Next Generation article on the unreleased 'Saturn 2' and The Dreamcast Story

[esteban]

Tangent: handygrafx/AirRaidX!!!!

You had posted sound files comparing different versions of Ghosts n Goblins or Ghouls and Ghosts many, many years ago. Good stuff.

Kudos to Nat for recognizing the tell-tale signs of handy grafx  .

/tangent

[ProfessorProfessorson]

edit 2:  ProfessorProfessorson, by re-reading your post, I can clearly see that you have a great understanding of the subject (Lockheed Martin Real3D)!  Good for you!

Yeah you know if you care to google it, I think you can find pics of the R3d/100 pci cards posted on a forum a couple years back or so. I think some prototypes were also posted. I never really understood why Intel bothered to purchase Real3d. I mean, I know they were somewhat invested in i740, but that tech was really dead in the market by the time they made the purchase, and they could have just washed their hands of it all and been better off for it then having to deal with the nuisance of the 3DFX patent lawsuit and other mess.

Intel has always kinda toyed around with the gpu market for the past 14 years or so, i740 on up, but nothing they have done has been exceptional really by any means. At least their Intel Extreme gpu line started to become somewhat capable. It was really interesting to see how the 3D accelerator retail market played out during the mid 90's up till Nvidia sunk their meat hooks into 3DFX. After 3DFXs death everyone kinda either closed shop or focused their efforts elsewhere leaving the market to ATI and Nvidia, including PowerVR, Matrox, and Sis, who were probably the last 3 other smaller major players to hold out in that battle after 2000.

PowerVR had their last retail Gpu, Kyro II, which if I remember right was mainly sold via Guilment/Hercules (they sold excellent sound cards and some awesome Geforce cards too). Lack of Hardware T&L and pixel shader support really tanked the Kyro II card after 2001. The Matrox Parhelia and the Sis Xabre 400/600 released to retail and both basically performed poorly on the market. Well, I mean, it was really bad in fact for the Parhelia since its major feature was supposed to be multi-monitor gaming and it didn't have the power to back the feature up, and the card was terribly expensive. At least the Xabre cards were cheap though and you got what you paid for, mostly.

[Black Tiger]

So guys, what do you think about the articles I posted, about Sega possibly using Lockheed Martin Real3D in Saturn instead of the mess of chips it had? 

I think it would've been an N64 and 3DO M2 killer

Sounds expensive. Wouldn't have been any good unless it came in at or below the actual Saturn's launch price, which was still high.

The actual Saturn already beat the Nintendo 64 in Japan. If the Saturn had better overall 3D and the same library, it still would have needed to secure exclusive contracts with publishers the way Sony did for the Playstation in order to have done much better. Maybe the hardware would have helped them snag Core, Namco, Square, etc early on. If not, then it wouldn't matter how good the graphics were.

[SuperGrafx16]

Better hardware, better API (Open GL) would've landed Sega much better support all over the world.  The Saturn as it was, was a disaster as a piece of hardware.

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, it was a kit-bash of nonsense. Of course, launching something else a year later, regardless of quality, would have been 10,000 times too stupid, even for Sega, who was interested in getting out of that kind of thing by that point. As it was, the Saturn was much MUCH more popular than the Megadrive in the domestic market, so to some extent they did the right thing.

[SuperGrafx16]

Part of the R3D/100 cost issue was the geometry assist processor, so they scrapped it for the Pci cards they manufactured for business use, opting to rely on the cpu like the i740, so it would not really be reasonable to assume it would have been on par with R3d/1000s arcade performance at all, or even close to it in a home console situation. The sad fact of the matter is that i740 is all Real3D could muster up as is for a affordable consumer grade gpu before ATI nabbed some of their better techs and Intel snuffed them out.

This truly makes me sad.  Lockheed had outstanding tech back in the mid 1990s. Too bad it was never put into consumer use, not counting the i740.

[SuperGrafx16]

I forgot to include an important article, It's about the never-used Nvidia NV2, which was specificaly for Sega. They mention Real3D and that's the part I'll quote:


http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/page4.asp

Sega Black Belt
Real3D and 3dfx

With the collapse of the NVIDIA deal, Sega started looking for another partner and eventually hooked up with Real3D, then a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. This seemed like a good match as Sega had worked with Real3D on the development of the Model 2 arcade machine, and would later work together again on the Model 3. []bThe console chip would likely have been at the same performance level or just slightly below Real3D's PC chip, the Intel i740.[/b]
The console was codenamed "Black Belt". Sega reasoned that casual gamers could get a "white belt" gaming system such as a PC, but real gamers would want something better, a "black belt" system.

Although there were discussions between Real3D and Sega, Real3D never made any silicon for the Black Belt. 3dfx had beaten Real3D by offering better performance and a more robust feature set. Officially, Real3D stated that the business model for the console market did not create a win-win situation with Sega as it did in the high-end arcade market.

Sega awarded 3dfx with the chip contract. The console's Black Belt name remained even after the graphics chip was to be replaced by a variant of the 3dfx Voodoo2.

You really need to read the entire article, though:

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/page4.asp

The i740 probably wouldn't have been as good as a Voodoo 2, since a variant of Voodoo 2 or Voodoo 3 would've ben far more powerful. However, if SEGA had contracted LM to make a true next-gen GPU for a year-2000 console, it would've blown away the PowerVR2DC accelerator in Dreamcast. As well as not having the problems PowerVR had compared to Model 3.  (Every Model 3 game has AA and run at 60fps, can't say the same about the DC).
A custom next-gen Real3D GPU could easily have been more powerful than NAOMI 2, Xbox and GameCube, nevermind the PS2.

[nat]

From an end-user standpoint, I don't personally think what the DC got was too crippling or significantly less than what the other "128-bit" consoles got. Dreamcast can easily hold its own and sometimes look better than the PS2, and at least competes competently with the XBOX and GC.

The Dreamcast is comparable to the TurboGrafx-16 in that it was designed a year or two before its competitors, with slightly older technology, yet still manages to deliver and perform remarkably well against them.

I remember when the Dreamcast first came out, it was a simply downright AMAZING piece of technology. I remember when a friend got one at launch, I was absolutely blown away. For the first time in my life, I was witnessing polygon-based 3D that DIDN'T look like vomit-textured shards of glass. I recall the hype leading up to the release was pretty big, too, and it certainly didn't disappoint.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

However, if SEGA had contracted LM to make a true next-gen GPU for a year-2000 console, it would've blown away the PowerVR2DC accelerator in Dreamcast. As well as not having the problems PowerVR had compared to Model 3.  (Every Model 3 game has AA and run at 60fps, can't say the same about the DC).
A custom next-gen Real3D GPU could easily have been more powerful than NAOMI 2, Xbox and GameCube, nevermind the PS2.

The reason Model 3 appeared powerful was because the hardware was huge, using TWO PRO-1000 chips, costing arcade vendors tens of thousands of dollars to purchase on some of the titles. It is also not fair to expect ports of Model 3 games ported over to Dreamcast to be picture perfect, as the 3D hardware was entirely different, and the games had to be reworked from the ground up due to how PowerVR2 renders graphics versus TWO PRO-1000 chips.

Also to note, games running on Model 3 were displayed at a res of 496x384. Running at that low a resolution, games are obviously going to run at a fast framerate on that hardware configuration. Dreamcast/Naomi displayed games at a higher resolution, and PowerVR2 supported more graphics features then PRO-1000 did, and was stackable for multi gpu ability at a far more affordable price. Anything made specifically for the PowerVR2 chipset handled quite well, and most of the A+ titles on Dreamcast and Naomi 1&2/Atomiswave look quite a better then anything produce on the thousands of dollars more expensive Model 3 hardware. Power VR2 was a more powerful feature rich GPU in general, and it was consumer grade (Dreamcast and Neon 250 pc graphics card), and smoked everything LM/REAL3D had produced for Sega or PC on the consumer side. This is why Sega went with PowerVR2 and stuck with it for so long until moving to Triforce, Chihiro, Lindbergh etc.

You are totally forgetting the fact that the horribly weak, totally inferior i740 (designed during the same time as PowerVR2 was) was the best Real3D could muster for a custom consumer related GPU. They were totally incompetent when it came to affordable consumer grade GPU technology, and they were amazingly far behind 3DFX, Nvidia, ATI, VideoLogic, etc due to that. LM/REAL3D was not in the right mindset to produce consumer grade technology, for game systems or otherwise, and Sega, along with Intel and everyone else knew this. All they knew how to design and manufacture well was massive workhorse technology used for expensive simulators and other applications the typical consumer would never use, where the price was not the question of the day, where no expense was spared.

As is, it is even hard to say whether their later work was even their own. They were involved in patent lawsuits as it was by the time they got snuffed, and they were starting to have to compete with companies like Quantum3D in the simulation market, and Quantum3D was curb stomping them with consumer grade 3DFX chipsets in the AAlchemy systems, etc. To be perfectly blunt, spending time speculating on what could have been/fantasy projects concerning Real3D is time unwisely wasted. What they did bring to the table that had real merit, that was the best they had to offer, in the end that was totally out of reach for the normal guys wallet, let alone 5 normal guys combining their wallets. And as a 3D company in general, they were not even 2nd or 3rd in their class by the time of their demise. As far as I am concerned, good riddance.



Nuff said.

[SuperGrafx16]

Well, ProfessorProfessorson, I have no choice but to agree with you on most points. You've certainly schooled me on Real3D vs PowerVR2 and other chipsets.  Job well done.

[SuperGrafx16]

By April 1997, Next Generation Online discovered that Lockheed Martin would not be involved with Sega's home console plans, and that Black Belt would not be an upgrade for Saturn but a whole new console.

Black Belt from a Lockheed Perspective
Two former Lockheed Martin employees, N-Space's Erick Dyke and Dan O'Leary voice their views on Sega's move to use 3Dfx instead of a Lockheed Martin solution.
April 29, 1997

With experience in developing for Model 2 (Desert Tank) and having helped develop the Model 3 hardware while at Lockheed Martin, Erick Dyke and Dan O'Leary have indicated that it would have been difficult for Sega to make a better decision in terms of a graphics subsystem.

"3Dfx has proven itself. Just look downstairs (at CGDC). Nearly every major demo at every booth is running off of some form of the Voodoo graphics chipset," said O'Leary. While consumers have yet to establish a standard in 3D acceleration, most of the developers projects and demos were using Voodoo as their target platform.

Commenting upon the strengths of the proposed Black Belt Dyke said: "Not only is Sega getting the hottest chipset around, but with Microsoft in its corner it will be getting useful libraries; something the Saturn desperately lacked."

The major question facing the duo was why did Sega neglect its long-term hardware partner Lockheed Martin when designing the hardware? O'Leary stepped up to the plate answering: "Sega has to find the cheapest but most powerful hardware it can. Lockheed Martin is still trying to figure out how it fits into the consumer space seeing as it has traditionally worked in the simulation arena. 3Dfx on the other hand was created from the ground up to be a consumer level product. It isn't at all surprising that Sega has gone this route."

When comparing Lockheed's Model 2 and Model 3 hardware to the proposed Black Belt specification, both O'Leary and Dyke felt that that Black Belt would be far more similar to developing for the Model 2 than Model 3. "The Model 2 is a beautiful board that is simple to get right to the metal, " said Dyke. "The Model 3 was designed around more of a traditional simulator model with a host and GPU arrangement where the database runs the entire game."

While Dyke mentions getting to the metal easily, some developers such as Scott Corley and Dave Perry both voiced some concern over Microsoft's OS getting in the way. "Good developers will cut through the OS to get to the metal as they need it." says Dyke. "As long as Microsoft doesn't force the OS upon the developers it should be fine."

With the ease of development that is expected to go along with the system, and the double-edged sword that this situation can present, Dyke said that Sega's quality assurance program should help to weed out games from developers that are relying too much upon the base libraries or that are quick ports of substandard PC titles.

Both Dyke and O'Leary also pointed to one non-technical element that is different at Sega presently than it was at the launch of the Saturn: executive personnel. Both men cited the fact that Bernie Stollar was a major factor for the third party support that PlayStation enjoys and the fact that Stollar is now responsible for generating that same third party support for Sega. "They've assembled a really good team at Sega now and it's going to be interesting to see what the next generation brings." said Dyke.

http://web.archive.org/web/19970605161903/www.next-generation.com/news/042997b.chtml

Black Belt eventually lost the internal competition within SEGA in favor of Katana in the summer of 1997, which was then named Dreamcast in May 1998.