PC chip giant Intel and 3-D software maker Digimation plan to announce a partnership late Tuesday that will bring a new technology for 3-D games to the Intel platform.
Dubbed multiresolution mesh technology, the new software plug-ins will help game developers design games that look better on more powerful PCs.
"We want consumers to feel good about their purchase," said Jason Rubenstein, games evangelist with Intel. "This has been an issue for a long time."
Trouble in toyland
The problem: Games developers design their software for the "average" PC in the home.
Unfortunately, today that may mean a 200MHz Pentium with MMX, not the super-fast Pentium III that just hit the shelves. That means software that doesn't look as good as it could and lost potential sales.
"Games developers don't want to predict what the baseline PC will be in two years -- they want to know," said Rubenstein.
The new software does users one better than that.
New tools for developers
Provided to developers, the Digimation plug-ins will help them create software at as high a detail as they want. The game maker can include as many "polygons" -- the fundamental measure of detail in graphics -- as they want, making explosions look ultra-real and faces extremely detailed.
"The developer can author the game the same way they do it at Pixar," said Rubenstein, "because eventually the technology will get there."
The software part of the technology will run in the game -- or possibly, the installer -- and reduce the detail to a level that the user's PC can handle. The software will work with Direct3D, OpenGL, and Glide graphics interfaces -- the primary ways that 3-D software talks with the computer, he said.
The result: A game that runs as well as the PC will allow. Still, that goal will not be here before Christmas -- and more likely, the year 2000 -- as it requires a new cycle of game development incorporate the new plug-ins.
Intel wins, too
Yet for Intel, the benefits could be immediate. No longer will having a middle-of-the-road PC be all that is necessary to play games: The more powerful the PC, the better looking the games.
That alone could spur lagging interest in high-end PCs.
