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Date: August 10, 1989 16:16
From: BERT::LTURNER
To: @SYS$MAIL:EVERYBODY
The following press release was placed in several computer graphics publications prior to the SIGGRAPH '89 Conference. NEW 3-D GRAPHICS ENGINE FROM ATARI GAMES TO BE ON DISPLAY AT SIGGRAPH SHOW MILPITAS, Calif., July 5, 1989 -- A new high-performance 3-D graphics engine, promising advanced capabilities at a fraction of the cost of similar products, will be on display at the upcoming SIGGRAPH '89 Conference, July 31 - August 4 in Boston. The new graphics engine, dubbed ShoView, is under development by Sho Graphics, a division of Milpitas, Calif.- based Atari Games Corporation. According to Rich Moore, Vice President/Engineering, ShoView will compete with a growing category of solid modeling engines designed for CAD/CAM, architectural, simulation, video animation and other sophisticated 3-D applications. ShoView will operate with an IBM PC and other IBM-compatible systems, Moore said. ShoView's impressive solid modeling performance allows a wide variety of users to create more complex and highly realistic 3-D scenes and images. The power of the ShoView architecture allows 1 million 3-D matrix transformations per second, breaking major price/performance barriers. In excess of 190,000 clipped and projected polygons per second can be processed. In contrast to other systems, Gourand shading and texture mapping are fully supported by the unique ShoView architecture without loss of frame fill rate. Application programs can use a high-level 3-D graphics library, allowing greatly enhanced levels of interactivity when dealing with complex 3-D objects and scenes. ShoView will interface with any standard multi- sync monitor having VGA line resolution, and displays over 65,000 simultaneous colors from a palette of 16 million. Lighting is automatically calculated using up to four independent white light sources. Also, each pixel has a 16-bit z buffer, and the system features a double-buffered display screen and fast screen clear. Sho Graphics expects to ship small quantities of ShoView systems to the field by fourth quarter 1989, with full scale production and shipping beginning in first quarter 1990. Specific marketing and distribution plans have not been finalized, Moore reported. "Our overall plan is to bring a product to market that will offer far greater processing power and more advanced features for less than half the cost of other advanced graphics products now entering the market," he said. Moore reported that Sho Graphics's primary goals at SIGGRAPH will be to demonstrate ShoView to industry insiders, as well as to continue the process of encouraging software developers to write new ShoView applications for other computer systems and workstations via the HOOPS library. "Our basic message at SIGGRAPH will be that we have developed a highly cost-effective hardware solution which allows a broad range of applications to tap the power of interactive 3-D graphics," Moore said. "We believe this product offers an extraordinarily high level of performance that will bring quality 3-D graphic capability to users previously priced out of interactive 3-D graphics, or those who were dissatisfied with existing systems." This year's SIGGRAPH conference is expected to draw up to 30,000 visitors to Boston's Hynes Convention Center. Sho Graphics will demonstrate ShoView in booth #2355. In addition, the firm will offer a hospitality suite, allowing software developers and other interested conference-goers a chance to meet with the ShoView development team and company officials. Sho Graphics is a new division of Atari Games Corporation, one of the world's leading video game software and hardware developers, and is headquartered at 675 Sycamore Drive, Milpitas, Calif., 95035-1110; (408) 434-3700. Atari Games Corporation is a privately held company, is not affiliated with Atari Corporation, and should be referred to as Atari Games. # # # #
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Date: August 18, 1989 21:28
From: SANDY::HOFF
To: @SYS$MAIL:EVERYBODY
Very few people at Atari have had the opportunity to see the interactive, graphic demonstrations of the ShoView product that were presented Siggraph 89 in Boston earlier this August. They will be on display in the central conference room of 675 Sycamore from 10 am until 12 noon: Please stop in and take a look. The Holy Grail/System3D/Sigma/ShoGraphics/ShoView team
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Date: August 21, 1989 11:28
From: SANDY::HOFF
To: @SYS$MAIL:EVERYBODY
OOPS!! No ShoView demo today. I left out the date of the demo and the ShoView demo has been delayed until further vaxmail notice. (We hope to do it later this week.) The Holy Grail/System3D/Sigma/ShoGraphics/ShoView team
Aug 10, 1989