MULTIGEN TEAMS UP WITH SILICON GRAPHICS TO DEMO "VIRTUAL VILLAGE" AT SIGGRAPH 96

MultiGen Combines Forces with Leaders in 3D to Present "Bayou Sauvage," World's First Large-Scale, Multi-user, Multi-vendor 3D Video Game

New Orleans, La. (SIGGRAPH 96 Booth #1929)--August 6, 1996--MultiGen Inc., the leader in realtime 3D authoring software, today announced that it has teamed up with the LEGO Group and Silicon Graphics®, Inc., to demonstrate the "Virtual Village"-a virtual encounter with New Orleans experienced through SmartScene™, MultiGen's new immersive application for assembling realtime 3D scenes. In addition, MultiGen has combined forces with Silicon Graphics and other leading 3D companies to present "Bayou Sauvage," a preview of the future of 3D, network-based entertainment.


Virtual Village: a SmartScene Experience from the LEGO Group


SmartScene is a new, fully immersive virtual reality application which allows a user to stand in the scene he or she is creating and design a realtime 3D world through the intuitive and natural movements of a two-handed interface. Wearing pinch gloves and a 3D head-mounted display, the SmartScene user easily plucks a recognizable component from a library of models created with MultiGen tools, snaps it into the scene, and then customizes the size and appearance of the model. SmartScene models are "smart" because they are encoded with context-appropriate choices and behaviors: not only do they precisely align themselves with other objects in the scene, they also seek out appropriate components to snap onto.


"SmartScene, which is now available to customers, is often called the closest thing to Star Trek's Holodeck," said Joe Fantuzzi, president and CEO of MultiGen. "The commercial release of SmartScene will debut at SIGGRAPH 96 with a new demonstration called the "Virtual Village," which will enable visitors to step inside SmartScene and enjoy the world's first interactive Holodeck experience."


Using model content provided by the LEGO Group, a SmartScene early access customer, the Virtual Village allows visitors to enter storefronts and participate in construction projects in New Orleans. Running over an ATM network of new Onyx® InfiniteReality™ workstations from Silicon Graphics, the Virtual Village will transport players into a new dimension. The Virtual Village can be accessed from MultiGen's booth #1929, from Silicon Graphics' booths #1205 and 1405, and from the Digital Bayou which showcases interactive, networked environments at SIGGRAPH 96.


The LEGO Group is employing SmartScene in their digital prototyping effort to re-invent the product development process. Taking a shadow database approach, the LEGO Group is building a realtime 3D library of all LEGO® parts in MultiGen's OpenFlight® file format to allow realtime evaluation of new toy designs. Using SmartScene, artists at the LEGO Group can quickly see how new designs and combinations of designs interact. SmartScene was chosen by the LEGO Group because of its natural, two-handed interface and the ability to add ModelTime™ Behaviors, or prescribed attributes, to realtime models.


Bayou Sauvage: SIGGRAPH 96 Heralds 3D Industry Firsts


MultiGen is among the leaders in 3D hardware and software who have teamed up to create the first-ever, large-scale, multi-player, multi-vendor 3D video game. In collaboration, MultiGen, Silicon Graphics, Digital Equipment Corporation, Viewpoint DataLabs, MÄK Technologies, Real 3D® (an operating unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation) and others, have created a networked game which simultaneously supports up to 1,000 players at approximately 20 different networked sites on the show floor (including MultiGen's booth #1929). Bayou Sauvage players will use virtual airplanes, helicopters and swamp buggies to hunt down a U.F.O. that has crashed in the Louisiana bayou.


Bayou Sauvage is the result of MultiGen's and other 3D leaders' commitment to support the DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation) standard, an open systems-based, public domain 3D networking protocol originally developed by the U.S. military for virtual reality combat situations. DIS works in conjunction with a variety of hierarchical 3D database formats-including MultiGen's OpenFlight, Silicon Graphics' OpenInventor™, Real 3D's Target, and VRML 2.0-which run in realtime over the Bayou Sauvage network of PCs, workstations and high-end image generators connected via the Internet's standard TCP/IP protocol.


"OpenFlight and DIS are used throughout the visual simulation community to provide realtime methods for multiple users to see, add and modify entities over a network," added Joe Fantuzzi. "The technology built into Bayou Sauvage represents the first viable solution for realtime 3D multi-user applications to be deployed over the Internet."

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MultiGen and OpenFlight are registered trademarks and GameGen and SmartScene are trademarks of MultiGen Inc.

All other trademarks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.

For More Information, contact:   
 
MultiGen Inc.   
Chris Stocker
408/261-4100                            
cstocker@multigen.com