A Classic TurboRez card - Press Release

November 8, 1994

It would be an understatement to say it's been awhile since there's been
news from us about the status of the "fabled" TurboRez product. As some of
you may know, since the previewing of a prototype at the last two Apple
Expo's, we elected to do an entirely new design based on the use of custom
gate array technology. Even though underestimating project completion time
seems to be a tradition with computer hardware/software development, let's
just say that even we've been amazed at the degree of difficulty involved
here. This project has had an appetite for resources (like TIME) that has to
be experienced to be appreciated.

The current status is that, after more than a year of design and simulation
of the virtual chips, we've got actual hardware up and running. This
happened just in the last 5-6 weeks and the debugging process is proceeding
steadily. So far, the video is looking good and the circuits seem stable.

Our apologies for not being online with some news sooner. With the
pre-announcement situations we've created in the past, it seemed prudent to
wait until there was new hardware actually in operation before making any
public statement. Normally though, given the incomplete state of the project
at this point, we probably would have waited awhile longer. The announcement
of the Second Sight card (by Sequential Systems) has altered the marketplace
however, hence some earlier information from us.

On this note, we'll briefly discuss the two products. Operation in a GS with
the stock RGB monitor reveals similarities such as 256-color pixels, in both
320 and 640 resolution and 400-line interlaced modes. The TurboRez card has
a Display List CoProcessor and a high-speed blitter, while Second Sight has
a microprocessor that does blitter emulation. Now, what about the particular
strengths of the two cards?

Comparing The Two

The Second Sight card's strongest suite is when it's coupled to an external
SVGA monitor. Here it offers some pretty high resolution, up to 1076 by 768
pixels. Of course, to effectively take advantage of this, you'll really need
a 17 or 19 inch monitor to avoid eyestrain (Price a monitor this size next
time you're at a computer store). Second Sight does not offer overscanning.

The TurboRez card will accept an adaptor that allows attaching a VGA monitor
and sending out a 640 by 480 image, so it appears we come in second in the
resolution department. TurboRez is capable of doing overscan, however
(vertical and horizontal, together or separately).

Pictures That Move

Where TurboRez does shine is in the area of multimedia animation. It's nice
to be able to show pictures on the GS that have enhanced color and
resolution, but what about bringing them to life? In other words, making
them move and flow. Well, the TurboRez card enhances animation on the GS
with a host of features. First, of course, the high-speed Blitter for
drawing shapes and objects to the display very quickly. Add to that its
Multi-Plane Overlay capability and Line Drawing (w/Scaling). Let's talk
about those last two.

Multi-Plane Overlay Technology

The Multi-Plane hardware on the TurboRez card is similar in concept to the
multi-plane techniques used by commercial film animators. Basically, it
means having the various elements of the picture, both moving and still, on
separate "layers". In TurboRez, this means that moving shapes can be placed
in separate image layers (or planes) and pass over or under each other (or
in front of or behind foreground/background objects) without "interfering"
with the other picture elements. In a single-plane video card (like Second
Sight), an animated scene consisting of stacked shapes and objects is very
slow and messy to update fast enough to present a smoothly flowing image. To
alter a shape in the "middle", means not only erasing and redrawing that
particular shape, but also anything that appears above or below it onscreen.
To change that one shape requires massive amounts of erasing and redrawing
even though the neighboring shapes and objects are not due to change yet.
All of this activity translates to SLOW screen updating.

TurboRez, with hardware Multi-Plane technology, doesn't suffer from these
limitations. With separate image planes, the update process is confined to
just those shapes and objects that need it at the time. This means no wasted
time redrawing things that don't need it! The result: Efficient and FAST
animation on your GS (even without a Zip accelerator).

Texture Mapping via Line Drawing w/Scaling

The other major animation enhancer is the Line Drawing w/Scaling hardware.
Here we take a common operation like plotting a line of pixels and couple it
with Scaling logic. Scaling allows magnifying or shrinking a bitmapped shape
or object as it's being drawn. The scaling operation can be done by the
plotting software but that approach is never as fast doing it thru hardware.
By using Scaling along with Line Drawing, it's easy to not only alter the
drawn size of a source shape but to rotate it as well. Similarly, a drawing
technique known as Texture Mapping is enhanced using the TurboRez hardware.

Texture Mapping lets us manipulate a source texture map, which is a
rectangular, bitmapped image of something, say a picture of woodgrain or red
brick siding or whatever. The effect is that it's being stretched across the
face of some 3D object that's in the onscreen image. The woodgrain might be
applied to the floor of the scene and the bricks to a fireplace. Where
before there might have been a collection of 3D objects with solid-color
shaded faces, we would now have objects with realistic textures "pasted"
onto them.

To get a good idea of how effective this technique is, find somebody with a
486 PC (50 or 66 mhz) that has the popular program "Doom" and have them run
it for you. Now, we at RezTek aren't advocating that all games should
imitate the shoot-em up premise of Doom, but our purpose here is to examine
the implementation of a realtime, 3D texture mapped universe in which the
user can move about freely and interact with. The effect is quite impressive
and realistic. Now imagine something similar running on your GS, running at
fullscreen size and animating smoothly. How's that going to happen? Only
with a TurboRez GS card, using its hardware enhanced Line Drawing w/Scaling.

While we're talking about features, we'll also mention that page-flipping is
no problem and there's also support for the GS's NTSC video port and planned
GenLocking support (for instance; the Apple VOC card).

What, Where, When

OK, by now the questions are when and how much. Well, we've still got quite
a bit of work to do to get this ready for production, so don't worry about
ordering a TurboRez card just yet. There will be more news posted at the
first of the new year (here, on Genie for sure, and possibly in one or more
publications). At that time we should have a better handle on release time
and pricing, etc.

Please understand that we're a dedicated but small company (i.e.
understaffed and overworked) and that we'll be needing to apply all of our
energy to completing the TurboRez product. Therefore, for the near future,
answering the phone will probably have to take a backseat to the production
effort. If we're slow in replying to EMail and stuff, just take comfort in
the thought that it was time diverted to a good cause. Also, thanks in
advance to folks volunteering for beta test duty but we're doing just fine
in that regard presently.

Thanks for your interest in this product. And stay tuned for more news about
TurboRez GS, the video card that'll bring powerful and dynamic animation to
your IIGS! (..and the company bringing it to you, RezTek, of course.)

Current contact info:
RezTek
2301 Cotton Ct
Santa Rosa, Ca 95401
707-573-9257