Subject: M2 3DO Debut Report 2 Date: Wed, 3 May 95 22:03:46 EDT I'm posting this info about the M2 Conference in New York once again. Apparently, my News Reader transfered my info in such a way, that part two showed up first in the newsgroups, and I still don't see a sign of part one. I wrote the report as soon as I returned from the show (about 12:30 PM in the afternoon), and I'm noticing that quite a few people here are still wondering where any reports are. SO....what I did was temporarily switch over to my older account (which is still active for situations like this) in order to repost the report as this server is much faster with newsgroup posts (and that's about it). If you see this report twice, you'll know what happened. :) Here it goes again.... M2 Launch 1: Carnegie Hall, May 2nd. Ok, just got back from the M2...ah..event at Carnigie Hall...make that Carnigie Hall Cinema (which is a small theater). Once I realized the presentation was in the adjacent cinema, and not the "Hall' itself, I knew it would be nothing more than a conference with a video presentation, rather than some kind of "hands-on" exhibition. Trip of course was the main event; - speaker of the house who spent the majority of the hour and a half talking about demographics, and the M2's capabilities compared to the "other" machines that are coming this fall. After the many spec-related slides on the large screen, an unbelievable demonstration of what the M2 will be producing came to life. They first showed a 16-bit Mortal Kombat, which gave way to the next level, that being Way of the Warrior which Trip quoted as "still being a bit choppy". Next we saw a fighting-style game featuring a very shapely female up against a giant dino. The pair were brilliantly rendered, going WAY beyond anything even seen in a coin-op. Virtua Fighters II and Killer Instinct suddenly looked old. After the fighting demo, we got to see how M2 will handle scaling routines, as a graphic display of stunningly rendered cow behind a picket fence zoomed in, without a trace of pixel expansion.They showed the same routine without M2, as the screen zoomed into that familiar blockiness which we've become acustomed to in today's 3D games. The highlight was this racing game which looked like MegaRace beefed up about 1000 times. The color, reflection, speed sound, everything - was too good to be REAL - it was workstation quality - exactly. Which brings up the big question - was this in fact the M2 tself producing all this magic in on the big screen? When Trip was asked - he replied with something like "it's basically an exact replication of M2's environment, so what you're seeing is a simulationn of the exact specifications that will make up the M2. According to Trip, there will be M2 mock-ups on the floor at E3, but unfortunetly, they didn't have actual M2 demos (running from M2 hardware) ready for this presentation. Trip is still deeply concentrating on the standard 3DO, so there is no word on a release date, or price (even though 3 or 4 people asked the same question, even though he repeatedly said this information was not ready yet). The MPEG-1 is built in, so according to Trip, that's a $200.00 savings right there (if you're one of those who were planning on buying the stand-lone MPEG-1 expansion). When asked which companies will be working on M2 products, of course EA will be on the same course they currently are with the standard 3DO unit - so that's already good news. Trip mentioned that only a small handfull of very talented companies will produce the first titles, rather then a bunch of companies producing mediocre games. Supposedly - a few of this games will be coin-op renditions. Trip ensured the audience that there won't be many games at launch, but the few that will be showing should be mighty impressive. OK, here's some specs.... * 10 Custom coprocessors * 528 MBytes/Second Bug Bandwidth Graphic Performance * 1 Million Polygons per second * 100 Million pixels/second rendering speed Highly intergrated system architecture CPU - Power PC 602 - 66 Mhz RISC Instruction/data caches - 64Kbits total (32k/32k) Floating Point Math Capability 132 Million floating Point Operations Per Second Memory - 48 Mbits (SDRAM, ROM) - 64-bit bus - Cache Coherent Memory System Graphics - Rez - 640*480 and 320*2240 or 16-but color depth - Full Motion Video * MPEG-1 Video built-in * MPEG engie supports JPEG decompression Custom Graphics Capabilities * Texture Mapping: destination base rendering * Texture Compression: Hardware decompression * Filtering: linear, bi-linear, tri-linear, point samled * Mip Mapping: multiple levels of detail * Gourad shading: RGB and Alpha Channel * 3-D Perspective correction * Hardware Z-Buffer * Special effects Audio * 66 MhZ DSP * MPEG audio decompression * 32 Channles: hardware decompression and interpolation on all channels * 3-D CD-quality sound Also, during the conference, Trip wanted to insure folks that the standard 3DO unit will continue to flourish with newly announced titles such as EA Baseball, NHL Hockey '96, and Foes of Ali (Boxing) - all from EA alone. I also found it interesting that Goldstar will be the distributor of the coin-Op fighter, PRIMAL RAGE which is coming in the fall. We never got to see the mystery box in action, but Trip did have the technology in his pocket. He pulled out a small circuit board with three chips - it was not larger than his palm. Overall, the conference was basically just that; a long speech, a Q&A panel open for discussion (although Trip got hit with 99% of the questions), and a short demo of M2 (equivilent) technology. If the M2 is anything like the demos that were shown, simply nothing will touch it (though the U64 specs come a bit close). This is full-blown, high-end workstation material - no joke. Now we'll have to wait for E3 - to get more info, and perhaps see some demos coming from the hardware itself. Last minute update - The evening after the show - I spoke with a fellow from one of 3DO's third party companies. While I'll leave his name and company anonymous - he did go on to mention that what we did view at the show was basically a perfect example of the real thing (he did see the real thing). I really hope Trip's dream can come true before the year is up. I sure as hell wouldn't mind playing something like that racing demo - though I'd have to say, it'll be tough to look at anything else after you've witnessed this monster. That's it! By the way, don't respond to this E-mail address (again, I'm only using this for the newsgroups), stick with joecat@phantom.com. This info will be reposted at my Web site as well. The real-deal below...