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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg S. who wrote (13260)	6/14/1999 3:49:00 PM
From: timbur	Respond to of 16960

Disappointing News: V3 and Win 2000 My sources ;) tell me that Dell will be shipping machines with Windows 2000 Beta 3 on it any day now. But according to the quote below, V3 drivers will not be available until the final release of Win2000. This isn't bad news, because I think most of those machines will be servers, but it is disappointing. Text below is from voodooextreme.com No Voodoo3 for Win2000 yet? 9:40am MST David "Octane" Morrison Just noticed over on the AVault house of love that some bad news has surfaced for all of us Voodoo3 users. Looks like 3dfx will not be releasing Win2000 compatible drivers until the OS's official release in the Fall. Here's the beef ripped straight from AVault: A 3dfx public relations representative told the Adrenaline Vault, "Windows 2000 drivers are in development, so there are no Windows 2000 drivers available to the public today. I also do not believe this situation is unique to 3dfx. The fact is, we are currently operating closely with Microsoft and are scheduling the drivers for release when Windows 2000 is available.” Our sources also tell us 3dfx has told Microsoft there will be no Windows 2000 Voodoo3 drivers, even after the official release of the OS, which is business- and not consumer-oriented. The 3dfx representative countered this, saying, “When we merged with the former STB, we were very open that we are going to be successful in the OEM business. We have since announced several design wins and have other announcements pending. Windows 2000 will be very important to our business-oriented OEM partners. To suggest 3dfx would not support Windows 2000 and an OEM partner such as Dell is unrealistic. A call to 3dfx technical support confirmed that there are no drivers currently available because the OS has not been officially released. It was recommended that users download and install the Voodoo Banshee drivers, which the representative claimed could run the Voodoo3 on Windows 2000. Beta drivers for competitive cards are not out yet but are stated to be in development.

To: Greg S. who wrote (13260)	6/14/1999 3:51:00 PM
From: Eric Howard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Glide will never be a leading API, it is too late. Developers in general want to support as few as interfaces as possible. Going forward games will either be developed for Open GL or Direct X. There is no reason for a developer to develop using Glide today. Why would a developer write a new game and deliberately limit themselves to one brand of video card, it would not make any sense. All the games that were originally going to be Glide only, Everquest, Diablo2 etc now support or will support on release either OpenGL or DirectX. In order to get developers to use Glide 3dfx would have to have to own the 3d market by themselves which they no longer do or pay developers money to create Glide exclusive glide games which I doubt developers would go for. The only Glide only game that I am aware of currently that people play at all is Tribes. I know the sequal to Tribes2 will be openGL based. Eric

To: Greg S. who wrote (13260)	6/14/1999 4:06:00 PM
From: timbur	Respond to of 16960

Frankly, I'd rather see them focus on the standard APIs than Glide. Probably 98% of the 3D games coming out this Xmas will have D3D or OpenGL support. Glide-only games are dying quickly. Why? D3D is a lot better now than it used to be, and many of the good 3D FPS engines are licensed out. Unless you have someone like Carmack or Sweeney on your team, why create your own engine? Does that mean Glide is or should be necessarily dead? No, since it maps to the hardware directly, if the next gen products are based on similar architecture, there's no reason to back off of Glide. Plus it can be used to support advanced features that D3D has not implemented yet. (OpenGL has ways of extending itself so it's not as important.) Also note that Glide is a very primitive API. To quote Jan Fostier, who wrote VoodooExtreme's Glide 3 Tutorial (at voodooextreme.com ), Why Glide? That's a very good question and to get the whole answer you should read the Glide reference programming guide, included in the Glide SDK. But if you ask me why I use Glide the answer is simple : not because I'm a 3Dfx freak, but Glide is the only API that gives you full control over all the specification and features of you board. You can only use Glide on a 3Dfx board, so if you want to make something commercial, you should definitely include a Direct3D or OpenGL version. But Glide is very logical, very primitive... Oh, my personal experience with Glide 3 is pretty limited, having only covered the first few parts of that tutorial. Cheers, Tim

To: Greg S. who wrote (13260)	6/14/1999 5:21:00 PM
From: El Guapo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

By licensing the glide API, 3dfx can gain a competitive edge over its competitors by releasing new hardware with new features concurrently with the new version of the API. If glide is the preferred API, then other cardmakers would be forced to follow 3dfx's feature set. Unfortunately, it seems that we're still waiting for a new hardware which HAS new features which would give 3dfx a competitive edge... The problem is that 3dfx is still riding the wave of Voodoo 1. As investors, we're all going on faith that they can develop an innovative product, and successfully bring it to market. I believe that 3dfx is more capable of the latter than the former. But it worries me because I invested at the IPO because I believed it to be the other way around.

To: Greg S. who wrote (13260)	6/14/1999 5:23:00 PM
From: Scott Garee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Sparc: This whole Sparc thing is way off. SUNW did not give away the Sparc architecture. They are merely a fabless chip producer (just like TDFX :) They still design the Sparc core, they just don't make chips. No one else can create and sell a Sparc processor. SUNW is also going to use Merced chips. The next Sparc is late already and getting later. This is also like TDFX; you miss a step and you're toast. Price: One might wonder if someone leaked info about internal problems at TDFX? Glide: If TDFX licenses Glide they lose some control over it (the licensees become customers and therefore you must meet some of their demands (unless you're MS :)) which leads to a loss of focus. They also stand to lose reputation if another card-maker pooch screws their implementation. There is also the issue of who wants to pay for a license for an API controlled by a competitor? Your shareholders aren't going to think you're the sharpest pencil in the box for that one. There is no reason to license Glide anyway. OpenGL is a better answer to the same problem. OpenGL has really taken off. Pretty much every major vendor has a driver, it isn't completely controlled by MS (yet), is a good interface, is well understood, has lots of example code, and is well liked. It is also easy to take a Glide code and extend it to OpenGL. A game producer can do an initial implementation with Glide (exploiting new features), then extend the engine to Glide to garner further sales. The massive volumes of recent 3dfx card sales makes it even more realistic for a game producer to select Glide as the initial API. They get quicker time to market, the latest features, excellent support, very few compatibility issues, a good initial sales base, and excellent performance. TDFX should push Glide in just this manner.