Jerry and David Em attend SIGGRAPH and see wonders. On the home front, Jerry tests a raft of new programs, but an over-the-Web software upgrade results in Chaos. For the full story, read "Fooling Around with the Web" in the November BYTE.
Jerry Pournelle
"This was the biggest and loudest SIGGRAPH ever. I thought I'd died and gone to E3."
Those are graphic artist David Em's words, not mine. (For the uninitiated, E3 is shorthand
for the Electronic Entertainment Exposition.)
You'll find my observations of SIGGRAPH, the Association for Computing Machinery's big show, in the regular column, but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask David, who knows more about this than I do, to share his impressions with you. Here they are.
On the Prevalence of NT
"The prevalence on the show floor of powerful Windows NT workstations and software was astounding, given that two years ago, they were virtually nonexistent. This is because of the combination of NT 4.0's much beefed-up graphics capabilities and the development of increasingly powerful CPUs and high-end graphics boards.
"The impact of NT is intense on the lower end of workstation graphics -- Silicon Graphics' (
http://www.sgi.com/
) O
2
notwithstanding -- and increasingly significant in the midrange (read Octane). T
he upcoming release of NT 5.0 coupled with Intel and Alpha multiprocessing environments will dramatically raise the stakes on the high end as well. The era of SIGGRAPH as the SGI-and-everything-that-goes-with-it show is definitely over.
"Nevertheless, the evolving new order has by no means won the hearts and minds of the graphics community. I was somewhat surprised by the vehement audience response the Intel and Microsoft logos generated when they appeared on the screen at the Electronic Theater film show. At the screening I attended, they were greeted by widespread hissing and lusty boos.
Hardware Highlights
"SGI supercomputing is so far beyond anything any of us will touch this year, I more or less ignored the Monster Reality Engine hoopla and concentrated on stuff we might actually use.
"If Compaq's (
http://www.compaq.com
) sales figures are to be believed, the market penetration of its 5000/6000/8000 series is phenomenal for a product line less than a year old. We got a look inside the new, very solid, very accessible, very expandable Workstation 6000. It runs cool as a cucumber. Compaq's weak point is still third-party graphics cards. It acknowledged its problems with Elsa cards, and claimed that as of last week, its Diamond Multimedia Fire GL 4000 card solution (which uses Evans and Sutherland REALimage technology) has good drivers, but who knows?
"Intergraph (
http://www.intergraph.com/
) was all over the show floor in numerous booths; I counted dozens of them. Intergraph is very aggressive, taking on all comers at all levels of graphics computing. What we've seen of its newest systems is
impressive by any standard, and it has its integration and driver acts together. It is also ahead of Compaq in offering 10,000-rpm drives (Compaq is still testing)."
I'll have more from David in a moment, but as an aside, Intergraph put on a special show for us of their newest desktop Pentium II workstations (approximately $10,000), which they announced at SIGGRAPH. The performance was astonishing, and when I had them open up one of the systems seconds after shutting it down, everything inside was cool. Intergraph likes to call their designs "balanced," meaning that they try to get disk speed, computing power, and graphics speeds all working at the same pace to avoid bottlenecks; the result was so impressive I'm having trouble controlling my superlatives. More after we get one to pound on, but in my opinion, Intergraph has just ratcheted the standard professional graphics workstation down by a factor of five.
What particularly impressed me was the ability to do 3-D designs in real time without ha
ving to use wireframes. With wireframe graphics, all I see is a mess of lines I can't make heads or tail of; but with the newest Intergraph, I could put up a sphere and begin to put craters on it as a sculptor might work with real clay; I could see everything I was doing. As soon as I get one of these, I'm going to take my spreadsheet model of a moon base and connect the parts to graphics. I'm no artist, but if I can see what I'm doing, I can chisel away until I have what I want; and for the first time, I've seen a system that will let me do that. These things are wonderful!
Now back to David's report:
"On the Alpha front, Digital Equipment (
http://www.digital.com/
) and Carrera Computers (
http://www.carrera.com/
) showed new Alpha systems with improved internal architectures they claim improve processor performance radically. Digital finally showed dual- and quad-processor systems as well as a 767-MHz system, although I don't believe any of these were shipping products. Digital Domain (Jim Cameron's SFX shop) bought 230 Carrera Alphas for its production pipeline. As a reality check, reports are that the
Titanic
film sequence in the Electronic Theater film show used 150 Alphas for the water alone -- and it still took 45 minutes a frame.
"Dynamic Pictures (
http://www.dypic.com/
) announced a new multithreaded driver for its Oxygen 402 graphics board that enables users with multiprocessing systems to take fuller a
dvantage of their CPUs with demanding nonmultithreaded applications such as Softimage.
Software Survey
"In addition to 2-D and 3-D graphics, I saw a profusion of video products that were either stand-alone products or integrated into 2-D or 3-D packages. It seems that virtually all serious graphics packages are now expected to be able to input, manipulate, and output moving broadcastable images.
"There were also all manner of dynamics simulation applications. The major 3-D packages all have some level of dynamics built in for simulating water, wind, fire, and the like, and there are numerous plug-ins such as Digimation's (
http://www.digimation.com/
) hair simulator and REM Infografica's (
http://www.infografica.com/
) cloth simulator to extend the range of existing packages. This technology will proliferate next year, with major implications for modeling and animating everything from natural phenomena to realistic computer-generated character motion.
"The war on the high-end 3-D front heated up with demonstrations of the imminent 3D Studio Max 2.0. Gary Yost (longtime readers will recall when Gary Yost visited Chaos Manor during his stint at Atari) and his team at Kinetix (
http://www.ktx.com/
) have added 1000 (count 'em) features to the product that let the $3495 package compete with almost any 3-D application on any platform (with the exception of very high-end rendering) at a greatly reduced price. Of cou
rse, porting the program out can easily triple the cost.
"I repeatedly heard that the reincarnation of SGI's top-of-the-line Alias/Wavefront PowerAnimator 3-D software, Maya (demonstrated at the show), will soon be running under NT. It's scheduled for release early next year for SGI Irix machines, with the NT version to follow."
David's Personal Pick of Show
"The best time I had at SIGGRAPH was spent behind an unassuming gray door on the second floor of the convention center in a room called the Guerrilla Gallery. Inside were about three dozen networked workstations from Apple, Compaq, Intergraph, and Silicon Graphics hooked up to state-of-the-art large-scale printers from Hewlett-Packard, Encad, Scitex, Xerox, and CalComp.
"Inside the room were professional artists, printmakers, photographers, designers, and students, working together and individually. The equipment in the room was available for use by absolutely anybody attending the conference, with all the high-quality papers, i
nks, and other supplies provided by the corporate sponsors of the project.
"There were master printers and volunteer technical assistants available to answer questions and help make prints; everyone involved had a can-do attitude. The results were stunning. Digital printing has come a long, long way recently, and the prints rolling off the presses, some as large as 30 by 40 inches, had a resolution, richness, and depth seen until now only on extremely finicky presses costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"Of particular note, and perhaps the most amazing piece of technology I saw at the show this year, was Hewlett-Packard's large-format DesignJet 2500 CP Printer, which uses image-interpolation software to increase the perceived resolution of an image (known in the printing business as ripping).
"I printed a 1200 by 1200 image at a reasonable 300 dpi for starters, which gave me a print 4 inches by 4 inches square. Then I went down to 150 dpi for an 8-inch-square print. It looked great
. That's usually as far as you can go before an image starts to break up unacceptably, but I decided to try for 16 by 16 inches at 72 dpi. I was amazed by the result -- it still looked great.
"So I went for broke and printed it 32 inches square at 36 dpi, eight times the size of my original print. Incredibly, the picture held up. There was now, of course, some artifacting, but the color and density were punchy as ever. Since an image that size is normally viewed from a few feet away, it could still be successfully exhibited.
"A chance to experiment freely with state-of-the-art technology in a field that changes as quickly as digital printing is rare indeed; the hours I spent working, talking, and learning at the Guerrilla Gallery were like attending a master class in printmaking. Lectures and trade show floors are great, but this is what SIGGRAPH used to be about. I hope the organizers keep this going.
"By the way, there were a couple dozen ViewSonic P815 monitors there. The early production
models we worked with had less-than-perfect color distribution on their surfaces, but these all looked fine."
Regular readers will know that I've been spending a good bit of time working on my Web site.
I enlisted David to help me get started, but it's been my project since. It's also a good test-bed for all kinds of programs. You'll find out about several that I like in this month's regular column.
Meanwhile, I must have about a zillion books on Web-page design and construction. They're all pretty good, in the sense that if you read carefully and follow the examples, you'll probably end up with a Web page. However, it can be rough slugging if you start with a book designed for people trying to set up their own Web server.
At an introductory level, I've found Todd Stauffer's
Using HTML 3.2, 2nd ed.
(Que, ISBN 0789709856) about the best. This is one of the Que "User-Friendly" series of books, and it's quite well written. A more graphically oriented book that goes into a few mat
ters that Stauffer doesn't and has more illustrations of what certain code lines do is by Scott Arpajian and Robert Mullen,
How to Use HTML 3.2
(Ziff-Davis Press, ISBN 1562764969). This is one of the ZD "How It Works" series. Taken together, they ought to be enough to get started, particularly if you're using Microsoft Word as your HTML editor.
Mac users will find Robin Williams and Dave Mark's
Home Sweet Home Page and the Kitchen Sink
(Peachpit Press, ISBN 0201886804) very useful. The title gives the tone of the book. There's also an excellent CD-ROM of buttons, lines, backgrounds, banners, and the like in GIF format; these are useful to both Mac and PC users. For that matter, since HTML is HTML, the same code should produce the same results for both Macs and Windows systems; the book is useful for anyone. Unlike the previous two books, this one isn't very technical; it's more about design and effects and what you would like to do than how to write HTML code.
Finally, once you'v
e got past basics and want to do real whizbangs, Ardith Ibanez and Natalie Zee's
HTML Web Magic
(Hayden Books, ISBN 1568303351) is quite good. This is primarily Netscape for Mac users, but again, HTML is HTML, so the same code works on both platforms. They provide a CD-ROM in both Mac and PC format, and this book will show how to do just about every effect you might want short of those requiring Java.
I'll get to Java in another column.
In part three of Walter M. Miller's wonderful novel
A Canticle for Leibowitz
, the Abbot uses a machine he calls the abominable auto-scribe, which transcribes his dictation into letters and essays. It's a measure of how long ago Miller wrote it that his Abbot dictates in English, but the auto-scribe transforms it into Church Latin. Since that time, there have been many speech-recognition programs, and I have found every one of them useless. I. Simply. Cannot. Speak. With. A. Full. Stop. After each word, and if I do manage it for a while, it ge
ts to be a habit I have trouble breaking.
Dragon's NaturallySpeaking continuous speech-recognition program doesn't have that problem, or at least not as bad as the others do. It has its limits. First, you have to teach it how you speak; there are several texts you read into the machine so that it learns your way of talking and pronunciation. Second, you still have to make a conscious effort to dictate, and it helps if you watch the screen as you speak so that you get some feedback and adjust your ways to the program's idiosyncrasies. Alas, it still won't take a recording of an impromptu speech and transcribe it, even if it has been taught by the person speaking.
With those limits, though, it's pretty good. I probably won't use it, because I'm a pretty fast typist, and I've learned to think at about the speed I can type. On the other hand, they tell me I'm a fairly effective public speaker, and since I never talk except from notes, I never have any real record of what I said. Perhaps I can record o
ne of my talks, listen to the tape, and dictate from that? It would be an interesting experiment. And for those who can't type or hate typing, this can be a godsend. You'll spend a while teaching it your ways and learning the program's, but once you're used to each other, it's pretty amazing how well it performs.
Some people can write only by dictating -- St. Paul dictated better epistles than he wrote with his own hand, and there are a number of contemporary novelists who dictate. If you think you have a lot to say, but you never have the time or inclination to sit down and write it, try NaturallySpeaking. It's not perfect, but it's darned good, and for nontypists it's a heck of a lot better than the alternatives. The longer you use it, the better it, and you, get at speaking your words onto paper. It's not the abominable auto-scribe yet, but it's only about a step away. Recommended.
Creatures from Mindscape isn't the
game of the month
because it's not really a game, although it's marketed t
hat way and has a number of game-like features. It's really an interesting experiment in artificial life, and possibly in AI as well. Do you recall Little Computer People for the Atari? Creatures has some similarities to that, but there's a lot more potential.
The game -- I'll call it that for lack of a better term -- begins when you hatch an egg. A rather likable critter called a Norn appears. You will have previously explored the rather rich environment in which you'll raise your Norns. Now you teach the Norn how to eat, and speak, and what foods to look for and which to avoid. Hatch more Norns and breed them; their offspring have some of the traits of their parents. They also learn from them. The goal here is to see how many generations you can manage.
Ted Sturgeon long ago wrote a novelette called
Microcosmic God
, in which a mad scientist invents a race of tiny fast-living creatures called the Neoterics. He becomes their god as they evolve to a technological society beyond human. That
isn't going to happen here, of course. Sturgeon's creatures were an experiment in biology, not artificial computer life, and the Norns have a long way to go before they learn real intelligence and how to pass their knowledge on to their young. Even so, this is a fascinating program, with startling potential. Mindscape intends to update the program, and there are ways to swap Norns for crossbreeding purposes. Random elements give an open-endedness to it. All told, it's quite fascinating, and if you have any interest in artificial life programs, you'll love this one. It's sure more interesting than solitaire. Recommended.
Critical Concepts has a series of medical and physiological simulations on CD-ROM
that are stunningly accurate and can be used in teaching medicine in major schools. The SimBioSys series includes Clinics, subtitled "The World's Most Realistic Simulated Patient." I can't say if that's true or not because I don't know of any other simulated patients. Lord knows this one is realistic
enough. Get your diagnostic data, including EKG and airway pressures. Try different drugs. If the patient dies, who's to know?
There's also a physiology lab set and other programs. If you have an interest in medicine or want to see just how far along we are in simulating human physiology, this is fascinating stuff. Highly recommended for those with an interest in medicine or simulations.
I've been meaning to mention the DR Hand Eagle infrared mouse for some time now.
This is a gadget with a receiver that plugs into your system's serial port and a transmitter that looks like a large and gaudy ring. The ring functions as a remote (IR, line of sight only) mouse. Its batteries charge when you plug it into the receiver (which has a wall brick).
This works very well, and because you can wear it like a ring, you don't put it down and lose it as often as you do with the Logitech wireless mouse. For sheer hand pleasure, I prefer the Logitech remote mouse, but that's also larger.
The Hand E
agle has left and right mouse buttons and a click-and-drag button. The steering is a round button that operates like a joystick. I didn't have any problems with precision, although again, the Logitech wireless mouse with its thumb-operated trackball may be a bit better in that department.
I don't normally use a remote mouse -- I still like Microsoft's newest "wheel" rodent -- the IntelliMouse -- best of all the pointers I've tried -- but for presentations and discussions where you want to lean back in your chair, it's pretty hard to beat the Hand Eagle, and if you do many computer presentations, this is a good item to stuff into your travel kit.
Product Information
Hand Eagle Pointing Device...................$129.95
DR Electronics
Norfolk, VA
Phone: 888-324-5384 (after 10/18/97)
Phone: 757-459-2550
Fax: 757-459-2497
Internet:
http://www.herndonva.com/DRE/
NaturallySpeaking............................$349.00
Deluxe edition...............................$695.00
Dragon Systems
Newton, MA
Phone: 800-825-5797
Phone: 617-965-5200
Fax: 617-527-0372
Internet:
http://www.dragonsys.com/
SimBioSys Clinics............................$195.00
Student edition..............................$ 79.00
Critical Concepts
Chicago, IL
Phone: 312-240-0403
Fax: 312-240-0903
Internet:
http://www.lake
tech.com
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Jerry Pournelle is a science fiction writer and BYTE's senior contributing editor. You can write to Jerry c/o BYTE, 29 Hartwell Ave., Lexington, MA 02173. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope and put your address on the letter as well as on the envelope. Due to the high volume of letters, Jerry cannot guarantee a personal reply. You can also contact him on the Internet or BIX at
jerryp@bix.com
. Visit Chaos Manor at
http://home.earthlink.net/~jerryp/
WEB EXCLUSIVE: The Biggest Show in Town
