Finally, SIGGRAPH news
4 messages in this thread
Just got back from SIGGRAPH in Orlando. Quite a show! I was finally able
to meet some people I've only known online for all these years. 🙂
There were a number of things that should be of interest to Amiga owners.
o The previous version of the RAPTOR is no more. There are two new
versions of the Raptor, one of which is mainly for use as a server. Ben
Williams was on hand showing of some very impressive Black Belt software
running on one of those boxes.
o Syndesis (right across the aisle from Deskstation, the RAPTOR folks) was
selling their two new CDs: 3D ROM volume II, and a copy of the entire
AVALON 3D FTP site. The Avalon disc is pretty new too…It's the latest
data as of July 18th.
o Newtek was on hand showing off the Flyer and new version of Lightwave.
Newtek announced Lightwave for the PC and SGI platforms too. Newtek was a
lot more "low key" than I've seen them at other shows. There were a
steady stream of people going in and out of their booth. There were also
a number of 3rd party companies in the Newtek booth, including Video
Toaster User, LightwavePro, Cinegraphics, and Xaos.
o Steve Worley was one of the speakers at the course on Procedural
Textures and Modeling. Steve and the other speakers have put together a
book, which should be out shortly. (There was a preview copy at the show,
and it looked pretty good).
Lots and lots of other stuff going on, but those are the main things that
Amiga folks would be interested in.
Steve
In reference to your SIGGRAPH news. I was impressed this year with
NewTek's booth. I was happy to see that for once they were not
attempting to put down every other platform and product, but were
instead almost embracing other platforms!
Does anyone know of anyone who has hooked up a Dec Alpha instead of a
Raptor? I'm afraid we can not afford a Raptor, but a Dec Alpha
(6,000) is much more within our budget. (Sheesh, what English!) 😉
I talked with the Dec folks and they say it should be possible.
I don't beleive LW will work with an Alpha based system right now
because it is compiled for an NT MIPS machine. Re-compiling is not a
big problem but I don't know what problems there would be with
screamernet.
Anyway, on the topic of 'Siggraph News', we were showing our Real 3D
windows NT versions working on both Alpha and Mips NT machines. The
Alpha machine was a Cobra 275 Mhz box that was quite impressive and
lists for around $10500. DEC seems to have the fastest chips out
right now. Real 3D really flys!!! We had two MIPS NT systems, a
Deskstation Raptor II and a Shablam. The Shablam is interesting in
that you can plug the card into a 486/33 and end up with a R4600 MIPS
full NT system for around 2500-$3000. Yes the NT world is certainly
gaining momentum.
Please tell us more about the current available revs. of Real3D. I'm
a Real3D user kinda. I bought it when the 2.? version came out and
was very impressed but never really gave it the time to get over the
learning curve due to my addiction to LW :^)
I am VERY interested in u/g to the current rev., and of cousre the
possibility of moving to another platform. Probably Windows NT, I'd
much rather just get an 060 board for my Amiga though.