what if the Lockheed Martin Real3D/100 (not i740) had been a consumer card ??

The Lockheed Martin Real3D/100. The mid-range semi-professional card with a 3-chip chipset (geometry processor + graphics processor + texture processor) in a different class than typical 3D accelerators before Nvidia's NV10 GeForce256.

Not to be confused with the crappy Intel & Real3D developed i740 consumer/gamer 3D accelerator chip used in Lockheed StarFighter cards and Intel motherboards, which lacked any form of geometry processor engine / T&L.


Pictured here is the Real3D/100 and the high-end Real3D-Pro/1000 image generator (the guts of the Pro/1000 was used in Sega's Model 3 arcade board



Next Generation August 1995 article on Lockheed Martin entering the CONSUMER / GAMING PC 3D graphics market with Real3D/100, for $180 (or $200)...



At that point, nobody outside Lockheed knew that Real3D/100 would NOT be for consumers, that instead, a lower-end, weaker 3D chip would fill that role several years later, the Auburn / i740 / Intel 740 / StarFighter. That came so much later, and was so much worse than Real3D/100. Imagine if Nvidia had promised you the GeForce256 for gaming, for $300 but instead, delivered a Riva 128 or TNT for that price....while the GeForce256 was an expensive $2000 professional card you couldn't buy for a few hundred bucks. That's the best comparison I can make.

I was so hyped for Real3D/100. I'm certain it would've killed S3, 3DLabs, Rendition, 3DFX, PowerVR, ATI, Nvidia, etc.

Damnit !!!




At 1 or 2 points in time, Sega concidered using Real3D/100 as the basis for either an upgrade cartridge for the Saturn console, or for a new standalone console to replace the Saturn altogether, before shifting to PowerVR2 used in Dreamcast.



From the Feb 1997 issue of EGM
http://i40.tinypic.com/2ypjb79.jpg

"In other Sega news, Yu Suzuki sand and the white shirts at AM2 aure currently knee deep into the development of VF3 for the Saturn, which will be released in Japan around October. The game (a CD) is designed to run in conjection with a 3-D cartridge upgrade that plugs into the port on top of the Saturn...can you say 64X? The Lockheed Martin Corportation (the company that designed Sega's Model-3 arcade architecture) is currently working on the 64-bit cart, which is based on the Real 3D chipsetm LMC's upcoming 3-D accelerator for the PC. The entire package is targeted to retail for 9800 yen in Japan (about $90 U.S.) with 6000 yen of that for the CD and about 3500-4000 yen toward the cart. Our Q-spies report that VF3 will be but just a small taste of Sega's 64-Bit console technology. Sega has also commissioned LMC to design a killer 64-Bit game system code named Pluto. The new system, due out in early 1998, is said to offer 3-D performance that could rival (if not surpass) the Model-3 arcade board. "

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A more in-depth article on never-released Saturn 2 (the 3D upgrade for Saturn or a new console, could've been either at that point) with the Real3D/100 being its graphical heart.




The EGM rumor column article (above the above article) of a Sega "64X" upgrade for Saturn and a more advanced 64-bit Pluto, both with Lockheed Martin Real3D tech, is basicly the same thing as the Saturn 2 reported by Next Generation, only EGM was saying, they'd do BOTH, instead of either/or.

Interesting article, thanks for the history lesson

Elledan said:

Interesting article, thanks for the history lesson

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Welcome

There's much I do not know. this is a combo of old reports, and rumor/speculation.

I'm sure I got some things wrong, but I'll bet there was something to it. The Real3D/100 chip/chipset/card was real.

thunderblade said:

Welcome

There's much I do not know. this is a combo of old reports, and rumor/speculation.

I'm sure I got some things wrong, but I'll bet there was something to it. The Real3D/100 chip/chipset/card was real.

Click to expand...

Sadly (computer) history is littered with cool stuff which never quite made it into the limelight and instead quietly faded away Sometimes it's due to poor management (3dfx), sudden decisions to focus on other markets, patent nonsense (SED) or a complete lack of marketing (IBM, I'm looking at you).

At any rate it's always a bit sad albeit interesting to read back on technological progressions

Indeed there are many technologies that never saw the light of day,
and the 1990s seem to be littered with canceled projects.

The 3DO-designed / Matsushita/Panasonic manufactured M2 console
and the 3DFX Rampage family of graphic cards are two prime examples.

interesting article
Lockheed Martin made computer hardware? didn't know that

Lockheed Martin didn't manufacture IBM compatible PCs, like say, Dell or Compaq, but they certainly did design 3D graphics / simulation systems for the military and 3D graphics hardware for Sega's arcade boards, and several PCI graphics cards.


Real3D was the result of combined graphics engineers, technology, IP of General Electric Aerospace (basicly created realtime 3D graphics in the 1960s for NASA), and Martin Marietta (made texture mapping in the 80s) under Lockheed.

Real3D based in Orlando, Florida was the graphics division of Lockheed Martin, spun off as a seperate company. They closed their doors in the late 90s, but ATI took over what was left.

The Next Generation Nov 1995 article best explains the history.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real3D

Real3D, Inc. was a maker of arcade graphics boards whose lineage traces back to the aerospace industry when General Electric sold off its aerospace division (GE Aerospace) to Martin Marietta. In 1995, Martin Marietta and Lockheed merged to form Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer. Following the merger, Lockheed Martin decided to market their cutting-edge graphics technology for civilian use by setting up Real3D, Inc. in partnership with Intel and SGI. In 1999, Real3D sued ATI Technologies over infringement of its patents (originally issued to General Electric in 1988 and 1990) as well as misappropriation of trade secrets (involving the hiring away of several Real3D engineers). By October 1, 1999, Real3D was forced to close its doors and Lockheed sold its remaining stake in Real3D to Intel on October 14. Following the sale, Intel fired all employees and closed the Orlando office. Interestingly, ATI opened an Orlando office and ostensibly retained many former Real3D designers.

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There are some pictures of Real3D cards floating around somewhere, I'll try to find them.

Real3D/100 (1995)
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/891/199503real3dr3d100nw4.jpg
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/3118/199503real3dr3d1002mc0.jpg

This version of Real3D/100 only had 2 chips, it lacked the 3rd chip, the geometry processor/T&L unit

Real3D Lightning/110 (1997)
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6435/199708real3dlightning11nk9.jpg

Real3D Cobra (1999 prototype)
http://img15.imageshack.us/i/1999real3dcobraprototypud3.jpg/


Again, these mid-range professional Real3D cards series should *not* to be confused with the crummy consumer gaming StarFighter cards which had the Real3D-Intel i740 chip, which competed with 3Dfx, PowerVR, ATI, Nvidia, etc.

You're kidding, right?

1. The GeForce 256 was not the first consumer-level GPU, and neither was the R3D/100. That honor goes to 3Dlab's Permedia, as crappy as it was, or the Gaming Glint ( Creative 3D Blaster VLB), depending on who you ask. It's hardly a distinction worth mentioning, because the Pentium processor could keep up with most of these anemic geometry processors anyway.

2. The i740 is just a single-chip version of the R3D/100 (combined pixel and texture) with AGP DiME texturing, and without the geometry processor. There's nothing revolutionary about it, as it was a single-pipeline, single texture solution just like the other cards of the time.

Real3D was just an attempt by Lockheed Martin to find a new market for stuff they developed during the cold war, but the government wasn't buying anymore (this was BEFORE the defense industry recovery of the late 1990s). They hyped it up like crazy, but the reality was they had NO IDEA how to sell to consumers Their solutions were delayed to market, and by the time anyone saw them, they were unimpressive.

Some other major players announced affordable 3D solutions in 1995 too, but the difference is, they actually delivered products by 1996. Those included Rendition (v1000), 3DFX (Voodoo Graphics), and PowerVR (PCX1). All of these chipsets eschewed the geometry processor to reduce cost, because the Pentium processor packed a surprisingly powerful floating-point unit. It was a foregone conclusion that Real3D would have to do the same to compete.

Still, it's nice to see someone dig all this crap up Real3D is one of the forgotten companies of the industry.

defaultluser said:

You're kidding, right?

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No, I'm just somewhat misinformed it seems, trying to piece together what is what.

1. The GeForce 256 was not the first consumer-level GPU, and neither was the R3D/100. That honor goes to 3Dlab's Permedia, as crappy as it was, or the Gaming Glint ( Creative 3D Blaster VLB), depending on who you ask. It's hardly a distinction worth mentioning, because the Pentium processor could keep up with most of these anemic geometry processors anyway.

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Thanks. I totally forgot about Permedia and Glint.
I believe that a low-end version of Glint without geometry/T&L was used in the Creative Labs 3D Blaster of 1995, which came out around the same time as the Nvidia NV1-based Diamond EDGE 3D card.

2. The i740 is just a single-chip version of the R3D/100 (combined pixel and texture) with AGP DiME texturing, and without the geometry processor. There's nothing revolutionary about it, as it was a single-pipeline, single texture solution just like the other cards of the time.

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I thought that i740 codenamed Auburn was a new, built-from-scratch consumer 3D chip announced in 1997, released in early 1998, and nothing to do with Real3D/100. However, it does make sense if i740 was a single-chip version of the Real3D/100, that combined pixel and texture processor of the Real3D/100. Not unlike how 3Dfx Banshee was a single-chip version of Voodoo2 with one texture unit (combined PixelFX2 & TexelFX2).

Real3D was just an attempt by Lockheed Martin to find a new market for stuff they developed during the cold war, but the government wasn't buying anymore (this was BEFORE the defense industry recovery of the late 1990s). They hyped it up like crazy, but the reality was they had NO IDEA how to sell to consumers Their solutions were delayed to market, and by the time anyone saw them, they were unimpressive.

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True. The best thing that came out of Real3D was the Model3 arcade board for Sega. The real-world performance of that thing was far ahead of any consumer graphics product for PCs until 1999. Even the PowerVR2-based Dreamcast, which was more powerful than Model3 in many ways, struggled to reproduce Model3 graphics. Real3D had some good technology. It's a shame that Lockheed Martin did not understand (or care) to sell its products to the consumer.

Sega and Lockheed Martin Real3D were apparently in talks over a chip for a new Sega console (Saturn 2 or what would become Dreamcast). I don't know if anything was developed or not, but it didn't go far--Because both 3Dfx & Videologic/PowerVR offered Sega a much better deal in terms of price/performance ratio. Thus, the 3Dfx-based Black Belt (aka Dural aka Shark) and PowerVR2-based Katana were developed in parallel in 1997. Well, the info leaked in 1997, work could've started in 1996. There was an internal face-off between the two prototype consoles in mid 1997 but Sega already had planned to go with Katana no matter what, for a number of reasons, mainly because 3Dfx angered Sega by revealing work on Black Belt in 3Dfx's SEC filing, and, NEC a Japanese company, manufacturer of PowerVR, offered Sega some deal to keep everything 'Japanese'. The Katana was released as Dreamcast. Even Sega's arcade boards switched from Lockheed Martin Real3D to using PowerVR2 (NAOMI, NAOMI 2), there was no Real3D-based Model 4 board, even though one was apparently in development.. er well, it was hinted at in a Real3D interview.

Some other major players announced affordable 3D solutions in 1995 too, but the difference is, they actually delivered products by 1996. Those included Rendition (v1000), 3DFX (Voodoo Graphics), and PowerVR (PCX1). All of these chipsets eschewed the geometry processor to reduce cost, because the Pentium processor packed a surprisingly powerful floating-point unit. It was a foregone conclusion that Real3D would have to do the same to compete.

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Yes, and it appears that the samples of the Real3D/100, which was supposed to have the geometry processor, didn't actually have it because of cost, and this wasn't for the consumer market like i740 was either. If the mid-range professional Real3D/100 lost its geometry processor, there's no way a the consumer chip was going to have it.

thunderblade said:

I thought that i740 codenamed Auburn was a new, built-from-scratch consumer 3D chip announced in 1997, released in early 1998, and nothing to do with Real3D/100. However, it does make sense if i740 was a single-chip version of the Real3D/100, that combined pixel and texture processor of the Real3D/100. Not unlike how 3Dfx Banshee was a single-chip version of Voodoo2 with one texture unit (combined PixelFX2 & TexelFX2).

Click to expand...

...Or how the Permedia 2 was just a single-chip version of the Permedia. Cost was the major driving force in the early industry, because you had to hit a certain price point if you wanted a chance in hell of consumers buying your cards.

One thing I am confused on: was the R3D/100 board targeted at a price of $180, or was that the target chipset price for OEMs? I'm thinking chipset, in which case the final board cost would have been about double that (would have cost even more than a Voodoo Graphics board).

True. The best thing that came out of Real3D was the Model3 arcade board for Sega. The real-world performance of that thing was far ahead of any consumer graphics product for PCs until 1999. Even the PowerVR2-based Dreamcast, which was more powerful than Model3 in many ways, struggled to reproduce Model3 graphics. Real3D had some good technology. It's a shame that Lockheed Martin did not understand (or care) to sell its products to the consumer.

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Hey, it happened to a lot of companies. SGI had their impressive single-chip N64 chipset available in 1996, and there was talk of making a sub-$300 PC gaming board out of it. But internal politics killed the program. Some companies just don't know how to sell the technology they have (and those companies die).

Sega and Lockheed Martin Real3D were apparently in talks over a chip for a new Sega console (Saturn 2 or what would become Dreamcast). I don't know if anything was developed or not, but it didn't go far--Because both 3Dfx & Videologic/PowerVR offered Sega a much better deal in terms of price/performance ratio. Thus, the 3Dfx-based Black Belt (aka Dural aka Shark) and PowerVR2-based Katana were developed in parallel. There was an internal face-off between the two prototype consoles, but Sega already had planned to go with Katana no matter what, for a number of reasons, mainly because 3Dfx angered Sega by revealing work on Black Belt, and, NEC a Japanese company, manufacturer of PowerVR, offered Sega some deal to keep everything 'Japanese'. The Katana became Dreamcast. Even Sega's arcade boards switched from Lockheed Martin Real3D to using PowerVR2 (NAOMI, NAOMI 2).

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Sega was fickle for the entire decade of the 1990s, beginning with the mixup between SEGA America and Japan that produced the 32X. I'm sure their management was quick to denounce the Saturn as a failure, and I'm sure they did entertain several suitors for upgrades/new console (Nvidia was actually the first with the NV2!). It's no surprise that a company with no spine would flutter from one company to the next until market needs forced a decision. Hell, by the time SEGA had selected PowerVRSG, the Saturn was already completely dead.

Sega was looking into just about every possible new emerging 3D graphics technology in development during the mid-late 90s for possible upgrades for Saturn and/or for a new standalone console to replace Saturn.

*Nvidia NV2, funded by Sega (1995, new console)
*Lockheed Real3D/100 (1995, upgrade or new console)
*3DO / Matsushita M2 (1995-1996, upgrade or new console)
*3Dfx Voodoo1 (1996, upgrade)
*PowerVR PCX1 / PCX2 ( 1996, upgrade)
?TriTech Pyramid3D (1996, new console?)
?PixelSquirt (upgrade or new console?)
*Lockheed Real3D i740 (1997, upgrade or new console)
*3Dfx Voodoo2, Banshee (1997 new console, Black Belt)
*PowerVR2 (1997 new console, Katana/Dreamcast)

defaultluser said:

...Or how the Permedia 2 was just a single-chip version of the Permedia. Cost was the major driving force in the early industry, because you had to hit a certain price point if you wanted a chance in hell of consumers buying your cards.

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I need to research Permedia to refresh my memory on it.

One thing I am confused on: was the R3D/100 board targeted at a price of $180, or was that the target chipset price for OEMs? I'm thinking chipset, in which case the final board cost would have been about double that (would have cost even more than a Voodoo Graphics board).

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I think they meant $180 retail price, because a $180 chipset price would've cost so much more. It turned out that the consumer-level price (meaning *a* consumer-level pricepoint whether it was $200 or so), was going to be, not for R3D/100, but for the future i740 chip.


From the Real3D interview
http://web.archive.org/web/20000915221208/www.hardcoregaming.com/spotlight/r3dint.htm

HGN: A while back the R3D/100 was announced as a consumer product, and then we kind of never heard anything else about it. Whatever happened to that product? Is it related in anyway to the i740?

R3D: The R3D/100 was a graphics chip designed for the high-end workstation markets such as CAD and 3D modeling. This product was not really related to the Intel740 because the i740 is targeted at the performance mainstream PC market. As a company, Real 3D has decided to focus its chip-design efforts in the mainstream PC market through our co-developments with Intel and our own designs (in addition to the custom work we do for Sega). The primary business model for Real 3D is as a board company. We are still involved in selected business opportunities with the R3D/100, but it is not a product we are actively marketing any longer.

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Hey, it happened to a lot of companies. SGI had their impressive single-chip N64 chipset available in 1996, and there was talk of making a sub-$300 PC gaming board out of it. But internal politics killed the program. Some companies just don't know how to sell the technology they have (and those companies die).

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I didn't know there was talk of making a PC gaming board out of the N64's chipset, the RCP. In 1996, it would've been better than stuff like NV1, ViRGE, ATI Rage, and the other crummy 3D accelerators, perhaps on par with the very decent Rendition Verite V1000, but not with Voodoo Graphics or PowerVR PCX1. I do know SGI's gaming chip was originally offered to Sega in 1992 before Nintendo but Sega turned it down, stupidly, because they felt the stuff they were working on for Saturn was better (it was not), and because Hitachi's SH2 was faster (it was not or would not be by the time N64 was completed). What Sega was saying was only true of their Martin-Marietta developed Model 2 *arcade* board, not the disaster of an architecture that was Saturn.

I do remember there was going to be a PC gaming board based on 3DO's main 3D chip for M2 from Cirrus Logic.
http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/whats_new/past/3do-cirrus_logic.html

Sega was fickle for the entire decade of the 1990s, beginning with the mixup between SEGA America and Japan that produced the 32X. I'm sure their management was quick to denounce the Saturn as a failure, and I'm sure they did entertain several suitors for upgrades/new console (Nvidia was actually the first with the NV2!). It's no surprise that a company with no spine would flutter from one company to the next until market needs forced a decision. Hell, by the time SEGA had selected PowerVRSG, the Saturn was already completely dead.

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The Sega-Nvidia NV2 article was very interesting, I've used it in the past for reference. There was no need for Sega to goto Nvidia at the time, because better technology existed (Lockheed Real3D, and the much cheaper 3DO M2).

Sega had access to some of the best high-end and consumer level technology during the 1990s. As well as they did using this tech for arcades, they failed to capitalize on it for home use. The 32X should've never happened. Sega should've never had TWO hardware upgrades for the MegaDrive-Genesis. One upgrade (SegaCD) would've been enough. The SegaCD had a faster 68000 CPU plus a custom chip for sprite scaling & rotation. Plus a better sound chip. What SegaCD did not have was a chip to allow Genesis to display more colors from a larger pallete, and put more sprites on-screen. If SegaCD had that too, it would've been perfect, and no need for a 32X 2-3 years later in 1994 (SegaCD launched in 1991 & 1992).

If Sega had not rushed the Saturn out in late 1994 & early 1995, but instead worked with IBM on a CPU and Lockheed Martin for graphics (whether it was R3D/100 or some other chip), Sega could've continued dominating the U.S. market for the rest of the 90s, or at least keep pace with Sony.

What a great thread. Very informative!

OP: thanks for the awesome writeup...

i actually had the Real 3d Starfighter.... it was my first 3d card

[Eyes well up] Thanks for a trip down memory lane [/welled up]

Looks like it probably would've been competitive with a voodoo1 or a souped up voodoo1 speed wise, albeit with higher color output.

Pictured here is the Real3D/100 and the high-end Real3D-Pro/1000 image generator (the guts of the Pro/1000 was used in Sega's Model 3 arcade board

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Yep and Virtua Fighter 3 was the title showing it off. WAY ahead of it's time graphically.

its funny this came up. As i was reading, i remembered i just pulled an old AGP card from a P2 machine last week. Sure enough, its an i740 @ 8mb ram.

Don't be hatin' the i740. Played Monster Truck Madness 2 at 1024 x 768 with everything turned on. Good times back then.

I had a intel 740 as well. Badass little card, decent driver stability for sure, better color output with less dithering than a voodoo, just slower.

AceGoober said:

Don't be hatin' the i740. Played Monster Truck Madness 2 at 1024 x 768 with everything turned on. Good times back then.

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great game

Mr. Bluntman said:

What a great thread. Very informative!

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Ah, yes. Back in the day when there was real competition in the 3d markets.

(And the great volume of game publishers out back then - really quite an amazing variety of titles making use of all this very-new-tech pouring out. Good times, good times!)

AceGoober said:

Don't be hatin' the i740. Played Monster Truck Madness 2 at 1024 x 768 with everything turned on. Good times back then.

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Couldn't play Tribes 1 for shite, though.

I actually had (have?) an i740 card as well Used it for a secondary Linux box

im thinking of trying to get a win 95 box together with this card... just need an old P1

Smiththers2 said:

im thinking of trying to get a win 95 box together with this card... just need an old P1

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p1? I got my real3d starfighter with the purchase of an OEM computer way back in 1998 that had a Pentium 2 @ 450mhz (horribly mismatched pair, lol.... so sue me, i was only 13)

brucedeluxe169 said:

p1? I got my real3d starfighter with the purchase of an OEM computer way back in 1998 that had a Pentium 2 @ 450mhz (horribly mismatched pair, lol.... so sue me, i was only 13)

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lol was just a shot in the dark. its been a while since ive had stuff that old...

even if... the real3d starfighter really wasn't that great of a card....

for really old school gaming, does anything really beat the voodoo 3/4? (no, the TNT/geforce dont.... they dont support Glide...)

It would be cool if they had a Skunkworks for computer parts.

dderidex said:

Couldn't play Tribes 1 for shite, though.

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It could after Intel released the ICD. The D3D wrapper had horrible OpenGL performance in every OGL game.

It's funny now how important OpenGL *used* to be.

Whoa, this thread suddenly got jump started again

I come from a different perspective, a console gamer.

In the mid-late 90s, I did not have a PC, so I didn't own a 3D accelerator for gaming. I was a console-only gamer, always looking "up" to the arcades with their awesomely impressive technology, that consoles never matched.

Sure, by the time the 32-bit consoles came out, it was possible to do high-end 16-bit sprite scaling games of the late 80s without any downgrades, and even semi-decent ports of 3D arcade games, but consoles never kept up with arcades (totally different situation now, where consoles are as good as if not better than most arcade boards).

The Saturn was a huge disappointment. Sega had promised the Saturn would be capable of perfect conversion of Daytona USA. The early hype even stated that Saturn was based on the latest 32-bit arcade hardware that powered Daytona. This was not true. While Saturn was indeed based on Sega's 32-bit arcade technology, the Saturn's graphic chips were based on their System32 board, which was good for pushing around massive amounts of 2D sprites, scaling & rotation and lots of background layers. Not good for 3D. Even with Sega's last-ditch efforts to beef up the Saturn's 3D ability in the face of PlayStation, it wasn't even close to good enough. The Saturn was not a good machine for handling flat-shaded Model 1 games, nevermind the much more advanced texture-mapped Model 2 games.

It was exciting to me to hear that Sega's arcade technology partner, was going to make 3D cards for home use in 1996. It was even more exciting that there was a good possibility of a new console to replace Saturn, or an upgrade for Saturn in 1996 or 1997. Based around this new Real3D/100 chipset from Lockheed, which was more powerful than the older Model 2 board, which dated back to 1993-1994.

While the PC did see a good share of powerful 3D cards from 3DFX , PowerVR, Real3D-Intel i740, Nvidia , the console side of things were staggnant for years.
Console gamers had to make due with the weak 3D tech that was in the PS1 and N64 (nevermind the Saturn which was subpar for 3D)...The only real hope of a powerful 3D console that could do arcade-level 3D, and keep up with 3D PC cards, was the 3DO M2.
The M2 was said to offer slightly better than Voodoo1 performance which meant at least Sega Model 2 and Namco Super System 22 arcade games could come home without huge downgrades. The M2 was canceled in mid 1997. It wouldn't be until the Dreamcast, PlayStation2, GameCube and Xbox1 that consoles had enough 3D performance to handle modern arcade games, at a time when arcades were dying in the U.S.

That's where my interest in Real3D/100 , and to some extent, the i740, came along.

The last I heard of Real3D, is that ATI took over Real3D's Orlando, Florida office, opening up ATI's Orlando R&D center sometime between 1999 and 2001. ATI got a decent portion of Real3D's patents and engineering talent. I suppose it would be safe to say that modern ATI / AMD GPUs have some of the Real3D DNA in them.

pxc said:

It could after Intel released the ICD. The D3D wrapper had horrible OpenGL performance in every OGL game.

It's funny now how important OpenGL *used* to be.

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OpenGL is still important. There is a large market outside Windows. Most current-gen consoles and handhelds use some form of OpenGL (ES), OS X uses OpenGL only and there is of course Linux (Wine uses a wrapper around OGL for D3D).

My company's game engine is based on OpenGL too, as it's the only sane thing to do for portability.

pxc said:

It could after Intel released the ICD. The D3D wrapper had horrible OpenGL performance in every OGL game.

It's funny now how important OpenGL *used* to be.

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No, still - I had a Real3d Starfighter in a Pentium-II 233mhz box, and it choked on Tribes in OpenGL mode. Had to play the game in 'software' mode (heh - remember when games shipped with a 'software rendering' mode?) to get playable performance at 640x480. Oh, sure, the i740 did just fine at 320x240, and it looked pretty darn good, too. Aside from the INCREDIBLY low resolution, which was really a serious disadvantage at the office.

dderidex said:

No, still - I had a Real3d Starfighter in a Pentium-II 233mhz box, and it choked on Tribes in OpenGL mode.

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So did I. The only OGL support the i740 had for around a year IIRC was the D3D to OGL wrapper that was horrible. OpenGL performance increased significantly after the ICD was released, and I don't remember Tribes being unplayable on the i740 (the graphics menu even had an option for the i740). All of the contemporary peers of the i740 paled in comparison to the Voodoo2, but that was partially because Tribes had GLide support for it and the V2 had much better hardware.

If I still had an i740 I would slap it in the retro system and test it with Tribes just for kicks.

Elledan said:

OpenGL is still important. There is a large market outside Windows.

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Who was talking about phones and consoles? Not me or dderidex when you replied to my post based on his Tribes claim. OpenGL is fairly dead for PC gaming (and many other uses) and even the ports of top games on the Mac use wrappers for graphics compatibility. Sorry if that's not appealing to you, but it's the reality.

ah this thread brings back memories. Was big into SGI machines back in the 1990s...anyone remember the SGI Magic Bus??? Other 3D players were Accelgraphics and the one from Mitsubishi....remember their 3D ram? Evans and Sutherland? Intergraph had some neat 3D workstations back then. Sometimes I miss the old days. *tear in eye*

Come to think of it I think I still have some Real3D brochures in my drawer here.

Glint...I think there was the 300SX and the 500TX had texturing. I think I have brochures on all of this stuff still in my drawer.

Cheval said:

ah this thread brings back memories. Was big into SGI machines back in the 1990s...anyone remember the SGI Magic Bus??? Other 3D players were Accelgraphics and the one from Mitsubishi....remember their 3D ram? Evans and Sutherland? Intergraph had some neat 3D workstations back then. Sometimes I miss the old days. *tear in eye*

Come to think of it I think I still have some Real3D brochures in my drawer here.

Glint...I think there was the 300SX and the 500TX had texturing. I think I have brochures on all of this stuff still in my drawer.

Click to expand...

Evans & Sutherland still exists sort of, their graphics division is part of Rockwell-Collins now, and they've got some pretty interesting stuff (no more custom hardware, but still good software)

I remember the SGI Indigo/Indy boxes, and 3DLabs, and Matrox, and PowerVR, and of course 3dfx with those ridiculous Obisdian boards and that 8-GPU VSA-100 card for Quantum3D

and yes, it was Glint and Delta
still have my STB GLyder TX Gold, with Glint 500TX and Delta geometry co-processor, and a full 16MB of RAM

Monster Truck Madness 2, I sunk so many hours in to the demo.. ;-;

Interesting,I have nothing to say so ole lockheed doesn't show up at my door.(LOL)
there is a LM plant by my house actually

thunderblade said:

There are some pictures of Real3D cards floating around somewhere, I'll try to find them.

Real3D/100 (1995)
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/891/199503real3dr3d100nw4.jpg
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/3118/199503real3dr3d1002mc0.jpg

This version of Real3D/100 only had 2 chips, it lacked the 3rd chip, the geometry processor/T&L unit

Real3D Lightning/110 (1997)
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/6435/199708real3dlightning11nk9.jpg

Real3D Cobra (1999 prototype)
http://img15.imageshack.us/i/1999real3dcobraprototypud3.jpg/


Again, these mid-range professional Real3D cards series should *not* to be confused with the crummy consumer gaming StarFighter cards which had the Real3D-Intel i740 chip, which competed with 3Dfx, PowerVR, ATI, Nvidia, etc.

Click to expand...

They are mine actually.

www.tga3dx.com