Autodesk releases optimized graphics toolkit; new HOOPS release offers more power at lower price.SAN RAFAEL San Rafael (săn rəfĕl`), residential city (1990 pop. 48,404), seat of Marin co., W Calif., a suburb of San Francisco on the northern shore of San Francisco Bay; inc. 1913. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 1995--Autodesk Inc. today announced the availability of an optimized HOOPS developer's toolkit A set of software routines and utilities used to help programmers write an application. For graphical interfaces, it provides the tools and libraries for creating menus, dialog boxes, fonts and icons. at prices that have been slashed up to 50% over the previous release. Along with its enhanced power and lower price, HOOPS 4.1 enables PC 3D Graphics developers to easily port applications across Intel PC, Macintosh and UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). platforms. According to Jim According to Jim is an American situation comedy television series originally broadcast by ABC. The show premiered with little publicity in October 2001, following the surprise hit comedy My Wife and Kids. Merry, HOOPS product manager, the main focus of the development effort was to optimize performance, especially on Intel PC platforms. "Given that 50% of all UNIX machines and virtually the entire set of PCs and Macintoshes lack hardware acceleration for 3D graphics, special emphasis went into optimizing performance of the software rendering pipeline. On the Intel PC platforms running Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 95, HOOPS 4.1 is up to 12 times faster than HOOPS 4.0. HOOPS 4.1 provides a high-level, high performing portable API which enables visualization and interaction of true 3D raster and vector geometry and text. Its rendering capability covers a continuum from wireframe An umbrella term for a general outline of some structure. For example, the rough design of Web pages may be called wireframes. See wireframe modeling. , through shading and on to radiosity and ray-tracing. The functionality and portability of HOOPS 4.1 minimize the time and risk costs associated with developing 3D interactive graphics applications and let developers focus their resources on the core value of the software developer's application. Eric Wagner, director of graphics technology for Autodesk said, "Many of the HOOPS 4.1 optimizations also apply to HEIDI, our new HOOPS-based immediate-mode library. HEIDI has been incorporated into Autodesk's AutoCAD Release 13 WHIP Driver and 3D Studio MAX, significantly accelerating the display speed for each of these products. Developers can now achieve the same level of graphics performance in stand-alone applications by embedding the HOOPS Release 4.1 libraries into their software." Kevin Gambrel gambrel the bracket-shaped piece of iron rod on which a sheep carcass is traditionally hung to cool and set. , development director at MicroCadam Inc. said, "HOOPS 4.1 has enabled us to deliver a better product, faster and on more platforms and has allowed our engineers to focus on higher-level CAD development rather than reinventing portable display list code and writing device drivers for 15 different graphics APIs." Features & Enhancements: -- Font Engine -- The BitStream font engine was licensed and embedded, bringing continuously 3D transformable, true spline In computer graphics, a smooth curve that runs through a series of given points. The term is often used to refer to any curve, because long before computers, a spline was a flat, pliable strip of wood or metal that was bent into a desired shape for drawing curves on paper. See Bezier and B-spline. outline fonts to HOOPS Classic. The font engine enables developers to incorporate Adobe Type I (PostScript), TrueType and BitStream's Speedo An earlier scalable font technology from Bitstream Inc., Cambridge, MA (www.bitstream.com). Speedo fonts used the .SPD extension. See FaceLift. fonts in their HOOPS-based applications by simply setting the text font name attribute. -- Windows Clipboard and Metafile A file that contains other files. It generally refers to graphics files that can hold vector drawings and bitmaps. For example, Windows Metafiles (WMFs) and Enhanced Metafiles (EMFs) can store pictures in vector graphics and bitmap formats as well as text. Support Enhanced -- Integration into native windowing systems, including MS Windows clipboard and metafile support, has been greatly enhanced and sample implementation source code provided. This lets developers embed HOOPS in native graphical user interfaces, reducing the time needed to integrate the application. -- Hardcopy Raster Printing Optimized -- Hardcopy performance has been optimized, especially the speed of printing raster information generated by lighted scenes. -- Reference Materials Augmented -- To make learning and using HOOPS faster and easier, a keyword index has been added to the reference manual and a hyper-text version of the complete documentation provided. The on-line version is in industry standard Hyper Text Markup Language format (HTML HTML in full HyperText Markup Language Markup language derived from SGML that is used to prepare hypertext documents. Relatively easy for nonprogrammers to master, HTML is the language used for documents on the World Wide Web. ) and can be accessed with any hyper-text reader. -- Driver Writer's Guide -- To expedite the production of 3rd party drivers for HOOPS, both for hardcopy devices like pen-plotters and for display drivers for accelerator devices, a device driver writer's guide is provided with HOOPS 4.1. HOOPS' use of dynamically loaded drivers for the Windows platforms enables HOOPS 4.1-based applications to connect to third party drivers during run-time. This feature lets board manufacturers ship HOOPS drivers with their boards and lets existing HOOPS-based applications exploit the drivers. Pricing & Availability Development licenses for HOOPS 4.1 are priced, in the United States, at $1,495 per developer seat for the PC and Macintosh platforms and $2,495 for the UNIX platforms. There is an additional support and royalty fee for commercial developers. HOOPS 4.1 is available now for these platforms. In the U.S. and Canada, HOOPS is licensed and supported directly by the Autodesk OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and Sales group located in Alameda, Calif. In Europe, sales and support are provided by Techsoft, Gmbh, located in Berlin, Germany. In Japan, sales and support are provided by FAMOTIK, Ltd. located in Tokyo. For more information on Autodesk, please call 415/507-5000, type GO ADESK on CompuServe, or log-in with a World Wide Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. at http://www.autodesk.com. Autodesk is the world's leading supplier of PC and UNIX-based design software and PC multimedia tools. The company's 2D and 3D products and data management tools are used in many industries for architectural design, mechanical design, film-making, videography vid·e·og·ra·phy n. The art or practice of using a video camera. vid  e·og and geographic information systems. The fourth largest PC software company in the world, Autodesk has three million customers in 118 countries. Autodesk products are sold through Autodesk Systems Centers, Dealers and Distributors worldwide. -0- Note to Editors: Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, AutoCAD and HOOPS are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, and MS-DOS MS-DOS in full Microsoft Disk Operating System Operating system for personal computers. MS-DOS was based on DOS, developed in 1980 by Seattle Computer Products. Microsoft Corp. bought the rights to DOS in 1981, and released MS-DOS with IBM's PC that year. are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States or others countries. CompuServe is a registered trademark of H&R Block. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. All prices are suggested retail prices. CONTACT: Autodesk, Inc. Marty Tacktill, 415/507-6484 |
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