More Voodoo, and PSX2 Thoughts

FiringSquad: Will the fervered pace of 3D acceleration advance stop or slow down sometime soon? What plans does 3dfx have to continue pushing the market?

We do it to keep you working and drive your hits! Seriously, it has been this way for ten years. 3d is still an emerging and very young technology. New technologies tend to evolve very fast. I would not anticipate nVida and 3dfx calling a "technology truce" any time soon. There has been a lot of speculation on our technology direction, but we are not announcing plans.

I think it is safe to say that we are concentrating on fill rates and looking at different ways to address geometry processing. We are not in the habit of blindly following competitors simply for the sake of "not being left behind" or announcing that we have a technology and then not implementing it when we ship the product. Again, the "good" news is that there is so much room to improve the quality of 3D for the mainstream consumer that we're going to be able to innovate for decades.

FiringSquad: During our last interview, Scott Sellers discussed the possibility of extending the Voodoo brand into peripherals other than video cards. Any news or progress?

We talked about our plans to introduce new products in complimentary technology fields. We also used the term multimedia to describe them. STB did a lot of pioneering work when DVD was an emerging technology, and in fact, we were the first company to show fully functional DVD to the press. We are leveraging that expertise in multimedia products to broaden our product line and should have an announcement very soon.

FiringSquad: Lately, Sony's Playstation 2 has been heralded as the biggest step in 3D acceleration yet. How does 3dfx see this claim, especially considering how little experience Sony or Toshiba actually have in real-time consumer 3D?

Sony has had some very impressive demonstrations, for sure. It is absolutely a big jump from the graphics on the current Playstation but architecturally it's nothing new. It's just wider -faster, like we just talked about Something that tends to be overlooked in the comparison of PC and console gaming, and what I think is important for consumers to realize, is that the Playstation's hardware can not be upgraded until a new system is released.

We have already talked about how fast the PC's 3d technology is evolving. So it is logical to assume that the Playstation 2 will not be being compared to current products shortly after it is released. It will also have to hold its own for a period of about five years as PC graphics continue to evolve at a very rapid pace; we'll be providing a superior 3D experience on the PC within a year of the first PS2 shipment.