3 March 2003
Reported, written and edited by David Duberman
For editorial/subscription inquiries, send mailto: spectrum1@broadviewnet.net
Search the Spectrum archives at http://www.3dlinks.com/spectrum
___________________________________
___________________________________
NXN
Software will launch its alienbrain Engineer at the Game Developers Conference
2003 in San Jose. The new system for software-configuration management (SCM) is
designed to make software development for media and entertainment projects more
efficient, with such features special branching, merging and sharing
functionality. For example, pre-configured branch types facilitate the creation
and maintenance of new language or platform versions. alienbrain Engineer
provides clients for Windows, Linux and Mac OS (9, X, Jaguar) as well as
integrations for development environments (IDEs) such as Microsoft Visual
Studio, .Net and Metrowerks CodeWarrior.
Claimed
benefits for developers include:
___________________________________
Anark
Corporation last week announced the formation of AnarkDigital, a design house
and division of Anark specializing in the development of interactive media.
Using multimedia tool, Anark Studio, and a team of designers and developers,
AnarkDigital's multimedia projects are geared towards driving revenue and
recognition for their clients through stunning interactive experiences. In
addition to creating original content for clients, AnarkDigital will also
provide consulting and training services for Anark Studio customers.
AnarkDigital
provides a range of creative services ranging from motion graphics and 3D
animation to video production and custom audio for applications such as
corporate presentations, interactive training, tradeshow presentations, CD-ROMs
and Web applications.
___________________________________
anacubis,
a division of the i2 Group of Washington, D.C., an international company
specializing in visual investigative analysis software for the most demanding
intelligence professionals, last week released its Web-enabled visualization
technology for online information portals.
Leveraging
over a decade of research and development, anacubis extends the visualization
and analysis technology used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies
worldwide to online business information databases. The anacubis Viewer
solution incorporates Java and XML-based technology to enable commercial
information professionals to extract intelligence from complex data.
anacubis
Viewer lets end users and information professionals navigate and explore online
business information, uncovering hidden relationships and trends within the
data. The software creates a visual representation of complex data in real-time,
which can be manipulated and acted upon. It does this by automatically
representing entities, such as people and organizations, pictorially as icons
and shows the relationships between such entities as link types. As the user
explores the online source, data is continually added to the visualization,
providing a big picture overview of a particular organization, market or area
of interest.
The
company's first announced partners are: LexisNexis and Questel Orbit.
The
anacubis Viewer is available now to interested parties for integration into
their enterprise infrastructure. The anacubis View Manager will be available
for free download from http://www.anacubis.com
in mid-March.
___________________________________
Coming
March 31 from Eovia Corporation is Amapi Designer 7 (US$499), 3D modeling
software for Mac OS 9 and OS X and Windows platforms.
New
features include:
___________________________________
Coming
late this spring from Electric Rain is Swift 3D 3.0 for Mac OS X. Swift 3D is a
standalone application for designers to build and export 3D animations to the
Macromedia Flash (SWF) file format, as well as other vector and raster formats.
Swift 3D for Mac OS X will be available late spring 2003 as a free upgrade to
existing Swift 3D 3.0 users.
The Mac OS
X version of Swift 3D will offer advantages over previous versions by utilizing
Mac OS X's dynamic memory management and multi-tasking capabilities, reportedly
providing faster rendering speeds and enhanced workflow.
___________________________________
Fakespace
Systems, a supplier of immersive display solutions, and Xi Graphics, a supplier
of graphics drivers for Linux and Unix-based systems, last week released a new
software driver that enables stereoscopic immersive environments to run on the
Linux platform. Now Fakespace visualization systems that incorporate digital
projection technology, such as the CAVE, RAVE II, WorkWall, and ImmersaDesk,
can run Linux-based applications using off-the-shelf graphics cards.
Xi
Graphics, the first company to provide Linux drivers for OpenGL applications
for CRT-based visualization, developed new Linux-based drivers for the 3Dlabs
Wildcat III graphics card, which is used to drive advanced visualization
environments based on stereoscopic digital projection.
Based on
an open text customization solution using XiG’s Accelerated-X driver software,
any stereoscopic capable Linux application can be used with supported
Linux-based graphics cards to display both active and passive stereo modes with
digital projection technology. Digital projectors provide brighter and sharper
images that are easier to control and maintain compared to traditional
CRT-based projectors.
http://www.fakespacesystems.com
___________________________________
Coming
later this quarter from SolidWorks Corporation is PhotoWorks release 2,
software that lets engineers create near photo-quality images of a finished
product design. The software gives users more control over key computer-aided
design (CAD) features such as light, shadow, material, and definition than
previous versions. For example, a designer can use PhotoWorks release 2 to
create a realistic image of a chrome-plated toaster in a kitchen with accurate
lighting, shadows, and reflections off the toaster's sides.
PhotoWorks
release 2 contains three enhancements:
PhotoWorks
release 2 is based on mental images' mental ray software, used in digital film
studios (for such recent films as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, The
Matrix, and Spider-Man), videogame manufacturers, scientific laboratories, and
other industries that require high-quality images.
___________________________________
3Dconnexion,
a developer of motion controllers, last week released SpaceBall 5000, the next
generation of line of motion controllers. The SpaceBall 5000 features a new
optical sensor, said to offer improved performance and control to the 3D CAD
designer. The new sensor technology reportedly provides drift-free and
calibration-free operation with its non-wearing measuring system.
The
SpaceBall 5000 USB offers a new, modern silver-and-black design, with a soft
coat palm rest, while the serial version retains the black design. The USB
version offers a 6x higher data rate, providing greater precision and control.
It also supports the recently introduced Microsoft Office Plug-In, which
premiered on 3Dconnexion's SpaceNavigator.
___________________________________
Users of
trueSpace 3D software might like to know about a new $10 product. The
Charactermation Modeling kit contains over 100 royalty-free 3d models in
trueSpace .scn and .cob format.
The models
include low-poly mesh cages, plus realistic yet editable models that are ready
to texture and animate. The kit includes starter head shapes, hand shapes, and
body shapes, some in low-res mesh cage format, some hi-res and realistic to be
used with trueSpace's native subdivision surfaces.
The kit
also contains face-modeling tutorials and bones animations, including run and
walkcycles.
http://www.ts.skwerm.com/mojo/flashfloyd/
___________________________________
Last week
in New York, four children's cartridge-based computing platforms were
announced. These, along with the Tablet PC, offer opportunities for children's
publishers. They will be discussed at "Dust or Magic Bologna -- From Paper
to Pixels" to be held next month prior to the Bologna Children's Book Fair
(March 31 - April 1).
iSprout
(The Original San Francisco Toymakers), $100, ages 4-up. Like the Leapster and
the Pixter, this portable learning system has a color, backlit touch screen;
with a library of cartridges that includes activities adapted from the
JumpStart line of software. Children can store their work on the flash memory,
(up to four pictures), or export them to a regular computer by way of a USB
port. Runs on 4 AA batteries. Coming "summer 2003."
Leapster
(LeapFrog) $80, ages 4-8. Cartridge-based system combines a backlit color touch
screen with rechargable batteries -- the only device of the four with a
rechargable battery option. Included software will teach "60 essential
skills in reading, math and music" and every activity will have three
levels that a child can select. Additional cartridges can be purchased for $25
each and include Leapster Kindergarten (ages 4-8), Leapster First Grade (ages
5-7), Dora the Explorer Animal Rescue (ages 4-6) and SpongeBob SquarePants
Saves the Day (ages 5-8). Coming "November 2003."
Pixter
Color (Fisher-Price, Inc.) $80, ages 4-up. Two years after the first Pixter,
this new version features a color back-lit touch screen with better resolution.
The drawing program has been upgraded from the Pixter Plus, with 16 colors, a
paint bucket, and the ability to rotate graphics. Four new software cartridges
are planned, based on Barbie and Rescue Heroes. Runs on 4 AA batteries that
give it approximately four hours of operating time. "Coming September
2003."
PowerTouch
Learning System, Fisher-Price, $50, ages 3-8. Fisher-Price's answer to the
successful LeapPad. Lap-sized electronic book reader requires no stylus, just a
finger, banana or anything else a child wants to use. The reader uses optical
page codes to know what page it is on--there is no need to press a
"go" button to tell the reader what page it's on.
Look for
more details in the March/April 2003 issue of Children's Software Revue.
Preview the cover at http://www.childrenssoftware.com.
To
register for Dust or Magic Bologna: From Pixels to Paper, visit http://www.childrenssoftware.com/dustormagic.
___________________________________
Thanks to Slashdot for tipping us to this item: In an article posted on GameSpy.com last Saturday, based on a speech at the recent DICE conference, industry veteran and Microsoft Xbox evangelist Seamus Blackley sounds off on the current "broken" state of the game industry. "The number one problem we have … right now is that we're designing for publishers and not the audience. Designers are thinking about what will look good to a publisher, and this is just remarkably stupid, because designers have no idea of what publishers are actually looking for and why." He also disparages bloated design documents, saying "A 300-page design document is not a very good way to be creative. Design documents actually discourage quality." He goes on to criticize the royalty system, publishers, and focus testing.
Lastly, Blackley suggests that the industry focus on the mass market. Problem is, your editor has been hearing this suggestion for years at GDC, but little action is ever taken on that front. Let's hope that this time, the developers are listening.
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/march03/dice/seamus/
___________________________________
Butterfly,
a network and server technology provider for online games, has signed a tools
and middleware agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. to provide
technology and networking services for the PlayStation2 computer entertainment
system.
As part of
the agreement, IBM and Butterfly activated a computing grid said to let online
game developers take advantage of the advanced capabilities of PlayStation2 by
more efficiently provisioning resources to meet the demands of console gamers.
According
to Butterfly, PlayStation2 game developers can ensure that their games are
always available online, and operating at peak performance, by engineering
their games directly on a live computing grid. Registered developers will
receive a software development kit with sample games, client libraries, server
software, documentation and technical support. Developers can access the Grid
by registering on the company's Website.
The
Butterfly Grid takes advantage of the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA),
an new standard. OGSA supports several of the most critical functions of
successful online games: availability, security and performance. The Grid's
OGSA-compliant software monitors the processing load on Linux-based IBM
BladeCenters populated with 14 Blades, each with two Intel Xeon processors.
When the Grid determines there are too many players connected to any particular
server, the Grid automatically reconfigures underutilized Blades to support the
most popular game-play and seamlessly transfers players to these Blades.
Butterfly.net
is working with the Global Grid Forum to ensure that any video game developed
according to publicly available specifications and Internet open standards can
draw resources-on-demand from the Butterfly Grid. The Globus Toolkit, available
by download from http://www.globus.org,
provides authorization and accounting functions, allocates hardware resources,
configures game-specific logic and monitors performance on the Butterfly Grid.
___________________________________
Zona,
Inc., a network solution provider for online games, will release Terazona 1.1
at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Jose, California on Thursday,
March 6. The complete Terazona product suite will support small to medium to
massive-scale MMOGs.
Feature
highlights of 1.1 include:
Zona's
Terazona Community Edition (TCE) delivers a network online game engine for up
to 500 players. Today’s peer-to-peer (P2P) games can support from 8 to 32
players, and most MMOGs are over 1,000 concurrent players.
TCE
focuses on bridging the gap between P2P games and MMOGs. These games are likely
to be short-term and focus on winners of the match or race. Developers of this
nature tend to focus on two types of games including:
TCE
product operates at one game server for up to 500 players. Also included is
additional license for one game server to provide for fail-over
(fault-tolerant) support.
Zona's
Terazona Standard Edition (TSE) delivers a network online game engine for
lower-budget and smaller-scale online games with a few thousand players.
Zona's
Terazona MMOG Edition (TME) delivers a network online game engine for
large-scale online games capable of supporting up to 32,000 players per server
cluster.
___________________________________
At this
week's Game Developers Conference (GDC), GarageGames plans to premiere
ThinkTanks, a cartoon-style tank game from BraveTree Productions, preview a new
release of Orbz with a single-player mode, from 21-6 Productions, and display
Marble Blast from GarageGames and Monster Studios.
The titles
that GarageGames will show at GDC are built on the Torque Game Engine.
GarageGames will have all these games showing in their booth (#940) along with
tech demos of Tennis Critters from Nerd Riot Games, Realm Wars, the massively
multi-player GarageGames community project, and Idryonis Studios' Cyberfuge:
Second Battalion.
GarageGames
will be demonstrating a custom version of Marble Blast in the nVIDIA booth
(#1108), designed to show off dot3 bumpmapping, per pixel specular lighting,
and translucent refraction with dynamic cubic environment mapping.
ThinkTanks
is a single- and multi-player, cartoon-styled, power up-based tank-combat game
with a simplified play mechanic meant to appeal to the casual gamer. It
captures the simple fun of Atari "Combat" (in a 3D environment).
Since its
launch in December, 21-6 Productions is developing an upgrade version of Orbz
with requested features including single-player challenges, Botz (computer
opponents), new courses, and Macintosh and Linux support.
Tennis
Critters, a computer tennis game with chipmunks from Nerd Riot Games, can be
played with up to four players on a single computer or over the Internet.
___________________________________
The
Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences presented Interactive Achievement
Awards in 30 craft, console, and online categories, last week at the Hard Rock
Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Electronic Arts was the big winner with a
record 13 awards.
Battlefield
1942, published by Electronic Arts and developed by Digital Illusions, took
home the most awards, a total of four, including Game of the Year, Computer
Game of the Year, Innovation in Computer Gaming, and Online Gameplay of the
Year. Animal Crossing, published by Nintendo of America and developed by
Nintendo Co. Ltd., received the next highest number of awards, a total of
three, including Innovation in Console Gaming, Console Role-Playing Game of the
Year, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Design. Overall, Nintendo received
seven awards.
Sega's Yu
Suzuki, known as a forefather of console video gaming, won the academy's Hall
of Fame Award.
The
winners, in alphabetical order:
The awards
ceremony, held during the annual D.I.C.E. Summit (Design, Innovate, Communicate,
Entertain), were hosted by Dave Foley of Kids In The Hall. Among the presenters
were Tony Hawk, Blue Man Group, Kelly Hu, Kristen Dalton, Kristina Anapau, and
Mike Metzger.
___________________________________
The
International Game Developers Association (IGDA) will give two awards to honor
industry contributions at the Game Developer Choice Awards, Thursday, March 6,
in San Jose, Calif.
The founders of Activision will receive the
First Penguin Award and developer Doug Church will be honored with the IGDA
Award for Community Contribution at the ceremony held during the Game
Developers Conference.
The First
Penguin Award acknowledges developers who have taken risks to break new ground
in the game industry. This year's recipients--David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Jim
Levy, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead--will be honored for establishing the first
third-party developer of video game software. In an industry challenged by
consolidations, buyouts and complex relationships between publishers and
developers, the Activision pioneers were the first to model a solution which
has become a business standard - the independent development house.
Activision
was founded when Crane, Kaplan, Miller and Whitehead left Atari and joined
former music industry executive Levy to form a new company in Mountain View,
California. The startup's first game was Dragster, the first game independently
released for the Atari VCS, in 1980. Between 1980 and 1988, the company
launched 52 games with the designers' identities prominently featured in all
packaging and advertising.
The IGDA
Award for Community Contribution is presented to a developer who has made
significant efforts in building community, sharing knowledge and advancing the
art form of interactive entertainment. Doug Church, technical director, Eidos,
will be acknowledged for his team focus, his efforts to build community and to
improve the industry over the past 12 years. An inspiration for both veteran
and aspiring developers, Church has been instrumental in developing
relationships between industry and academia by serving as co-chair of the IGDA
Education Committee and helping develop curricula to train the next generation
of game developers. He has been an advocate of developing a common language of
game design and improving design methods.
A veteran
of Looking Glass Studios, Church is emblematic of the Game Developers Choice
Awards' call this year to honor the talent "behind the game." The
widely respected video game creator is credited with programming, production
and design on such games as Deus Ex, Flight Unlimited, Flight Unlimited II,
Frequency, System Shock, Thief: The Dark Project, Thief II, Ultima Underworld,
and Ultima Underworld 2.
___________________________________
Alias|Wavefront
was awarded an Oscar at the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on March 1, 2003 for its
development of Maya 3D animation and effects software.
Since its
launch five years ago, Maya has been used in almost every film nominated by the
Academy in its Visual Effects category. Most recently, it was employed in this
year's Oscar-nominated films in the Visual Effects category: "Lord of the
Rings: The Two Towers," "Spider-Man," and "Star Wars
Episode II: Attack Of The Clones." Maya was also part of the production
pipelines for the nominees for best animated short: The ChubbChubbs! and Mike's
New Car and four of the five best animated feature film nominees: Ice Age, Lilo
& Stitch, Treasure Planet and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
___________________________________
Online
games are fast becoming the focus of the global game industry. Tack Jin Kim,
CEO and president of NCsoft Corp., will deliver a keynote address on March 7 at
the Game Developers Conference (GDC), where he is to introduce the Korean and
Asian online game business, outline future prospects for the online game industry,
and present NCsoft's strategies.
In his
business and legal keynote, President Tack Jin Kim of NCsoft Corp. will reveal
the story behind the rapid growth of online games in Asia and the company's
strategies for the future.
In South
Korea, where online computer games are quickly becoming a national sport, there
are more than 26,000 Internet Game Rooms, or PC Baangs. Lineage, NCsoft's
flagship product, has more than 2.5 million active subscriptions and 120,000
concurrent users in a country of nearly 50 million people.
In
addition, Robert Garriott, CEO of NCsoft's North American subsidiary in Austin,
Texas, will moderate a panel at GDC on the Korean gaming industry. The panel
will include representatives from Sony Online Entertainment, Korean game
publisher Nexon and the Korean Game Industry Alliance. "Korea, Where
Multiplayer Gaming is King" will take place Thursday, March 6.
___________________________________
Spectrum is an independent news service published every Monday for the interactive media professional community by Motion Blur Media. Spectrum covers the tools and technologies used to create interactive multimedia applications and infrastructure for business, education, and entertainment; and the interactive media industry scene. We love to receive interactive media/online-development tools and end product for review.
Send your interactive multimedia business, product, people, event, or technology news by email only to: spectrum1@broadviewnet.net.
If you contact companies or organizations mentioned here, please tell them you saw the news in Spectrum. Thanks.
___________________________________
Please send address changes (with old and new addresses), subscribe and unsubscribe requests etc. to the above address. If you use the Reply function, please do _not_ echo an entire issue of Spectrum with your message.
___________________________________
Publisher's note: We are now accepting limited advertising. If you'd like to offer your company's products or services to Spectrum's elite audience of Internet and multimedia professionals, send an email query to mailto: spectrum1@broadviewnet.net.
- David Duberman
___________________________________
©Copyright 2003 Motion Blur Media. All rights reserved. No reproduction in any for-profit or revenue-generating venue in any form without written permission from the publisher.