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if you want real wearable computing for simulation, then might as well get the real thing:

http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Expedition/Exped itionDI.html

Here's one of their mil sim uses

http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Expedition/Exped itionDI.html

ExpeditionDI employs an eMagin® binocular OLED head mounted display (HMD) technology as the primary viewing device. The HMD features a 40 degree diagonal FOV, 24-bit color SVGA microdisplays, a 200:1 contrast ratio, patented OLED-on-silicon technology to enhance refresh rates, and on-chip signal processing and data buffering to provide bright, crisp, and flicker-free mono or stereo vision capability. An observer's clone view of the HMD is available using ExpeditionDI's secondary display connector. Alternately, a stealth view is available with select software options.

I just love the fine-print in the bottom of this picture!

For more Information, look here (original press release from Quantum3D):
http://www.quantum3d.com/press/2005/02-15-05_Exped _Anno.htm
and here (Quantum3D about Thermite):
http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Thermite/thermit e.html

For more Information, look here (original press release from Quantum3D):
http://www.quantum3d.com/press/2005/02-15-05_Exped _Anno.htm
and here (Quantum3D about Thermite):
http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Thermite/thermit e.html

It's interesting to that a number of manufacturers are putting out glowing press releases about their involvement with this, including Transmeta. There's a bit more information on Transmeta's site about the actual specs of the wearable system itself.

And, yes, it can run Linux.

The fact that he has 'accessories' kit or the fact that the caption says "Soldier not included".

The fact that he has 'accessories' kit or the fact that the caption says "Soldier not included".

3dfx has never suggested in any forum that they will leave the PC market. Why would they? At worst what we're seeing is a return to the Voodoo 2 strategy: a successful one, before they took too much upon themselves. And by the way, Quantum 3D had a kick-ass SLI product on store shelves then, too.

Derina X. Pinchfish

Remember that VooDoo2 SLI (2 VooDoo2's on one chip with 24MB RAM)? It cost around $550 or $600 depending where you got it. People still yanked those up. And that was when video cards/games/extreme hardware wasnt as poplular as it is today. So this should be interesting indeed...
As for loosing money, that may be true. However, 3dfx is still number one in sales according to this article.

Their v5-6000 has four separate chips running in parallel... each with its own cooling fan. The board requires its own external power supply.

And if that isn't scary enough, Quantum 3D is building 8, 16, and 32 (THIRTY FRICKIN TWO) processor... well, "cards" isn't the right term: they are external rack mountable boxes. It uses 1600 WATTS.

URL: http://www.quantum3d.com/product%20pages/aalchemy3 .html

Thanks shugashack

Check out Quantum 3d's website for some heavy duty 3d using a "ruggedized" version of Win95 for arcade systems and high end simulations. They have sub- systems ($40,000 for the 32 CPU version) that can use up to 32 of the new VSA-100 chipsets (Voodoo 4/5) and it just rocks. I have flown a 35 million dollar Beoing 777 simulator (my brother's landlord is night security and has access) and there is very little difference in speed and quality between the two. The flight simulator does have adavantages in all the other areas of course. I haven't spent enough time with the Quantum 3d to see it crash but I have seen every other OS crash at least once including consoles. The real question is if they can build it as solid as other consoles. I believe they can IF they don't try to make it do more than it should.

I don't know what exactly their patent is trying to cover. It looks like it's trying to cover distributed, rather than parallel, rendering; that is, in triple-buffering, have one chip handle the first backbuffer and the other chip handle the second backbuffer. The law of diminishing returns would definitely apply right away. Right now one of the big bottlenecks in 3D cards is the speed at which the bus can send rendering commands to it. Also, the time it takes to send a rendering command is often longer than the time it takes to execute it on the card; unless each chip is storing a complete displaylist and then post-rendering it (and there's not really much point to that, either), the overlap between the chips' rendering times will be minimal, at best. At the absolute best you could get a doubling in framerate, but the latency would still be just as high, and latency is the real killer in 3D games, not framerate (it's just that framerate is easier to measure and easier to explain).

Perhaps some of their patented work involves trying to 'interpolate' between frames. If that's the case, then that really is a quite difficult problem, and I'd be tempted to say they deserve any patent they get in that area. However, I seriously doubt that's the case.

Basically, this seems like another case of Exxtreme Marketing[tm]. ATI seems to have taken a page out of 3Dfx's book. (I'm sorry, but the Tbuffer is nothing revolutionary - it's a crippled accumulation buffer being marketed as revolutionary, when the TNT and Rage and Savage and the like have had a full accumulation buffer for a couple years now.)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.