Microsoft showed off its plan this week for a new level of 3-D graphics performance that will make Web sites, business applications, and Windows-based CD-ROM and DVD titles pop out and zoom.
That's the promise, at least, for the technology code-named "Chrome," which will be delivered as an enhancement to the Windows operating system - exactly how it will be implemented has not been determined.
"Chrome is an interactive media technology that pulls together 3-D and 2-D graphic objects - animations, user-interface elements - to let you navigate and interact," said Microsoft product manager Tom Johnston.
Calling on Chrome's capabilities, developers of games, Web sites, and multimedia applications will be able to create better-performing multimedia content, Microsoft said at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Orlando, Florida. Furthermore, developers can publish the same Chrome content to DVD and CD-ROM discs, as well as a Web site.
Chrome leverages Windows' DirectX application programming interface - working with that underlying technology via scripts written in the extensible markup language (XML). But the company hasn't revealed specifics on its software form - system components, application support files, etc. - or when or where it will show up.
The upcoming Windows 98 is one logical vessel, but the company hasn't committed to Chrome's inclusion there, and the new OS is slated to debut later this year, long before Chrome's roll-out. The full Chrome feature set is "expected" to be available in the first quarter of 1999 for both Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0 users, the company said.
But the 3-D technology will demand a great deal of hardware that most people don't have today. Chrome will require systems based on at least a 350 MHz Pentium II processor equipped with Intel's Accelerated Graphics Port. Such configurations are far above the PC mainstream today.
"It's incredibly processor interactive," said Johnston. "Your average PC today won't be able to run this. It's for high-end systems."
Chrome's processor demands are one reason that Bob Pearson, a consultant who formerly worked for Sun and is still in a close relationship with the company, questions some of the motivations behind Microsoft's new technology.
He wonders if the company isn't simply driving demand for more powerful hardware - which benefits the company by helping it solve some of the burdensome processing and memory demands of one of its primary revenue-generators: the Microsoft Office application suite.
"They need to get people up to those systems," he said.
Pearson also said the technology isn't blazing new paths as much as it's mending a stunted and aging architecture in the Windows OS. "I don't think any new ground is being broken here - if anything bad architectures are being corrected."
He notes that the company is working to address an architecture that will see its last release in Windows 98. The company has said Windows NT will take over for Windows 98 after that, and Pearson said that particular operating system has a different architecture altogether.
"The bulk of the architectural problems they're trying to overcome were in the Windows [95] architecture - so I'm not sure what they're moving forward with this," Pearson said.
Microsoft said the technology will apply to both Windows NT and Windows 98.
Chrome's XML connection comes in describing and delivering Chrome's multimedia content, allowing dynamic manipulation via XML scripting. Using the markup language, programmers can code their 3-D content without having to write directly to the lower-level DirectX application programming interfaces in Windows.
"It's providing a data format and syntax for expressing some of the graphics elements [developers] might need," Johnston said.
Meanwhile, there is another technology seeking to handle 3-D graphics via the Web - VRML 97. That method for delivering and playing interactive 3-D graphics over a network was recently ratified as an international standard. Microsoft is listed as one of its supporters, and it is now available as a plug-in for both Microsoft's and Netscape's browsers.
"We don't see them as competing technologies," Johnston said. "VRML is primarily targeted at 3-D Internet solutions and doesn't do a whole lot of media integration. Chrome is not aiming to do immersive 3-D worlds on the Internet."
And Niel Trevett, president of the industry consortium promoting the deployment of VRML 97, agrees, welcoming Microsoft's efforts in the 3-D area in general. "I think Chrome is a very good thing." He said there is a potential overlap, but that by and large the two technologies are complementary.
But from his more Sun-centric viewpoint, consultant Pearson believes Sun's approach to some of the same 3-D issues, in Java3D, better serve developers. "It's a whole different level of integration of media types - it allows people who have those kinds of [3-D needs] to move into a Java programming world."
That's a world that developers prefer, he said, and once Java's performance is on a par with Windows (soon, he said), it will have much greater appeal with its cross-platform capabilities. Furthermore, Java3D doesn't make the same intensive processing demands from the start, Pearson said, and is better able to scale to the capabilities of the systems 3-D applications will run on.
