E&S Extends Revolutionary EP Technology to Military Applications.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 19, 2003

Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. (E&S(R)) (NASDAQ: ESCC) announced today that its Environment Processor, or EP(TM), technology, which has already set a new standard for realism and rapid database creation in commercial simulation, is now available for military applications. The military version of EP is designated as EPX(TM) (EP with military extensions). Designed to meet the demands of today's military training requirements, EPX systems deliver unmatched realism and visual fidelity, with imagery-based database content, rapid database creation and update, and a full complement of military training and visualization features. Software-centric EPX technology is platform independent, operating on a wide range of hardware, including off-the-shelf personal computers, value-added PC platforms such as E&S' simFUSION(R) series, and E&S' Melody(R) hardware, which offers high-end features by adding extensions to PC hardware.

"War fighting is evolving toward smaller missions and rapid movements that require a different approach to training," said E&S President and CEO James Oyler. "Although general regions of potential conflict are known in advance, specific localized conflict areas and mission requirements may change very rapidly. For simulation training, such developments create a need to rapidly generate and update training databases to reflect current conditions. With its revolutionary database creation and update capabilities, EPX technology makes it possible for training commands to respond to these changes in a fraction of the time and cost required with traditional simulation systems."

EPX represents a revolutionary approach to visual simulation software that drastically reduces the time required to create and update training databases. EPX's layered architecture allows separate components to be created, edited, and stored independently of each other in industry-standard formats and ingested and combined during real-time rendering. As a result, updates to individual elements can be made quickly and easily, allowing customers to keep their training databases up to date without the encumbrance of completely regenerating the entire database for each change. Because EPX runs on PC platforms, database development, update, and review can be done on a PC workstation, conserving costly simulator time. In addition, efficient, "WYSIWIG" software tools allow database modelers to use a variety of third-party programs to create specific content, focusing on building quality models with the knowledge that the software will automatically handle the insertion of the models into the training database.

All EPX systems include a database of the entire world, which is capable of supporting training missions with no further database development. This whole-earth database includes full 3D textures built with geotypical, theme-based imagery, including cultural lighting at dusk and night, and geographically correct coastlines, cities, urban areas, mountain ranges, farmland areas, and tundra. For more detailed missions, the standard world database can be rapidly augmented with high-resolution imagery and terrain insets, as well as airports, landing zones, and other features appropriate to specific missions. The whole-earth model is stored in a compact format that uses very little disk space with multiple levels of resolution for imagery.

EPX technology allows customers to protect their investments with built-in legacy system compatibility. Simple-to-use conversion paths for ESIG(R), SPX(R), Harmony(R)/Integrator(R), OpenFlight, and SEDRIS databases allow them to be transferred to EPX. In addition, the EPX host, which is essentially a common image generator interface (CIGI) with extensions, is compatible with E&S legacy systems such as ESIG and SPX, allowing rapid integration with any CIGI-compatible simulator host.

Currently available on three hardware platforms for military applications, EPX technology allows customers to select a platform to match their training and budgetary requirements.

EPX-5000

Designed for the most demanding training requirements, EPX-5000 uses E&S' Melody hardware, which balances commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware with enhanced E&S technologies to deliver the highest fidelity visual training environment in the world. EPX-5000 provides a full suite of military training capabilities, including a rigorous approach to antialiasing, real-time lighting sources that provide realistic multiple moving illumination effects with no limits on where the eyepoint can be positioned, SensorTexture(TM), advanced weather effects, and real-time bump-mapping for better speed and height cues without the need for additional modeling.

EPX-500

EPX-500 delivers the world's highest performance-to-price ratio on a PC-IG. Using a standard PC motherboard in an industrial chassis, EPX-500 offers all the advantages of EPX technology with the performance of E&S' simFUSION(R) PC-IG. Equipped with highly scalable graphics using ATI RADEON(TM) 9800 graphics chips, simFUSION graphics options extend from a double-chip/single card up to four-chip/multi-card solutions. EPX-500 offers a number of military simulation capabilities, including shader-based weather and sensor effects.

EPX-50

EPX-50 is aimed at price-sensitive applications and offers the features of EPX technology running on a commercial-off-the-shelf PC and a commercially available graphics accelerator board. EPX-50 is compatible with all other Environment Processor systems, enabling customers to mix low-cost systems with higher-performance systems to achieve a flexible mix of price and performance for different levels of training while sharing a common database and common host interface.

About Evans & Sutherland

Evans & Sutherland produces professional hardware and software to create highly realistic visual images for simulation, training, engineering, and other applications throughout the world. E&S visual systems are used in both military and commercial systems, as well as planetariums and interactive theaters. Visit the E&S Web site at http://www.es.com.

E&S, EP, EPX, Continuous Texture, SensorTexture, simFUSION, ESIG, Harmony, Integrator, Melody, and SPX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Salt Lake City. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.