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

[SuperGrafx16]

You know by now I love obscure/unreleased stuff, so here's another one for you all  

From Next Generation November 1995:







'Saturn 2' could've been a new console instead of Saturn or a quick replacement (not in place of Dreamcast, it's not of that class) or as a Saturn upgrade cart for Model 2 ports and downscaled Model 3 conversions.


I have more to post.

[SuperGrafx16]

More on the Real3D/100 destined for Saturn 2....  
Not to be confused with the low-end i740 or the highend Real3D/Pro-1000s used in Sega Model 3 arcade board.








The Real3D/100 chipset could've been reduced into a single chip, much like PS1's CPU+GTE or better yet, the 3DO M2's Bulldog ASIC.  If Lockheed Martin had desired to enter the consumer market in a big way (nevermind the i740),  They would've been a force to be respected.

[SuperGrafx16]

Also, you all should read this:

The Dreamcast Story

''A do-or-die machine which will decide whether Sega stays in the
hardware biz''

Dreamcast is a system born out of Sega's darkest hour, a do-or-die
machine which will decide whether the company stays in the hardware
business. Its precursor, the 32bit Sega Saturn, had been widely
expected to conquer the world with Nintendo's own second next
generation system heavily delayed -- due to the collapse of an
alliance with Sony -- and neither Atari nor 3DO seriously threatening
mass market success.
All that changed with the November '93 announcement of the Sony
PlayStation, a system which would heavily defeat Sega's system and
become a considerable influence on how Sega designed Dreamcast.
Although there had been rumours of Sony producing a console, what came
as a heavy shock to Sega was the technical superiority of the
PlayStation. While the Saturn had been designed as perhaps the
ultimate 2D arcade machine, albeit with a substantial 3D capability,
PlayStation was totally committed to polygons.

Sega boss Hayao Nakayama angrily berated Sega's engineers for their
failings, but it was too late to totally redesign the system if the
1994 launch was too proceed. Instead, Sega added yet another processor
to an already over-complicated design. In terms of raw power, the new
Saturn was much more of a match for PlayStation, but it would never be
an easy machine to program for. The twin CPU design in particular
demanded highly specialised machine code rather than the C most
Japanese developers prefered: barely a year after Saturn's launch a
key Sega manager admitted only one in a hundred programmers would have
the skill to use the machine's full potential.

Ironically, the Saturn's Japanese launch would be Sega's best ever
performance in its home territory. Even a flawed version of Virtua
Fighting was enough to transform the company's traditional weakness in
its home territory. Overseas, however, it was to be a different
matter. Scepticism about the prospects of a CD-ROM machine succeeding
in the cost-sensitive US market meant Saturn was originally partnered
with a low-cost, cart-based system codenamed Jupiter -- principally
due to American scepticism that a CD-ROM machine could be
competitively priced. When Saturn was upgraded, Jupiter got axed in
favour of Mars, an upgrade for Sega's 16bit Mega Drive which was
supposed to protect the company's hugely lucrative US market. In fact,
32X was an unmitigated disaster, drawing vital developer support away
from Saturn and destroying the company's reputation among gamers who
found themselves with an add-on with barely a handful of games.

The Saturn debacle would cost the jobs of Sega's American and Japanese
bosses, beside reducing its US empire to a ruin running up losses of
$167 million in 1997. For any replacement machine the lessons were
clear: a single format, complete user-friendliness for developers and
a new brand -- so low had sunk the once mighty Sega name.


As soon as any console is launched, work is usually underway on a
replacement but the Saturn's troubles gave this process an unusual
urgency for Sega. By 1995, rumours surfaced that US defence
contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. were already deep into the
development of a replacement, possibly even with a view to releasing
it as a Saturn upgrade. There were even claims that during Saturn's
pre-launch panic a group of managers argued the machine should simply
be scrapped in favour of an all-new LMC design.

Sega originally entered into partnership with LMC to solve problems
with its Model 2 coin-op board, however by 1995 the relationship had
soured somewhat with the Model 3 board suffering massive delays.
Around the same time, 3DO began shopping around its 64bit M2 system.
According to informed sources, Sega's Japanese bankers had brokered an
unwritten deal whereby Matsushita would manufacture M2 units, while
Sega would concentrate on the software. M2 devkits were supplied to
Sega in early 1996, with initial work reputedly concentrating on a
Virtua Fighter 3 conversion for M2's launch.

Sega's M2 project soon fell apart however. 3DO's Trip Hawkins blamed
corporate ‘egos' for the collapse, while Sega insisted its engineers
were unconvinced M2 was the breakthrough technology they needed.
Instead, the company was increasingly preoccupied by the PC market --
unlike Nintendo, it was fully prepared to convert its games onto the
format and in mid-1995 it had entered into a partnership with PC
graphics card manufacturer nVidia. Under the terms of the deal, Sega
would supply ports of key Saturn titles exclusively for the nVidia PC
graphics card. At the time, pundits wondered if Sega might be
switching from Saturn to nVidia as its principal platform.

By 1996, this speculation was ebbing away as two clear frontrunners
emerged in the PC graphics market: VideoLogic's PowerVR and 3Dfx's
Voodoo chipsets. Sega approached both companies to be partners in two
parallel Saturn 2 projects, each of which having minimal if any
knowledge of the other. The 3Dfx-Sega of America project was codenamed
Black Belt, while the VideoLogic-Sega of Japan system was known as
Dural. Although console development is usually shrouded in total
secrecy, Saturn 2's development coincided with the rise of the
Internet and Black Belt soon became a popular topic of gossip. For a
time, many presumed Black Belt was the only new Sega system.

All this changed on July 22nd, 1997, when 3Dfx was informed them Black
Belt was cancelled. It was a shattering blow -- "Our contract with
Sega was considered to be gospel right up until we received the call,"
admitted marketing manager Chris Kramer. Two months later, 3Dfx issued
a lawsuit against Sega while blaming VideoLogic's Japanese backers,
NEC, for bringing influence to bear on a decision which would
otherwise have gone to 3Dfx. An initial burst of publicity soon gave
way to highly confidential discussions which settled the lawsuit away
from the public eye in August 1998.

For outsiders, 3Dfx had always been the favoured partner due to their
leadership in the PC market, moreover Sega let it be known the
decision to cancel wasn't due to either performance or cost reasons.
What may have been a factor is 3Dfx's very strength made it a
difficult partner for Sega, VideoLogic's second-place status obviously
made it the hungrier partner. Moreover, whereas 3Dfx see themselves as
creating a new gaming platform around their Voodoo hardware and Glide
software, VideoLogic were much more eager to use Microsoft's Direct3D
API.

Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, the PowerVR decision
further dampened excitement about a machine soon to be redubbed
Katana. In January '98, UK trade newspaper CTW ran a savage onslaught
upon the new format: "When one looks at a format owner that actually
struggles to garner interest in its latest hardware announcements, you
know it''s in trouble. From Black Belt to Dural and Katana,
journalists have leapt into headline mode, but the level of
disinterest elsewhere is palpable." Commenting upon the latest
redundancies in America and Britain, Dinsey wondered whether the
company was "giving up and trying to re-invent itself as a PC
publisher."

In May, Sega gave its response with the official announcement of its
new system, its specifications and that controversial name: Dreamcast.
The marketing campaign began with the announcement of the marketing
campaign and its $100 million budget for each territory: America,
Europe and Japan. Sega boss Shoichiro Irimajiri put the cost of
hardware development at $50-80 million, software development at
$150-200 million, which with marketing added up to half a billion
dollars.

The PR statements were suitably bullish: "Dreamcast is Sega's bridge
to world-wide market leadership for the 21st century" commented Sega
US VP Bernie Stolar. "I am confident that Dreamcast will become a de
facto standard for digital entertainment" claimed Sega chairman Isso
Okawa. However, it was at E3 itself that the tide really began to turn
for Sega with bravura software demos finally earning the machine
journalists' respect. Post E3 reports were full of adoration , as
impressed by the restoration of Sega's old self-confidence as the raw
processing power on show. Dreamcast's launch date was set as November
20th and this time all Sony can threaten is the announcement of new
hardware -- 1998 is Dreamcast's alone.

From E3 onwards, Sega orchestrated a careful drumbeat of
announcements, including the launch of the VMS unit on July 11th to
tie-in with the Godzilla movie and a much hyped August 22nd PR event
for Sega's old mascot in Sonic Adventure. In September, Sega ran an ad
showing MD Eiichi Yukawa being abused by members of the public who
preferred Sony -- and promising all would change with Dreamcast's
arrival. And so it is, everything now rests with the machine and its
software.

[nat]

You know by now I love obscure/unreleased stuff, so here's another one for you all 

Did you used to post here and go by the name "AirRaidX" or "handygrafx?"

[SuperGrafx16]

handygrafx. I lost my password.

[nat]

I knew it. Your penchant for articles about unreleased hardware is unmatched (and unmistakable).

[SuperGrafx16]

I knew it. Your penchant for articles about unreleased hardware is unmatched (and unmistakable).

I knew it. Your penchant for articles about unreleased hardware is unmatched (and unmistakable).

I mean, is that alright and everything?

[TheClash603]

I didn't know that the Sega Saturn could be used to kill people?  It is funny when you see how these old consoles and military usage were hand-in-hand.  I one time saw a story how 1,000 Playstations were rigged together to power some military equipment.

The most bitter pill to swallow when reading this article is that the Hasbro Virtual Reality system never came to be.

[SuperGrafx16]

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

[nat]

I knew it. Your penchant for articles about unreleased hardware is unmatched (and unmistakable).

I knew it. Your penchant for articles about unreleased hardware is unmatched (and unmistakable).

I mean, is that alright and everything?

Oh yeah, for sure. Don't take it the wrong way.

[SuperGrafx16]

I knew it. Your penchant for articles about unreleased hardware is unmatched (and unmistakable).

I knew it. Your penchant for articles about unreleased hardware is unmatched (and unmistakable).

I mean, is that alright and everything?

Oh yeah, for sure. Don't take it the wrong way.

Cool, I mean, i just love to post about stuff that's on my mind, and I always try to keep my threads in the right forum.

[ProfessorProfessorson]

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

It may have been able to surpass a N64 visually maybe, but the N64 systems biggest problem more then anything was not being able to provide smooth framerates. Displaying a decent amount of polys at a decent res above a constant 30 fps would not have been as much a problem for the system had it not been hampered by such a weak ass clock speed. They should have refined the chipset better, upped the clock speed 50 to 75mhz more, and provided the hardware with a better active cooling solution then the passive cooling garbage they decided to go with. They should also have released the system with the ram expansion installed on day 1, not a couple of years later. As far as R3D/100 goes spec wise, it was supposed to be drastically weaker then R3D/1000 and still be costly, which is partially why Sega decided to work with 3DFX and Nec/Videologic to see who could provide them with a better more powerful, and yet still affordable single chip Gpu solution for home use.

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.

As far as M2 goes, I have had hands on experience with software running on it, both arcade wise and with the kiosk units, and visually, the hardware was pretty impressive for being designed in 93-95, proving it could render a high amount of polygons with high quality textures at a decent res at a constant 30fps and above. It was easily above Voodoo1 performance visually. If the hardware had been in better hands and was released to the home console consumer gaming market in 1996 as planned, I think things would have played out quite differently from 1999 on up when the Dreamcast finally hit. As is though, at least you can still see IMSA Racing, Battle Tryst, Evil Night, Total Vice, and Polystars run on the thing if you can get access to the stuff. I think there is some low quality videos up on youtube showing half of the stuff running anyway if nothing else.

[TheClash603]

Professor, thanks for the list of M2 game names.  I checked out the videos on Youtube and they all looked pretty impressive for their time.

[SignOfZeta]

Now that I'm an old man and I don't give a f*ck about console wars and such, I'm a lot less "angry gamer" about most things but...I still f*cking hate that stupid f*cking Next Gen magazine. Even now when I read this stuff I want to punch the guy who wrote it.

The 90s was a huge race to the bottom gaming-wise, with politics, pseudo-technical bullshit and an overriding obsession with shit that wasn't even released yet (in many cases, as seen here, stuff that never would be released). Kids used to talk about Mario versus Sonic or SF vs MK but then it became mip mapping and clock speeds and which big game PC graphics card makers were going to put their shit in the next console.

"Check it out. Lockheed Martin! The biggest US military contractor! Now you know we're all grown up! We're not just wanker man-children. This is a serious passion!"

Btw, I'm pretty sure the largest war profiteer is actually General Electric.

The rise of the "mature gamer". What a load it shit. Next Generation fanned the flames of this circle jerk like no other. Now it it takes $15 billion to launch a console and the companies making the most money are the a$$holes who make Call of Doody clones or, worse/better, micropayment based iPhone or Facebook games.

...where the f*ck is my PCE...

[SuperGrafx16]

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

It may have been able to surpass a N64 visually maybe, but the N64 systems biggest problem more then anything was not being able to provide smooth framerates. Displaying a decent amount of polys at a decent res above a constant 30 fps would not have been as much a problem for the system had it not been hampered by such a weak ass clock speed. They should have refined the chipset better, upped the clock speed 50 to 75mhz more, and provided the hardware with a better active cooling solution then the passive cooling garbage they decided to go with. They should also have released the system with the ram expansion installed on day 1, not a couple of years later. As far as R3D/100 goes spec wise, it was supposed to be drastically weaker then R3D/1000 and still be costly, which is partially why Sega decided to work with 3DFX and Nec/Videologic to see who could provide them with a better more powerful, and yet still affordable single chip Gpu solution for home use.

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.

As far as M2 goes, I have had hands on experience with software running on it, both arcade wise and with the kiosk units, and visually, the hardware was pretty impressive for being designed in 93-95, proving it could render a high amount of polygons with high quality textures at a decent res at a constant 30fps and above. It was easily above Voodoo1 performance visually. If the hardware had been in better hands and was released to the home console consumer gaming market in 1996 as planned, I think things would have played out quite differently from 1999 on up when the Dreamcast finally hit. As is though, at least you can still see IMSA Racing, Battle Tryst, Evil Night, Total Vice, and Polystars run on the thing if you can get access to the stuff. I think there is some low quality videos up on youtube showing half of the stuff running anyway if nothing else.

Exellent post, thank you very much for your comments. They're truly appreciated! I didn't realize Lockheed removed the geometry processor from the Real3D/100.  That sucks, making it, in practical terms, no better than the i740.  I wish I could reply more to your post, but later when I have more energy, I will edit-in some more of my thoughts.

Now where is my coffee!


Edit:  BTW, this old usenet post got me really excited for the Real3D/100:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim/msg/555aacb2319f5834?dmode=source&hl=en

First, let me start off by saying I am going to be buying a Voodoo card.
For low end comsumer grade flight sims and such, the Voodoo looks like
about the best thing available. Second, I am not necessarily responding
to just you, because there seems to be a hell of a lot of confusion
about Lockheed Martin's graphics accelerators. I have been seeing posts
all over the place confusing the R3D/100 with the AGP/INTEL project that
L.M. is working on. The R3D/100 is *NOT* the chipset that is being
developed for the AGP/INTEL partnership.

However, since your inference is that the Voodoo is faster than the
R3D/100, I have to say that you are totally dead wrong. While the specs
say that the Voodoo is *capable* of rendering a higher number of pixels
per second, or the same number of polygons per second as the R3D/100,
the specs fail to mention that these are not real world performance
figures any you probably will not ever see the kind of performance that
3Dfx claims to be able to acheive. This does *not* mean that the Voodoo
is not a good (its great actually) card, just that the game based 3D
accelerator companies (all of them) don't tell you the whole story.


The Voodoo uses a polygon raster processor. This accelerates line and
polygon drawing, rendering, and texture mapping, but does not accelerate
geometry processing (ie vertex transormation like rotate and scale).
Geometry processing on the Voodoo as well as every other consumer (read
game) grade 3D accelerator. Because the cpu must handle the geometry
transforms and such, you will never see anything near what 3Dfx,
Rendition, or any of the other manufacturers claim until cpu's get
significantly faster (by at least an order of magnitude). The 3D
accelerator actually has to wait for the cpu to finish processing before
it can do its thing.


I have yet to see any of the manufacturers post what cpu was plugged
into their accelerator, and what percentage of cpu bandwidth was being
used to produce the numbers that they claim. You can bet that if it was
done on a Pentium 200, that the only task the cpu was handling was
rendering the 3D model that they were benchmarking. For a game,
rendering is only part of the cpu load. The cpu has to handle flight
modelling, enemy AI, environmental variables, weapons modelling, damage
modelling, sound, etc, etc.


The R3D includes both the raster accelerator (see above) and a 100 MFLOP
geometry processing engine. Read that last line again. All geometry
processing data is offloaded from the system cpu and onto the R3D
floating point processor, allowing the cpu to handle more important
tasks. The Voodoo does not have this, and if it were to add a geometry
processor, you would have to more than double the price of the card.


The R3D also allows for up to 8M of texture memory (handled by a
seperate texture processor) which allows not only 24 bit texturemaps
(RGB), but also 32bit maps (RGBA) the additional 8 bits being used for
256 level transparency (Alpha). An addtional 10M can be used for frame
buffer memory, and 5M more for depth buffering.


There are pages and pages of specs on the R3D/100 that show that in the
end, it is a better card than the Voodoo and other consumer and
accelerator cards, but I guess the correct question is, for what? If
the models that are in your scene are fairly low detailed (as almost all
games are - even the real cpu pigs like Back to Bagdhad), then the R3D
would be of little added benefit over something like the Voodoo.
However, when you are doing scenes where the polys are 2x+ times more
than your typical 3D game, the R3D really shines. The R3D is and always
was designed for mid to high end professional type application, where
the R3D/1000 (much much faster than the 100) would be too expensive, or
just plain overkill. I've seen the 1000 and I have to say that it rocks!
I had to wipe the drool from my chin after seeing it at Siggraph (We're
talking military grade simulation equipment there boys, both in
performance and price!)


Now then, as I mentioned before, I'm going be buying the Voodoo for my
home system, where I would be mostly playing games. But, I am looking
at the R3D for use in professional 3D application. More comparible 3D
accelerators would not be Voodoo, Rendition based genre, but more along
the lines of high end GLINT based boards containing Delta geometry
accelerator chips (and I don't mean the low end game base Glint chips,
or even the Permedia for that matter), or possibly the next line from
Symmetric (Glyder series), or Intergraph's new professional accelerator
series.


Ted K.
Shadowbox Graphics
Chicago - where being dead isn't a voting restriction.

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!