RE: [Algorithms] Intrinsic Alchemy

[Feltman, H. <ham...@se...>]

Thanks thats just the information I wanted to know. Thanks also to Jeff for
asking. We just finished a project and need a  #portable#  solution.

Does anyone have any comments on Renderware? Specifically, the performance
on PS2. The RenderWare wepage www.renderware.com seems a little misleading,
giving 2 different throughput quotes but both saying "theoratical maximum". 

Any more opinion on middleware rendering on PS2, XBox, GameCube and PC, will
be appreciated.

Hamilton

Hamilton Feltman
Senior Programmer
Sega Of America

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Graham Rhodes [mailto:gr...@se...]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 7:56 AM
> To: gda...@li...
> Subject: RE: [Algorithms] Intrinsic Alchemy
> 
> 
> We evaluated Alchemy a year ago, which I think was while 
> their first version
> was in alpha or beta. We also evaluated LithTech and 
> NetImmerse. I was the
> primary evaluator. Ultimately, we bought a source license for 
> NetImmerse;
> however, Alchemy was my second choice. I just didn't care for 
> the way the
> LithTech package was designed, and their asset packing tool 
> was a major
> resource hog and was buggy. I won't go into more detail about 
> *that*. I'm
> sure its better now.
> 
> Alchemy. At the time I realized it had great potential. A clean API,
> seemingly solid code. The things that were missing at the 
> time were: a)
> complete documentation; b) a gaggle of sample programs; c) 
> support for a few
> things we needed but didn't have time to develop, such as 
> massive, high
> detail terrain. There were maybe 3 example programs and the 
> most complex was
> a simple textured cube (as I recall). If it had been a 
> released product with
> better examples and documentation, I might very well have 
> selected Alchemy
> over NetImmerse. I didn't get as far as evaluating their character
> animation/motion blending features (I assume they have some), 
> since that
> wasn't a requirement for our project.
> 
> (NetImmerse has been very good to us. Their tech support is 
> superior, many
> examples, good docs, the source code is very clean and there 
> are few bugs.
> And NDL is only 15 miles down the road!)
> 
> I've seen demonstrations of the latest version of Alchemy and 
> it looks like
> it could be fantastic. They were showing off their support 
> for hardware
> shaders at GDC 2001. The folks who designed it were working 
> for SGI's IRIS
> Performer team at one time and Performer was one of the first
> high-performance real-time rendering engines. When I looked 
> at the Alchemy
> API, it was *obviously* modeled after Performer to a degree 
> (even method
> names were the same). They seemed to have taken lessons learned and
> techniques developed for Performer and mapped them into the 
> new API---with
> care to make sure it is multiplatform capable. Performer is 
> still king on
> the SGI platform, as far as I can tell (we have a multi-year 
> contract with
> NASA Langley that has involved Performer programming for CAVE virtual
> reality environments) and that to me is a sort of indirect 
> endorsement for
> some of the architectural features of Alchemy.
> 
> Graham
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: gda...@li...
> > [mailto:gda...@li...]On 
> Behalf Of Jeff
> > Lander
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 1:37 AM
> > To: gda...@li...
> > Subject: [Algorithms] Intrinsic Alchemy
> >
> >
> > Anyone know anything or have any experience with Intrinsic's
> > middleware rendering library?
> >
> > I am integrating some technology with a console project that is
> > now going to be using this for rendering.  Just want to know
> > about the capabilities and how it can be used optimally for my
> > data (almost all dynamic mesh data).
> >
> > I hope to get some stuff from them soon but I worry about these
> > type of systems.  Unfortunately the decision on this one is not
> > in my control.  The fact that they have no sample code or demos
> > other than a 90 meg geforce3 demo on their website is not
> > encouraging.  They also don't list anyone using the product.
> >
> > Offlist is fine.
> >
> > Ta.
> > -Jeff
> >
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> >
> 
> 
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