering acclerators that end up
assisting 3DS r5.0.
John,
all your comments make good sense. And you are especially right about the game
market being huge – I'm hoping it will put food on my table for a year or two
🙂
John,
I've heard that Argonaut, UK have come up with a software library that does
65,000-80,000 polygons per second. They're also releasing a chip that will
increase that speed four to six times.
Jacek Artymiak (Bitmap Studios Ltd.)
IMHO, the videoconsole industry won't give anything to the PC 3D world. Sega,
Nintendo, the 3DO association, all them use propietary technology to achieve
that 3D performance. Looking at the actual OS scene and given the general
support by all the big OS players to OpenGL is difficult to see something
propietary entering this market.
However, I think too that gaming (but in the PC side) and home multimedia could
help to the introduction of 3D in the rest of the PC world. Take GLiNT, for
example. They will certainly take the market by attacking both the low end
(gaming/home multimedia) and the high end (high performance graphics cards)
There also will be a need for realtime 3D in the general business area. IBM is
using heavily realtime 3D for their human centered new PowerPCs.
Teleconference, "humanized" agents, etc. all this task require realtime
graphics. Sometimes it is a question of aesthetics. Others, there is a real
need for it, like virtual teleconference (which I found way better than video).
In all the cases, there MUST be a migration to 3D in all areas. Our world is
3D. We think in 3D. IMHO, it is a matter of years to see virtual reality
getting everywhere in our lives. I just remember the demos in Imagina about
virtual teleconference. After that, video teleconferencing seems primitive to
me and the idea of 3D applying is not longer krazy but a logical step in
computing evolution.
ana /krazy images
I don't necessarily think Nintendo will hand anything over, of
course… but I'd think it was a safe bet that someone like ATI will
move towards 3D enhancements to drive new sales of cards, and they'd
do it to attract game players before they'd try to attract CAD
people. Bigger market, of course.
My dreams have long been dominated by computing concepts and
problems… I think I'll lose my mind when I have some kind of VR
headset or immersion technology to augment that. It's bad enough
that I have to work such long hours, but to be pestered by compilers
when I sleep is a bit too much!
There is where MS/Intel are getting their hands on. Take a look to this news
story:
***
"The WinG library is a pre-release of the DIB engine, which will come with
Chicago and Daytona (…) The DIB engine blits directly to the framebuffer to
enable graphics performance to approach raw MSDOS speed in any Windows
compatible computer (…) MS and Id Software showed WinDOOM, version of MSDOS
DOOM game.
Intel came to announce the 3DRendering (3DR) graphics engine (…) and open API
in which software developers could build their own APIs. 3DR talks directly to
the Windows 3D Device Driver Interface (DDI) spec to allow vendors of 3D
hardware to develop a device driver that implements 3D acceleration for
multiple 3D graphics toolkits, such as OpenGL and toolkits based on 3DR"
***
IMHO, 3DLabs is going to make it (hopefully). Their GLiNT chip not only support
OpenGL, 3DR, HOOPS and any 3D API out there, but is supported by most of the
people out there. It is an scalable technolgy that allows parallel processing
and have an awesome spec. That's why I am so enthusiastic about it. There are
some interesting quotes there:
***
"Microsoft regards 3D graphics as a key component of advanced 32-bit operating
systems and will support OpenGL as its standard 3D API starting with the next
release of NT. Development of devices such as GLiNT are a vital step in
bringing high performance 3D graphics to the PC platform"
Matt Ragen, Senior Product Manager for Windows NT
"GLiNT delivers impressive performance for 3D software, and the combination of
GLiNT with Pentium, PCI-based platforms will enable low cost effective graphics
computing on desktop PCs"
Richard Wirt, Director Software Technology Labs, Intel Corp.
"We welcome and support GLiNT as a well matched companion for the PowerPC and
look forward to working with 3DLabs to encourage high performance, affordable
platforms using both chips"
Charlie Ashton, PPC Product Marketing Manager
(here is a good one)
"Autodesk's Multimedia Division has a long story in bringing 3D graphics
functionality formerly only available on workstation to PCs. We are excited by
devices such as GLiNT, as it further closes the gap between workstation and PC
performance and functionality"
Bob Bennet, Group Product Manager, Adesk Multimedia Division
***
Not bad, mmh? 🙂
ana /krazy images