Graphics: Degrees of separation

Sun and Microsoft are ready to do battle over a new graphics market, writes Tony Harrington

The war between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems over Java has spilled over from the esoteric world of operating system calls, and could be heading for a PC near you.

Both camps are aiming to create a new generation of high-performance graphical and multimedia tools to take computing to higher levels of visual splendour.

The new field of conflict is the relative merits of Sun?s Java 3D versus Microsoft and Silicon Graphics? joint Fahrenheit graphics project. Both sides see enhanced graphics design capabilities as the way forward for next-generation business applications across the board. Both are producing free technology to enable developers to make a quantum leap to a new wave of graphically intensive applications for the desktop. However, there the similarity between the two camps ends.

Sun, as always, portrays itself as the champion of cross-platform, Java-based technologies. Java 3D is a platform-independent library of graphical and multi-user application programming interfaces (APIs), specifically designed to enable cross-platform portability. Microsoft and Silicon Graphics (SGI), on the other hand, are nailing Fahrenheit?s colours firmly, if unsurprisingly, to the Intel masthead ? although Microsoft has a licensing agreement with SGI and Hewlett-Packard which allows both companies to port Fahrenheit products to their respective Unix platforms.

The Sun/Microsoft dispute is spiced up by the fact that before the Microsoft/SGI collaboration was announced at the end of 1997, SGI was one of four key collaborators on Java 3D. According to Shawn Hopewood, US director of product marketing at SGI, the company contributed a ?significant amount? to Java 3D before quitting in search of a happier partnership.

The reason SGI walked out of the Java 3D alliance and got into bed with Microsoft was, Hopewood says, because ?we did not feel that Sun?s approach to Java 3D would deliver the high performance graphics capabilities SGI wanted to bring to market.

?The way to conceptualise Sun?s approach with Java 3D is to think in terms of cars. The low-level API calls are like high-performance tyres. They are the bit that grabs the road and they are very important. But putting high-performance tyres on a family saloon is not going to give you the kind of experience you?d get from putting them on a racing machine,? Hopewood argues.

?We tried to tell Sun that the way they were going about things might have been state of the art a few years back, but that the game has moved on considerably.?

The disagreement gives some weight to Hopewood?s assertion that if Fahrenheit is released next summer, as planned, it will make Java 3D redundant before it really gets off the ground. The problem with Java 3D, Hopewood says, is that it tries to overcome performance issues associated with general-level graphics classes by enabling application designers to make low-level API calls to native platform resources, such as OpenGL.

This approach doesn?t go far enough, he claims. The challenge that Sun has shied away from, says Hopewood, is the need for a high-performance, high-level abstraction such as Fahrenheit?s Scenegraph interface definition. The point of the Scenegraph API, he says, is to take much of the rocket science out of graphics by automating a good deal of graphics know-how. The aim is to allow application designers to concentrate on what they want, rather than on the detail of how it is to be achieved.

What developers need is a way to incorporate easily high-performance 3D graphics into their applications. This is where the high-level abstraction, which embodies expert knowledge about graphics generation, arguably becomes critical. SGI is betting that once developers get the tools to do this, the world will get a whole new generation of 3D-intensive applications.

Hopewood says: ?Our approach to where graphics is going is based on a recognition of the fact that the use of graphics has achieved a level of saturation in the professional workstation space and the games space. But it has not moved into business or general consumer applications, and it will continue to fail to make inroads into this space until it becomes more transparent ? until the functionality is simply a pervasive part of the operating system. This is what we are looking to achieve with Microsoft.?

Hopewood points to a demonstration by Microsoft at the Fahrenheit launch where delegates were shown a rotating 3D cube, which used Fahrenheit technology to map a different image to each of the cube?s six sides. ?Imagine a word processor where, instead of tiling your open documents in the current 2D fashion, where one overlaps and blocks the other, you are able to have them mirrored on one or more cubes which you can rotate as you need,? he suggests.

The point Hopewood stresses is that once high-performance graphics cease to require extremely scarce and dedicated expertise in order to be incorporated into applications, people will discover vastly more ways of using animated 3D movement in business applications. He predicts a fundamental shift in the metaphors that underlie current graphical user interface technologies such as Windows.

Sun workstation product manager Simon Tindall remains unconvinced. ?There is a great deal of chest thumping going on from both Microsoft and SGI over Fahrenheit, but we?ve seen no content to back up the hype. It?s still out there with all the other vapourware,? he says.

By contrast, says Tindall, Sun is already at the stage of issuing beta releases of the Java 3D APIs for developers. ?These are being given to everyone from our traditional workstation market developers, right down to the 3D games market. This is not just Sun concentrating on its high-end technical area,? he says.

?There is no doubt that graphics is going to be the next big battleground between the proponents of 100% pure Java and our old foe, Microsoft,? adds Tindall. ?The choice for the designer will be the same as always. Do they want to design graphically-rich applications that can run on any platform, or do they want to limit themselves to the Windows platform by going down the Fahrenheit route??

Hopewood puts the case rather differently, particularly since SGI intends to offer Fahrenheit on Unix as well as Windows. ?The real choice for the application designer, bearing in mind that both technologies are free, will come down to speed,? he says. ?If they go for Fahrenheit, they will find their graphics running 10 to 20 times faster on the same machine. How many do you think will choose the slower option?? he asks.

While everyone is still looking for the killer business application in graphics, Hopewood argues that companies will find ecommerce driving demand faster than almost anything else. ?The plain fact is that people like to see what they are buying,? he says.

?The big advantage that 3D graphics brings to ecommerce is that it is much faster to download a mathematical equation to someone?s browser than it is to send a Jpeg image,? Hopewood adds. ?We?ve reached the point where the processor is much faster at rendering images than the Internet bandwidth is at streaming them.?

Jay Torborg, director of graphics and media at Microsoft?s US head office is more cautious in his assessment of the immediate impact of Fahrenheit. Microsoft is nervous that the world will immediately start clamouring for a new, 3D-style Windows interface. What will happen, he says, is that Microsoft will ship the Scenegraph API as part of its DirectX 7 developer package release in the Spring of 1999.

?We have to get the next release of DirectX to market in time for the consumer development sector to build their products for the peak Christmas sale period. We are confident that Fahrenheit will be ready by then,? he says.

Torborg is aware that many graphics specialists in the various software houses like to get their hands dirty with low-level graphics. The Fahrenheit Scenegraph, he says, will allow them to pick and choose which portions are most useful. They will be able to unplug Fahrenheit algorithms and plug in their own favourite versions on a pick-and-mix basis.

Torborg believes the first big business take-up of Fahrenheit will be by organisations with significant computer-aided design (CAD) operations. These companies will benefit directly from Fahrenheit?s very large model capabilities, which allow engineers to push large CAD drawings straight through to marketing department or purchasing department PCs.

?One of the problems companies face is that there is just no easy way an engineer can move his 3D workstation file to, say, a brochure designer?s PC in the marketing department. The very large model capabilities in Fahrenheit make this sharing of data sets a simple process,? he says.

Being able to manipulate high-end workstation 3D graphics on a much broader range of PCs will bring business benefits to many organisations, Torborg claims.

According to Torborg, the desktop Windows developers will take advantage of Fahrenheit to incorporate a lot more 3D, but they will probably do so in an evolutionary way.

Torborg?s verdict on Java 3D hardly comes as a surprise. He says that while Microsoft supports Java as a programming language, the company believes that because it fails to address high-performance issues, Java 3D has only a very limited potential.

And so the war rages on.