Alias/Wavefront Previews New OpenFlight Translator For Maya; First Public Showing of New Vis-Sim Technology to Take Place at I/ITSEC.

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 15, 2001

Alias/Wavefront(TM), an SGI (NYSE:SGI) company, today announced that the first public showing of its new OpenFlight(R) translator for Maya(R) technology will take place at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) Nov 26-29th in booth, No. 402.

The new technology takes the form of a plug-in translator that allows for the importing and exporting of OpenFlight Format(R) data into the company's award-winning Maya software. While best known for its use in the creation of 3D content for the film and interactive entertainment industries, Maya's vast 3D toolset and open architecture is well suited to the needs of the military and commercial visual-simulation markets that have systems based on OpenFlight databases.

"Over 10 years of creating software for the realtime 3D graphics market has left us well positioned to develop technology for the Vis-Sim marketplace," states Mike Wilson, Director of 3D Interactive Technology at Alias/Wavefront. "With the Maya Open Flight translator plug-in, those producing content for Vis-Sim applications will be able to reuse legacy data and exploit the productivity advantages of Maya such as its innovative user interface and efficient 3D workflow. Moreover, Maya's modeling history, MEL scripting language and open API are all features which will prove highly valuable to this growing community."

Maya in Vis-Sim

Until recently the Vis-Sim market was solely based upon highly proprietary hardware and software platforms. The advent of low cost 3D hardware and technology improvements that have come from the mass market computer game industry in the past couple of years (i.e.. entertainment oriented war-games, urban simulation titles) have caused parts of this market to re-tool around lower cost PC-based technologies.

While Maya is best known within the entertainment industry, it is in fact already in use in some Vis-Sim applications. EPL Productions Inc., developers of visual databases for realtime flight simulation, has been using Maya for the past twelve months. Says Gene Lynch, President: "With over ten years of experience in the interactive game world, prior to moving into flight simulation, we were aware of the power that Maya offered. That power includes such things as an integrated workflow, advanced texture mapping tools and model history. Having the Maya OpenFlight translator will extend this flexibility into the high-end realtime market and give us increased model quality and production speed."

Maya, available for the IRIX(R), Windows(R), Linux(R) and Macintosh platforms, is the leading 3D software package in the interactive entertainment market, having been the tool of choice for such renowned game titles as GT3(TM), Star Wars(R) Rogue Leader(TM): Rogue Squadron(R) 2 and Madden NFL(TM)2001. Its leadership in this market is due to such features as: powerful modeling and animation toolsets, human motion simulation capabilities, real world dynamics and particle systems. Moreover, Maya's open API and MEL scripting language give engineers the ability to customize and extend the software's existing features and UI, making it easily adaptable to existing computing environments.

Alias/Wavefront at I/ITSEC

Alias/Wavefront will be demonstrating both Maya and the new Maya Open Flight Translator plug-in at its I/ITSEC booth, 402 from November 26 to 29.

The Maya Open Flight translator is expected to become available in Spring, 2002 and will support OpenFlight files versions 14.2 and onwards and export of OpenFlight files version 15.7.

About Alias/Wavefront

As the world's leading innovator of 3D graphics technology, Alias/Wavefront develops software for the film and video, games, web, interactive media, industrial design, and visualization markets.

Games customers include Acclaim Entertainment, Inc., Core Design Limited, Electronic Arts Inc., Factor 5 LLC, Kodiak Interactive Software Studios Inc., LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC, Midway Home Entertainment Inc., Naughty Dog, Inc., Nihilistic Software, Inc., Nintendo, Rare Ltd., Retro Studios Inc., Sega Corporation, Single Trac, Sony Computer Entertainment, Square Co., Ltd., Timeline Studios, Relic Entertainment and Westwood Studios.

Alias/Wavefront is a wholly owned, independent software company of SGI(TM) with headquarters in Toronto and technical centers in Seattle and Santa Barbara. Please visit the Alias/Wavefront website at www.aliaswavefront.com or call 1-800-447-2542 in North America. Readers in Europe can call [phone] or 800 791 174 in the Middle East and Africa and 81 3 3470 8285 in Asia-Pacific for the nearest sales office or authorized reseller in their area.

Alias/Wavefront and the Alias/Wavefront logo are trademarks of Alias/Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. IRIX is a registered trademark and SGI is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Maya is a registered trademark and the Maya logo is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc., exclusively used by Alias/Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. OpenFlight and Flight Format are registered trademarks of Multi-Gen Paradigm Inc. Windows is either a registered trademark or a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. MacIntosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Gran Turismo is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. NFL is a trademark or registered trademark of the National Football League. Rogue Leader is a trademark and Rogue Squadron is a registered trademark of Lucas Licensing Ltd. All other products or companies mentioned are trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. Alias/Wavefront, 210 King Street East, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5A 1J7, Tel: [phone], FAX: [phone].

Note to Editors: There should be a pipe symbol between "Alias" and "Wavefront" -- the pipe symbol was changed to a forward slash ("/") for transmission purposes only.