Is Fahrenheit Graphics A Load Of Vapour? 11
Gerald asks: "It's been three years since Microsoft and SGI announced that they were jointly developing Fahrenheit, the new 3D graphics API that would be better and more cross platform than both OpenGL and Direct3D. The dates indicated on the press release have all passed, and there has been no mention on it anywhere. I haven't even been able to find a Fahrenheit home page. So what's happened? Was Fahrenheit a decoy to get the graphics industry off the back of Microsoft when it first came out with Direct3D?"
It's been dead for a long time (Score:1)
Re:More cross platform than OpenGL? (Score:1)
I highly doubt that SGI believed that the 3D power that they could offer would ever be used on commodity desktops. They stopped being visionary back when Jim Clark left, at least from the CEO level. Ed McCraken led SGI down a path of arrogance and myopic visions of customer delight. They always thought that they were dictating what technology would benefit their customers.
SGI's relationship with Hollywood, in particular, has been overbuilt. Why don't they use it to realize a larger market? They do all this work getting their systems into product placements in movies, but they don't actually have a product that regular movie-goers can buy. SGI never conceived that consumer products would be a good idea for their business model. Someone should have told that to their Windows NT System Engineers. I just think it's a shame to see such a well respected brand to be wasted.
Fahrenheit (Score:3)
In talking to the SGI crew at Siggraph, SGI already took their last developer off Fahrenheit, and Microsoft only ever had two guys dedicated to the project.
I won't guess at Microsoft's motives, but I'll submit this: At the point where Fahrenheit was announced, OpenGL was the defacto standard for 3D. If Direct3D hadn't taken off, the Fahrenheit alliance would have put Microsoft in the perfect position to embrace and extend.
Today, and as of Direct3D 5, all major chip makers are designing 3D hardware to match the functionality of Direct3D. nVidia's new hardware is DirectX 8. From Microsoft's standpoint, there wouldn't be much to gain by relinquishing control.
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My opinions are mine.
IIRC... (Score:1)
Too bad it never materialized.
COUGHvaporwareCOUGH
SGI didn't want to get E&E'd (Score:2)
DirectX and OpenGL both seem to have gotten along just fine on their own, and i for one am glad that SGI dropped Farenheit.
Re:Fahrenheit (Score:1)
Re:More cross platform than OpenGL? (Score:2)
In particular, at the time Farenheit was announced, there was nothing stopping SGI from releasing a decent hardware-accellerated OpenGL driver development kit for Win95.
I don't really know any of the history, except what I read on news groups at the time. Certainly, someone with the "real" history can fill in where I'm wrong (which might be everything). But, here's what I do remember:
At the time, Microsoft was actively heel-dragging on their own hardware accelerated OpenGL implentation on Win95, and using the delay to promote D3D for all it was worth. Back then, SGI still had a reputation for awesome workstations with kick-ass 3D graphics, and had just partnered with Nintendo to develop the graphics tech for their new game platform. They were the 800 pound gorilla in the 3D market, and it looked like they were in a position to jump into PC hardware. Then, SGI started to display their "Cosmo" OpenGL implementation on Win95, and if I remember correctly, there was quite a bit of talk that once SGI got into the market, OpenGL on the PC would be the path of the future -- D3D would be dead and gone, and Microsoft would be stuck with a cross-flatform accelerated 3D API.
But then, SGI didn't release Cosmo. And there was a few months delay, where each day they said "we'll release it soon, and when we do, we'll destroy Direct 3D on Windows." And, during that delay, Microsoft continued to improve Direct 3D -- their API's got better, and their relationship with the hardware vendors grew stronger.
After even more delay, at last SGI and Microsoft came out with a joint announcement -- they were going to write the magical graphics language -- backwards compatible with OpenGL, and Direct 3D, and Open Inventor, and Java 3D, and XML, and VRML, and... well, I exagerating there, but not by much. It was pretty clear that the Farenheit stuff was pie-in-the-sky technology.
It was also pretty clear that it was a carrot that Microsoft dangled in from of SGI's face, to get SGI to stop working on OpenGL for Windows. Instead of SGI partnering with other hardware companies to working on complicated 3D video drivers that Microsoft would almost certainly work to actively break in every new implementation of Windows, Microsoft offered SGI a chance to work on a new graphics API, one that Microsoft offered to embrace across the entire Windows platform. Farenheit was the Microsoft-approved road into the PC hardware for SGI. And like most Microsoft-approved roads, this one lead straight to hell.
It is very difficult to understand why a company like SGI would partner with a company like Microsoft. Perhaps at the time, SGI didn't realize how ubiquitous hardware accelerated 3-D graphics were going to become; they still saw it as a small and lucrative niche market that Microsoft would quickly grow bored with, and cede back to SGI. Perhaps SGI did look into the future, and saw accelerated 3D on the PC becomming commodity hardware, with no value to the SGI business model. Perhaps they also saw that most 3D applications on the PC would be commodity games, also with no real value for SGI. Maybe SGI realized Farenheit was just a way for SGI to politely step out of the PC market altogether, and they went down that path willingly.
I don't know.
Maybe... Just maybe... (Score:1)
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It's dead, but... (Score:1)
It's dead (Score:3)
Why would MS promote a pseudo-open API when their proprietary API is the standard in gaming now?
More cross platform than OpenGL? (Score:1)
OpenGL ain't broken, we don't need a third 'standard', surely?
THL
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