This is not competition, it is complimentary. Wicked has developed a technology that allows two graphics boards to process graphics instructions in parallel. Thus, instead of popping one graphics board into your PC, you pop in two. The strategy is analogous to using multiple CPU's in a single PC.
Perceptronics on the other hand has developed a technology that handles all of the low-level infrastructure work involved in multi-user communication (specific to 3d). Their product essentially handles the real-time traffic, messaging, synchronization, and compression involved and also provides a framework for rapid development. In other words, if you want to develop a colaborative 3D app, you can user Perceptronics infrastructure to gain the advantage of having a great deal of the low-level grunt work done out-of-the-box. You simply code to their API, and their product handles the complexity of compression / communication / synchronization etc.
I plan to do a great deal more research into Perceptronics' implementation (when I get the time). However, my initial take is that their product is very similar to Tibco's rendezvous in function. The logical difference between the two being TibRendezvous allows the creation of messaging frameworks and handles all low-level grunt work, IC3D is a specific framework (Real-Time Colaborative 3D) that also handles all low-level grunt work and provides some added benefits, i.e., compression. This is an over-simplified analysis, but the parallels exist. IC3D is middleware for real-time colaborative 3D!
JN |
