home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Grand Slam 3
/
Grand Slam 3.iso
/
017
/
inet4_5.arj
/
M2ANNRPT.TXT
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1995-05-07
|
7KB
|
166 lines
Subject: M2 3DO Debut Report 2
Date: Wed, 3 May 95 22:03:46 EDT
I'm posting this info about the M2 Conference in New York once again.
Apparently, my News Reader transfered my info in such a way, that
part two showed up first in the newsgroups, and I still don't
see a sign of part one. I wrote the report as soon as I returned
from the show (about 12:30 PM in the afternoon), and I'm noticing
that quite a few people here are still wondering where any reports are.
SO....what I did was temporarily switch over to my older account (which
is still active for situations like this) in order to repost the report
as this server is much faster with newsgroup posts (and that's about it).
If you see this report twice, you'll know what happened. :)
Here it goes again....
M2 Launch 1: Carnegie Hall, May 2nd.
Ok, just got back from the M2...ah..event at Carnigie Hall...make
that Carnigie Hall Cinema (which is a small theater). Once I
realized the presentation was in the adjacent cinema, and not
the "Hall' itself, I knew it would be nothing more than a
conference with a video presentation, rather than some kind
of "hands-on" exhibition. Trip of course was the main event; -
speaker of the house who spent the majority of the hour and
a half talking about demographics, and the M2's capabilities
compared to the "other" machines that are coming this fall.
After the many spec-related slides on the large screen, an
unbelievable demonstration of what the M2 will be producing
came to life.
They first showed a 16-bit Mortal Kombat, which gave way to
the next level, that being Way of the Warrior which Trip quoted
as "still being a bit choppy". Next we saw a fighting-style
game featuring a very shapely female up against a giant dino. The
pair were brilliantly rendered, going WAY beyond anything even
seen in a coin-op. Virtua Fighters II and Killer Instinct
suddenly looked old.
After the fighting demo, we got to see how M2 will handle
scaling routines, as a graphic display of stunningly rendered
cow behind a picket fence zoomed in, without a trace of pixel
expansion.They showed the same routine without M2, as the
screen zoomed into that familiar blockiness which we've become
acustomed to in today's 3D games. The highlight was this
racing game which looked like MegaRace beefed up about 1000
times. The color, reflection, speed sound, everything - was
too good to be REAL - it was workstation quality - exactly.
Which brings up the big question - was this in fact the M2
tself producing all this magic in on the big screen? When
Trip was asked - he replied with something like "it's
basically an exact replication of M2's environment, so what
you're seeing is a simulationn of the exact specifications
that will make up the M2.
According to Trip, there will be M2 mock-ups on the floor at E3,
but unfortunetly, they didn't have actual M2 demos (running from
M2 hardware) ready for this presentation. Trip is still deeply
concentrating on the standard 3DO, so there is no word on a
release date, or price (even though 3 or 4 people asked the
same question, even though he repeatedly said this information
was not ready yet).
The MPEG-1 is built in, so according to Trip, that's a $200.00
savings right there (if you're one of those who were planning
on buying the stand-lone MPEG-1 expansion).
When asked which companies will be working on M2 products, of
course EA will be on the same course they currently are with the
standard 3DO unit - so that's already good news. Trip mentioned
that only a small handfull of very talented companies will produce
the first titles, rather then a bunch of companies producing
mediocre games. Supposedly - a few of this games will be coin-op
renditions. Trip ensured the audience that there won't be many
games at launch, but the few that will be showing should be
mighty impressive.
OK, here's some specs....
* 10 Custom coprocessors
* 528 MBytes/Second Bug Bandwidth
Graphic Performance
* 1 Million Polygons per second
* 100 Million pixels/second rendering speed
Highly intergrated system architecture
CPU
- Power PC 602
- 66 Mhz RISC
Instruction/data caches
- 64Kbits total (32k/32k)
Floating Point Math Capability
132 Million floating Point Operations Per Second
Memory
- 48 Mbits (SDRAM, ROM)
- 64-bit bus
- Cache Coherent Memory System
Graphics
- Rez - 640*480 and 320*2240 or 16-but color depth
- Full Motion Video
* MPEG-1 Video built-in
* MPEG engie supports JPEG decompression
Custom Graphics Capabilities
* Texture Mapping: destination base rendering
* Texture Compression: Hardware decompression
* Filtering: linear, bi-linear, tri-linear, point samled
* Mip Mapping: multiple levels of detail
* Gourad shading: RGB and Alpha Channel
* 3-D Perspective correction
* Hardware Z-Buffer
* Special effects
Audio
* 66 MhZ DSP
* MPEG audio decompression
* 32 Channles: hardware decompression and interpolation
on all channels
* 3-D CD-quality sound
Also, during the conference, Trip wanted to insure folks that
the standard 3DO unit will continue to flourish with newly
announced titles such as EA Baseball, NHL Hockey '96,
and Foes of Ali (Boxing) - all from EA alone. I also
found it interesting that Goldstar will be the distributor
of the coin-Op fighter, PRIMAL RAGE which is coming in the
fall.
We never got to see the mystery box in action, but Trip did have
the technology in his pocket. He pulled out a small circuit
board with three chips - it was not larger than his palm.
Overall, the conference was basically just that; a long speech, a
Q&A panel open for discussion (although Trip got hit with 99%
of the questions), and a short demo of M2 (equivilent)
technology. If the M2 is anything like the demos that were shown,
simply nothing will touch it (though the U64 specs come a bit close).
This is full-blown, high-end workstation material - no joke. Now
we'll have to wait for E3 - to get more info, and perhaps see some
demos coming from the hardware itself.
Last minute update - The evening after the show - I spoke with
a fellow from one of 3DO's third party companies. While I'll
leave his name and company anonymous - he did go on to mention
that what we did view at the show was basically a perfect example
of the real thing (he did see the real thing). I really hope Trip's
dream can come true before the year is up. I sure as hell wouldn't
mind playing something like that racing demo - though I'd have to
say, it'll be tough to look at anything else after you've witnessed
this monster.
That's it! By the way, don't respond to this E-mail address (again, I'm
only using this for the newsgroups), stick with joecat@phantom.com.
This info will be reposted at my Web site as well.
The real-deal below...