More Features

More optimizations!

An additional nice touch was the individual optimizations for many of the top graphics applications. You just select which application you are going to use from a pull-down menu in the Oxygen's driver settings. The applications that we have listed are shown below. We don't know at this point if more apps will be added to this list.

Catia

3DStudio MAX2

Unigraphics

Truespace

SolidWorks

SoftImage 3D

Soft FX Pro

ReviewReality

PRO/Designer + PRO/3Dpaint

PRO/Engineer

PRO/3Dpaint

Multigen

Multigen

Maya with Alpha Support

Lightwave 3D

Lightscape

I-DEAS

Helix

AutoCad 2000

AutoCad

Bumpy maps

The Oxygen GVX1 supports bump-mapping as well. In fact, they support two types They're not the same bump mapping as the G400 chipset's environment mapped bump mapping, though. The first is single-pass emboss bump mapping, which is not quite as good as environment mapped bump mapping, but also does not incur as much of a performance hit as being environment mapped. To a purist, this is not "real" bump mapping.

The second type of bump mapping is more real. It is called dot product bump mapping. It looks better, and produces very realistic looking shadow and lighting effects. However, in a gaming scenario it would be processor intensive, and only the Permedia 3/GLINT R3 and Videologic Power VR2 chipsets support it right now, neither of which are mass-consumer gaming chipsets like the Voodoo3 or TNT/TNT2. Since it has to be written into software, we're still not likely to see dot product bump mapping for a while.

Software bundle

No, there are no games included in this software bundle. There are two titles that ship with the Oxygen GVX1. The first is SoftEngine 4, by Vibrant. This program is specific for AutoCAD, and essentially speeds up AutoCAD performance. (It retails at $399 ?!) Well, time is money - there's no time to wait for those 3D models to render! SoftEngine 4 is supposed to improve performance of AutoCAD by as much as 400%, according to 3Dlabs. The other program is called Colorific, by Sonnetech. Colorific is a color-calibration software. It calibrates your screen for display and printing consistency.