that's interesting, Pez D Spencer, but it is not QUITE correct.
Model 2's chipset was pre-REAL3D. that is, the ancestor of Real3D.
Although Model 2 *does* use much of the same technology that was later
put into the Real3D chipsets.
the various versions of Model 2, although different from version to
version, basicly consists of an Intel 32-bit CPU, a bunch of DSPs from
Fujitsu (and perhaps other DSPs) and some un-named custom, proprietary
3D rendering chips / software API, etc from Martin Marietta (formerly
GE Aerospace graphics). Sega got help from GE / MM for the Model 2
project when Sega had trouble upgrading their Model 1 board.
Model 2 was in development from probably 1992 to 1993. it was completed
sometime in 1993. An early version of Daytona was demo'ed in summer or
fall 1993. Then Daytona USA powered by Model 2 was released to
arcades in early 1994, shortly after Namco's Ridge Racer hit arcades
in late 1993. ...btw, Ridge Racer's System22 board also had DSPs, and
an Evans & Sutherland 'TR-3' rendering chip/ chipset, which has
certain advantages and disadvantages compared to the Martin Marietta
powered Sega Model 2. Also, the Evans & Sutherland powered Namco
highe-end System22 board has nothing to do with the Playstation-based
low-end System11 board that powered Tekken, Tekken2, Soul Edge, etc.
Sometime around 1995, Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed, thus
forming Lockheed-Martin. Then Lockheed took all of the graphics
technologies and engineers it had that were formerly at GE Aerospace
and Martin Marietta, and put them under a single new company, REAL3D..
Sega and LM REAL3D worked in on the Model 3 board, though it was
delayed a lot. Model 3 did not show up until May 1996 when Sega demo'ed
Virtua Fighter 3. The game was not released until late 1996 in Japan.
I didn't see one in my area in the U.S. until early 1997.
So the point is, Model 2 used the forefather of REAL3D technology.
Model 3 used actual highend REAL3D Pro-1000 chipsets.
In addition to the Pro-1000, REAL3D produced a mid-range chipset called
REAL3D-100. this is NOT to be confused with the very low-end and
disappointing 'Auburn' chip from 1997, which is better known as i740,
jointly developed with Intel, which Intel used in their crappy
intergrated graphics, and which Lockheed Martin Real3D sold to
consumers in the Starfighter cards.
The older but more powerful and better REAL3D-100 was not a consumer
product, although it was SUPPOSED to be according to announcements in
1995. R3D-100 was supposed to be sold as a $180 graphics card that
could upgrade Pentiums and even 486s, allowing them to provide stunning
3D for the time.
The Real3D-100 was ALSO supposed to be the graphics subsystem of Sega's
'Saturn2' which would've been either a new console for 1996 or used as
an upgrade to the existing Saturn - either way, the R3D-100 powered
Saturn2 was meant fight off the 3D-capable PS1 / N64. But the
Lockheed R3D-100 based Saturn2 (upgrade or stand-alone console) never
happened. but it apparently really was in development, or at the very
least, a serious proposal by Lockheed Martin, or at request from Sega.
It happened a few years before Sega developed two other new consoles in
parallal -- the 3Dfx-based Black Belt, and PowerVR-based Katana --
with Katana being selected, renamed Dreamcast, to become the approved
successor to Saturn.
(got side-tracked)
The REAL3D-100, although NOT as powerful as the REAL3D Pro-1000 used in
Sega's MODEL-3 board, was still more powerful than the Sega MODEL-2
board that used technology that was the ancestor to REAL3D. but
REAL3D-100 was more powerful, offering 750,000 textured polygons and
more features that MODEL-2 lacked. because Real3D-100 had its own
on-board geometry engine, it did not depend heavily on the CPU to
provide it polygon transforms. making the Real3D-100 of 1995 a more
powerful chip than the 3DFX Voodoo of 1996 or PowerVR Series 1 (PCX1,
PCX2).
I don't by any means concider myself an expert on these things, nor
extremely knowledgable. I'm just going off of memory of what I've read.
here are some usenet posts from around 1995....sorry if this seems like
alot of reading, those that are interested, here it is.
some of it comes from Next Generation magazine (and probably their
sister publication, EDGE, as well)
__________________________________________________
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...video/msg/0fae47986bb20e6d?dmode=source&hl=en
I remember reading several days ago from the latest issue of Next
Generation about the 3D graphics accelerator cards from Lockheed Martin
Corp. - the Real3D series. The article only mentioned the two earliest
cards in the *scaleable* family line - the low-end Real3D/100 and
high-end Real3D/1000. The R3D/100 (and I guess the 1000 too) is
basically composed of a graphics, a geometry, and a textureprocessor,
and will support OpenGL and 3D-DDI. The cards will "only operate with
PCI...33Mhz interface."
"LOCKHEED ENTERS GRAPHICS BATTLE WITH ITS *$180* REAL3D PROCESSOR: LMC
has announced a PC-based [PCI-ONLY] 3D graphics accelerator which it
claims can move more polygons per second than any mainstream system
currently available. The accelerator...is said to be able to move
750,000 textured, shaded, depth-buffered, and MIP-mapped polygons per
second, more than Sega's Model 2 arcade board, currently the most
powerful board in the arcades. The Real3D technology is primarily a
result of Martin Marietta's [1/2 of Lockheed-Martin] longstanding
relationship with the defense industry. The firm was involved in NASA
research during the '50s and '60s, and in the '70s and '80s went on to
work for the US Defense Department on a variety of graphically
intensive projects. The technology's basics were then applied to other
fields: they helped to make Sega's Model 2 arcade board, with Martin
Marietta supplying its texture-mapping chips and TARGET database
generation system. LMC has invested more than $200 million in computer
graphics research and now owns more than 40 patents in the field,
including the 'unique anti-aliasing architecture' used in Real3D."
---------
Then it goes on to list ALOT of specs of each chip component in the
card, which look REALLY good
You gotta see the sample screenshots
they showed (very, very good)! Anyway, LMC has annual sales of ~$23
billion and employs more than 170,000 people (large company, to say the
least).
--Paul
____________________________________________________________
Next Generation magazine November 1995
"Now Sega has conceded internally that Saturn will face tough
competition from the Playstation and will not be able to match the
onslaught from the Ultra 64 in 1996. Lockheed Martin has therefore been
given the go-ahead to start work on Saturn 2, although it's not yet
known exactly what form it will take. The current understanding is
that the system will be a standalone console, but it's possible that
Sega could save money by using the existing Saturn as an I/O device, CD
drive and power supply. As with Sega's coin-op IG boards, Lockheed
Martin will be concentrating on the graphics side of Saturn 2,
providing a R3D/100 graphics chip which includes both a geometry
processor and a graphics processor. It's quite possible that Hitachi
will supply the front end (possibly PowerPC -based) - it was rumoured
that Yu Suzuki and other Sega coin-op honchos had wanted Lockheed
Martin to handle the whole project, but this was vetoed internally
because of delays with LMC's development of the Model 3 IG board."
_______________________________________________________________
USENET:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...t-sim/msg/555aacb2319f5834?dmode=source&hl=en
________________________________________________________
"First, let me start off by saying I am going to be buying a Voodoo
card. For low end comsumer grade flight sims and such, the Voodoo looks
like about the best thing available. Second, I am not necessarily
responding to just you, because there seems to be a hell of a lot of
confusion about Lockheed Martin's graphics accelerators. I have been
seeing posts all over the place confusing the R3D/100 with the
AGP/INTEL project that
L.M. is working on. The R3D/100 is *NOT* the chipset that is being
developed for the AGP/INTEL partnership.
However, since your inference is that the Voodoo is faster than the
R3D/100, I have to say that you are totally dead wrong. While the
specs say that the Voodoo is *capable* of rendering a higher number of
pixels per second, or the same number of polygons per second as the
R3D/100, the specs fail to mention that these are not real world
performance figures any you probably will not ever see the kind of
performance that 3Dfx claims to be able to acheive. This does *not*
mean that the Voodoo is not a good (its great actually) card, just that
the game based 3D accelerator companies (all of them) don't tell you
the whole story.
The Voodoo uses a polygon raster processor. This accelerates line and
polygon drawing, rendering, and texture mapping, but does not
accelerate geometry processing (ie vertex transormation like rotate and
scale). Geometry processing on the Voodoo as well as every other
consumer (read game) grade 3D accelerator. Because the cpu must handle
the geometry transforms and such, you will never see anything near what
3Dfx,
Rendition, or any of the other manufacturers claim until cpu's get
significantly faster (by at least an order of magnitude). The 3D
accelerator actually has to wait for the cpu to finish processing
before it can do its thing.
I have yet to see any of the manufacturers post what cpu was plugged
into their accelerator, and what percentage of cpu bandwidth was being
used to produce the numbers that they claim. You can bet that if it
was done on a Pentium 200, that the only task the cpu was handling was
rendering the 3D model that they were benchmarking. For a game,
rendering is only part of the cpu load. The cpu has to handle flight
modelling, enemy AI, environmental variables, weapons modelling, damage
modelling, sound, etc, etc.
The R3D includes both the raster accelerator (see above) and a 100
MFLOP geometry processing engine. Read that last line again. All
geometry processing data is offloaded from the system cpu and onto the
R3D floating point processor, allowing the cpu to handle more important
tasks. The Voodoo does not have this, and if it were to add a geometry
processor, you would have to more than double the price of the card.
The R3D also allows for up to 8M of texture memory (handled by a
seperate texture processor) which allows not only 24 bit texturemaps
(RGB), but also 32bit maps (RGBA) the additional 8 bits being used for
256 level transparency (Alpha). An addtional 10M can be used for frame
buffer memory, and 5M more for depth buffering.
There are pages and pages of specs on the R3D/100 that show that in the
end, it is a better card than the Voodoo and other consumer and
accelerator cards, but I guess the correct question is, for what? If
the models that are in your scene are fairly low detailed (as almost
all games are - even the real cpu pigs like Back to Bagdhad), then the
R3D
would be of little added benefit over something like the Voodoo.
However, when you are doing scenes where the polys are 2x+ times more
than your typical 3D game, the R3D really shines. The R3D is and
always was designed for mid to high end professional type application,
where the R3D/1000 (much much faster than the 100) would be too
expensive, or just plain overkill. I've seen the 1000 and I have to say
that it rocks!
I had to wipe the drool from my chin after seeing it at Siggraph (We're
talking military grade simulation equipment there boys, both in
performance and price!)
Now then, as I mentioned before, I'm going be buying the Voodoo for my
home system, where I would be mostly playing games. But, I am looking
at the R3D for use in professional 3D application. More comparible 3D
accelerators would not be Voodoo, Rendition based genre, but more along
the lines of high end GLINT based boards containing Delta geometry
accelerator chips (and I don't mean the low end game base Glint chips,
or even the Permedia for that matter), or possibly the next line from
Symmetric (Glyder series), or Intergraph's new professional accelerator
series."
_________________________________________________________
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.sega/msg/f23d8af79a4a8922?dmode=source&hl=en
"The Real3D, as I understand it, is what powers the Sega Model 2
hardware."
reply:
"The R3D/100 is said to be quite a bit more powerful. I know specs can
be pretty meaningless, but Lockheed-Martin rates it at around 750,000,
32bit RGB color depth,24 bit z-buffered, Gouraud shaded, textured,
anti-aliased, clipped and stenciled, 25 pixel triangles/second.
The Model 2 board is rated to do around 300,000 textured polygons a
second."
_______________________________________________
(1995)
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.nintendo/msg/9f1fff4bfd68d86a?dmode=source&hl=en
_____________________________________________________________
Lockheed Martin 3D Graphics Accelerator offers real-time PC visual
system
performance.
Bethesda Maryland, March 20- Lockheed Martin announced today it is
entering the 3D graphics PC market with a high-performance chip set
based on real-time computer image generation technology that gives a
combination of dynamic response and realism previously available only
on dedicated graphics workstations and high end custom image
generators.
The Real3D(tm) brand name will be applied to a series of commercial and
consumer computer graphics products. The first product, R3D/100, is a
graphics accelerator that provides high throughput, high realism and
sustained real-time 3D graphics response. Key performance attributes of
the chip set include an embedded 100 MFLOPS geometry processor, pixel
write rates of up to 33 million pixels per second, up to 750k polygons
per second, line processing up to 1.5 million per second, and provides
up to 192 color texture maps (128x128 mipmapped) in real-time. This
performance eliminates the jerky visual movement found in graphics
products that operate at less-than-real-time rates.
"Real3D(tm) products set a new price performance standard in such areas
as architectural and computer-aided design, object modeling, gameware
development, simulation and real-time visualization," said John Lenyo,
Commercial Visual Systems Business Development Director for Lockheed
Martin Information Systems Co. "Systems running Real-3D-based boards
will be able to function as supercharged graphics accelerators that run
3D graphics applications in real-time."
The new product is an outgrowth of Lockheed Martin's proprietary
computer graphics technology previously used in high performance
military simulation, engineering research and training applications
first developed for astronaut training and military flight simulators.
The company has invested more that $200 million in research and
development in this product area and owns more than 40 related patents
in the field.
Lenyo attributes much of the development success of the new commercial
PC product to experience gained in a highly successful adjacent
application developed for Sega Enterprises, Ltd - the Model 2 Computer
Graphics System. Model 2 is the host hardware platform for Sega's
latest generation of high performance arcade games. First released in
February 1994, Sega has shipped over 33,000 Model 2-based arcade games
such as the
top-selling Daytona USA(tm), Desert Tank(tm), Virtua Cop(tm), Virtua
Fighter II(tm), and virtual reality theme park ride system, VR-1(tm).
Lockheed Martin's R3D/100 chip set provides faster processing through
its patented hardware design which incorporates geometry processing,
rasterization and texture mapping. The R3D/100 embedded floating point
geometry processor removes significant processing burden from the host
CPU. The patented texture processor applies color mipmapped texture to
polygons in true 3D corrected perspective.
Designed as a true polygon processor with texture processing and
scaleable texture memory from the outset, the R3D/100 chip set includes
dedicated hardware acceleration of mipmapped texturing that provides
continuous high fidelity image quality. This chip set simulates
spotlights, fog and realistic curved surfaces. Additionally, improved
image quality is provided with multi-pass anti-aliasing.
The R3D/100 chip set directly interfaces with Microsoft 3D/DDI and
supports all 3D/DDI-compliant APIs, such as OpenGL(tm) and comes with
device driver software and a device driver kit."
_____________________________________________________________
post about Daytona USA arcade
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.graphics.algorithms/msg/cb4c4b7f850f647d?dmode=source&hl=en
"it is based on Real3D chipset"
reply:
"For the LAST TIME: IT IS *NOT* BASED ON THE Real3D CHIPSET!!!!!!!!!!
The chipset is the next generation of technology from the Model 2 board
used by sega. If it used the chipset, don't you think it would be anti-
aliased? Get your information right before spouting it out.
- Rich "
___________________________________________________________
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.programmer/msg/616efc6158f7d682?dmode=source&hl=en
"What hardware is there inside the arcademachine that runs
: Daytona from SEGA?"
reply:
"Hello Jonas:
I work for Lockheed-Martin in the game development group. We build
the boards used in several Sega games (Daytona, VF, VF2).
Daytona uses the Model 2 board. It's not *exactly* the same as the
Real-3D chipset (as a previous poster had said), but it's in the same
family. VF1 used the Model 1 board, while VF2 uses the Model 2. The
biggest difference between the two is, as you say, the texturing
capabilities. The Model 2 is also used in Desert Tank, the first game
done by our in-house Lockheed-Martin development team.
The texture mapping is all done in the hardware using an onboard
coprocessor specifically designed to push polygons around. The top
speed of the board is somewhere around 250,000-300,000 textured
polygons per second. "
________________________________________________________
