Systems Technology, Inc.'s Virtual Reality Parachute Simulator is the First Military Training Application Driven by 3Dfx Interactive's 3D Graphics Platform.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 13, 1997--

New high-end graphics application allows military to

safely teach, plan and practice dangerous missions

3Dfx Interactive today announced that Systems Technology, Inc.'s Parachute Flight Training Simulators are being driven by the company's Voodoo Graphics-based Obsidian graphics board.

The systems are in use with four U.S. Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance units to safely teach, plan, and practice dangerous parachute missions. The delivery of these systems marks the first actual in-service training application of this technology. Installations have been made at Quantico, Virginia; Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Camp Pendelton, California; and Panama City, Florida.

"Parachute missions are difficult, expensive and hazardous to train, plan and practice in actual flight. Now that our systems are enhanced with 3Dfx Interactive's Obsidian graphics board, operational personnel can plan and practice group missions at specific sites, trainees can deal with a variety of potential emergencies, and aircrew personnel can practice emergency procedures over scenes based on their anticipated actual operations," said Jeffrey R. Hogue, principal specialist of Systems Technology, Inc.

The U.S. Marine Corps systems combine a Virtual Reality head mounted display and tracker with the latest developments in low-cost high quality 3D texture-mapped graphics from 3Dfx Interactive. This produces a compelling, immersive and realistic environment which allows for obstacle tracking and avoidance, a view of malfunctions overhead, as well as the field of view and display rate to avoid common simulator sickness. Specific mission scenes can be created from digital map data and practiced with other recorded or networked jumpers.

"The Obsidian graphics boards enable military and civilian visual simulation application developers, like Systems Technology, Inc., to deploy PC-based systems, thereby replacing proprietary image generator (IG) and workstation solutions which typically are ten times the cost for equivalent levels of 3D performance," said Ross Smith, general manager of 3Dfx Interactive's System Products Division. "The extension into this market is a further validation of the power of our 3D graphics platform."

Staff Sargent Edward Walsh of Camp LeJeune's 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company noted, "Parachute flight simulation visual requirements are far more challenging than for any conventional military aircraft and classroom lectures cannot offer the practice necessary to develop skills. The Parachute Training Simulators provides immediate assessment and solution of any canopy deployment problems and allows the user to set up and fly a no-power landing while scanning in all directions for team members, obstacles, and hostile forces."

These new systems were also developed in response to the results of a U.S. Navy aircrew emergency training evaluation conducted at NAS Cecil Field, Florida. The U.S. Air Force averages over 25 aircraft ejections per year and the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps over 50, of which over 90% are survivable. Of these emergencies, over half result in injuries and a significant number are related to parachute flight skills.

Obsidian Graphics Board Family Capabilities and Performance

Based on advanced configurations of 3Dfx Interactive's Voodoo Graphics 3D graphics chipset, the Obsidian graphics board family is optimized to deliver interactive 3D applications with photo-realistic quality at real-time frame rates to address a range of different commercial and professional 3D applications.

The Obsidian graphics board family exploits the Voodoo Graphics chipset's patent-pending "texture streaming" architecture to deliver up to 2.4 Gigabytes per second of dedicated graphics memory bandwidth to real-time 3D applications. This highly dedicated memory bandwidth, coupled with the technology's on-chip "triangle set-up" engine, enables the various Obsidian graphics board products to render over one million texture mapped triangles per second and to sustain tri-linear filtered texture map fill rates at up to 100 Megapixels per second. Such levels of texture mapped performance are currently available only on high-end 3D workstations and dedicated image generators.

All of the 3D features supported by the Voodoo Graphics chipset are supported by the Obsidian graphics board family. Examples of such 3D features include perspective correction, sub-pixel and sub-texel correction, triangle set-up, depth-buffering, alpha-blending, tri-linear and bi-linear filtering with level-of-detail MIP mapping, and texture and polygonal anti-aliasing -- all of which are essential for visually realistic simulation and entertainment applications.

In addition to its core 3D capabilities, applications deployed on the Obsidian graphics boards can take advantage of the Voodoo Graphics chipset's more advanced capabilities, including comprehensive alpha blending with support for translucency and transparency at both the polygon and texture level, projected and detailed texture mapping, environment mapping, texture morphing, per pixel fog and associated atmospheric effects, texture animation, video texture mapping, fast linear frame buffer access, high-bandwidth texture paging, and support for 13 different texture formats, including 8-bit palletized and 3Dfx patent-pending narrow channel compressed format.

The Obsidian graphics boards are available in a variety of Voodoo Graphics chipset configurations with either 2 or 4 MB of effective frame buffer memory and 2, 4 or 8 MB of effective texture memory.

Prices for the graphics boards, which are sold via 3Dfx Interactive's network of manufacturer's representives to OEMs, VARs, and system integrators range between $500 to $2,500.

The Companies

Systems Technology, Inc. is an employee-owned research, consulting engineering, and product development firm located in Hawthorne, California. They specialize in vehicle dynamics and control and related human factors. For almost forty years they have been involved in research and design related to a wide range of aerospace, automotive, and marine vehicles. Their work in aerospace and defense has involved dynamic analysis, flight control system design, and flying qualities of fighters, transports, VSTOL, rotorcraft, the space shuttle, rockets, and missiles. Their automotive work has involves vehicle dynamics, handling qualities, transportation safety, driver behavior, and forensic engineering. Customers include the US Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, NASA and many of the major aerospace and automotive firms. They also develop and market specialized analytical software as well as low cost simulators and human performance assessment devices.

3Dfx Interactive, Inc., founded in 1994, is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, California. 3Dfx Interactive brings together a team of leading professionals from the 3D graphics, video game, multimedia, PC, and semiconductor industries to provide advanced technology that enables new levels of interactive 3D electronic entertainment and visual simulation. Consumer PC, multimedia and coin-op/arcade OEMs have announced support for the critically-acclaimed Voodoo Graphics chipset, including Acclaim Entertainment, Diamond Multimedia, Digital Vehicles, Hewlett-Packard Company, Falcon Northwest, Interactive Light, Micron Computers, NEC Technologies, Orchid Technologies, and Williams-Atari-Bally-Midway. Visual simulation companies that announced support for Voodoo Graphics include SAIC, Datapath, Gemini Technology, Reality by Design, System Technology, MaK Technology, MetaVR and McFadden Entertainment Systems. For more information about 3Dfx Interactive, visit the company's Website at http://www.3Dfx.com -0-

Trademarks: The 3Dfx Interactive logo and Voodoo Graphics are trademarks of 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. All other brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders, and are hereby acknowledged.

CONTACT: 3Dfx Interactive

Wendy Allen, 408/935-4400

[e-mail]

http://www.3dfx.com

or

Brodeur Porter Novelli

Linda White or Barbara Kohn, 408/327-0470

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

or

Systems Technology, Inc.

Jeffrey R. Hogue, 310/679-2281, Ext. 52

[e-mail]

http://www.systemtech.com/paramain.htm