Issue: Volume: 23 Issue: 2 (Feb 2000)

News - 2/00



The refocusing will entail the divestiture of a number of MetaCreations' graphics products, and the elimination of approximately 100 employees. When asked by Computer Graphics World which products were likely to be sold, a MetaCreations spokesperson said he could not say exactly which ones, but that "it would be unlikely that we would drop Canoma and Carrera." Canoma, which launched last year, is used to create 3D models from 2D photographs. Carrera is the company's new 3D modeling and animation software that shipped last month. Both products fit into the company's new e-commerce focus, according to the spokesperson.

Among other programs currently offered by MetaCreations are Bryce 4, Poser 4, Ray Dream Studio 5.5, Infini-D 4.5, Painter 6, KPT Vector Effects 1.5, and Kai's Power Tools 6.

This month, we list updated results from the 10 workstations that recently received the best ratings for the Lightscape viewset of the SPECviewperf benchmark, Version 6.1.1.

The Lightscape viewset consists of walkthroughs in four differently rendered environments. The mean scores shown in the chart at right represent the combined, weighted results of the four tests, measured in the number of frames per second the machines were able to execute. The larger the number, therefore, the better the performance.

The tests were conducted by the individual vendors under the auspices of the SPEC/GPC benchmark organization.To see how the same workstations fared in different benchmark tests, to view results from additional workstations, and to download the benchmarks themselves, visit SPEC's Web site at www.gpc.spec/org.