B I T

B L A S T S

Trick or Treat

Diane Anderson

curious trend: developers are abandoning game companies to start ventures of their own. Sid Meier left MicroProse, Chris Roberts left Origin, and now, perhaps most surprising, John Romero is leaving id, which he helped found in 1991. Dont worry, Bit Blasts introduces products to help you have a booming business with satisfied employees. Just check out some of these products....

for $1,495; the upgrade from 1.75 is $295. A Windows version of StudioPro 2.0 will be available the first quarter of 1997.
s Strata St. George, Utah (801) 628-5218 http://www.strata3d.com

Star5Trak
Realism is a big issue for game developers because everyone expects characters to move in a lifelike way; very few games actually deliver. Maybe wireless motion capture is the answer to your movement woes. Polhemus announced Star Trak. This wireless motion capture system provides six-degree-of-freedom (position and orientation) data from up to 32 sensors on multiple characters at up to 120Hz for dynamic motion capture situations. Users get freedom of movement within a 25foot-by-25-foot area. The system includes a Trak Suit (lycra body suit containing signal acquisition electronics for up to 16 receivers), a motion capture server, receivers, transmitter, and calibration fixture. January 1997 deliveries are being booked.
s Polhemus Colchester, Vt. (802) 655-3159 http://www.polhemus.com

mTropolis
mFactory Inc. is now shipping an update to its mTropolis software, an object-oriented authoring system for building interactive multimedia titles and applications for use on MacOS, Windows-based computers, and the Internet. Version 1.1 of mTropolis features run-time object cloning, support for Apples QuickTime VR, and immediate display update. It costs $4,995 to new users but is free to all registered customers of mTropolis 1.0.
s mFactory Burlingame, Calif. (415) 548-0600 http://www.mfactory.com

assembles and manipulates real-time 3D scenes in a virtual reality environment. Wearing pinch gloves and a 3D headmounted display, the SmartScene user steps into a virtual workspace and becomes the architect of realtime 3D worlds with a two-handed interface. SmartScene is available for $30,000. MultiGen also announced GameGen II for Windows NT, which provides authoring tools for building optimized 3D worlds in the OpenFlight data format. The core product, GameGen II Author, will cost $7,500. Two options, ModelMaker and BSPMaker, will cost $2,500 each.
s MultiGen San Jose, Calif. (408) 261-4100 http://www.multigen.com

Raving
Apple announced version 1.5 of its crossplatform 3D graphics toolkitQuickDraw 3D. The QuickDraw API is available for MacOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT. QuickDraw 3D has four components: a fast 24-bit interactive renderer, system-level handling of 3D components, a new 3D file format standard called 3DMF, and user-interface guidelines. Apple also announced availability of its QuickDraw 3D RAVE (Rendering Acceleration Virtual Engine) for the three platforms. 3D Rave supports DirectDraw on Windows 95 and render caching for faster manipulation of rendered objects.
s Apple Cupertino, Calif. (800) 462-4396 http://www.apple.com

Are You a Pro?

In addition to acquiring VideoShop from Avid, Strata announced StudioPro 2.0, a major upgrade to its modeling, rendering, and animation package. The new version features extruding, lathing, sweeping, freeform deformation, and new camera controls such as autopan, zoom, dolly, pitch, yaw, roll, motion blur, and lens flare. The Power Macintosh version is available

Make a Scene
MultiGen announced SmartScene, a new immersive assembler that lets a user stand in the scene he or she is creating and design a realtime 3D world. No need to model objects polygon by polygon with a mouse and keyboard; the SmartScene user

10

GAME DEVELOPER OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1996

http://www.gdmag.com