Feature:Siggraph 98 Update/LINUX 3D SIG

Cyrrin has written in with a killer update from Siggraph 98. He's got notes about everything from Alpha to Antz, as well as a ton of juicy nuggets from the Linux 3D SIG. Click immediately below and read this if you're at all into graphics!

The Following was written by Slashdot Reader Cyrrin

The pace has really picked up since the Exhibition booths opened on Tuesday. Pixar, one of the most popular booths in the center, was graciously handing out free copies of "Geri's Game" (the Academy Award winning short) which included the trailer for the very promising "A Bug's Life".

And speaking of bugs, keep an eye out for "Antz", and "Prince of Egypt" from Dreamworks and P.D.I.. Prince of Egypt boasts twice as much computer rendering as Titanic... and it looks great!

Digital expects the 1GHz 21264 chip to be released next summer, or alternatively, as their banner reads, "1 Gigahertz by 2000". Meanwhile, their 600Mhz 21264 workstation chews through anything you can toss at it. And Sun, while advertising their 3-D workstations as price/performance competitive to SGIs, has split their marketing pitch 50/50 to include plugs for Java.

CMU has a booth where they've been demonstrating a high-level 3-D web authoring system, called Alice . And the Lego Corporation has been showing off their microprocessor-imbedded, programmable robotics packages. Man, I wish I had this stuff to play with when I was younger! Okay, the Linux3D SIG. Brian Paul (author and maintainer of the Mesa package) opened the discussion with news that Mesa 3.0 release is due out in the next few weeks. Among other things, it will include the OpenGL 1.2 API, a revised GLX extension, and a few new texture functions.

Darryl Strauss (maintainer of the Linux Glide port) announced that version 3 of the Glide 3 drivers will be available soon and will access more of the Voodoo 2's capabilities. He also said that he has begun work on the soon-to-be-released-and-blow-everything-else-out-of-the-water Banshee card, a 2-D/3-D combo card scheduled for Q3 release.

Also, it would appear that the Obsidian 2 from Quantum 3-D is running in Linux under the Glide drivers... and the people from Quantum didn't even know it. Finally, Darryl said that there is now a Glide library for Alpha Linux that will be available very soon.

Next up was Metrolink, announcing their latest X server release, which includes the OpenGL extensions for use with Permedia, GLint, and more chips. Basically, it appears that hardware vendore are becoming more interested in supporting Linux, but only feel secure with NDAs with commercial companies like Metrolink. Metrolink stated that they feel that the XFree86 and Mesa can cooexist with commercial servers and extensions and that there will continue to be a demand for each, depending on the situation.

The important thing is... requests for Linux support are having an effect, and companies that are traditionally Windows-only are turning their heads.

Three more companies had reps there to answer questions. Precision Insight had a short blurb about their interest in Linux, and said that they fully support direct hardware rendering, instead of incurring overhead by going through the X server.

3DFX gave a little presentation on the new Banshee (which can have up to 16MB video memory not including texture memory, up to 1920x1440 resolution, and blazing 2D and 3D performance). They also said that they'd really like to hear back from Linux developers about what people are doing with the Glide-based software. You can mail them at [e-mail] if you have a nifty application that you want to tell them about.

Finally, SGI came to the front of the room, and was immediately inundated with questions about Farenheit and the future of Open GL. Farenheit is a spec that is being "published" by SGI and Microsoft and is a hybrid of Direct3D and OpenGL, and will allow for faster 3D on Windows systems. Unfortunately, that leaves the Linux community out of the game. This is even more true with the SceneGraph API that is being developed concurrently, and when finished, will be completely owned by Microsoft. HPUX, IRIX, and a couple others will be supported, but a port to any other systems will require a license from Microsoft.

SGI did make sure to stress though, that for cross-platform 3D apps, there is not substitute for pure OpenGL, and that they, in no way, will discontinue support or develeopment of the OpenGL that we all know and love.

One more thing. It was suggested at the meeting that there is an engineer for a "company that is VERY well known in 3D modeling and animation" who has ported their complete software package to Linux. No names were mentioned, just the suggestion that we "harass them all politely" until we can convince them that a commercial release of the product would be a viable business move.

My opinion? I'd have to place my bets on Softimage. They already have their product on NT and IRIX. So go and evangelize... just remember... it's just a guess.