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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 4</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"> 
          Play Where You Like!</font></p>
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          <font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Jeff &quot;<a target="" href="mailto:jeff@solomania.com">nonick</a>&quot; 
          Solomon</font></b></font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Under the hood, 
          Linux is awesome. If the Linux community can rally behind the issue 
          of the system's complexity and effectiveness in typical consumer environments, 
          Linux will become a serious competitor to Windows. This might very well 
          happen. Until that day, however, Linux will be primarily for expert 
          gamers only.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Be. The OS, 
          not the philosophical statement. The Be OS is a new operating system 
          for PowerPC and Intel processors that comes from Be (not surprisingly), 
          a company founded by Jean-Louis Gassée, who was formerly an influential 
          engineer at Apple Computer back in its heyday (some people, I suppose, 
          might argue that now is Apple's heyday, but I'm talking about the mid-eighties). 
          The Be OS is designed around the premise that digital media is the key 
          to the future of computer content development ("The Media OS," as they 
          refer to it), and it's engineered to work as efficiently as possible 
          with audio and video. And does it ever!</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Everything in 

          Be is new, and the system reflects an incredible degree of contemporary 
          thinking that should appeal dramatically to gamers. I'll let the system 
          speak for itself based on a demo that I saw recently at PC Expo.</font></p>
        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The demo, which 
          was technically a beta version of the OS, was running on dual 300MHz 
          Pentium IIs with 64 megs of RAM, a vanilla IDE hard drive, and a standard 
          video card. Apart from having two processors, this is pretty much a 
          middle of the road PC- nothing worth getting terribly excited about. 
          At one point, this system was running four movies (in large windows 
          at least four times the average QuickTime window size- and one of them 
          was <i>Star Wars</i>, which proves that Be's got its heart in the right 

          place); two instances of the hardware intensive game <b>Descent</b>; 
          three 3D rendering windows with <i>full motion video clips</i> mapped 
          to the constantly changing surfaces of the objects; a 44.1 kHz, 16-bit 
          sound clip; and several Web browser windows! To recap:</font></p>
        <ul>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> four large, full motion 
            video clips</font></li>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> two 3D-based games</font></li>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> three 3D rendering windows 
            with full motion video clips mapped to the surfaces</font></li>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">one 44.1 kHz, 16-bit sound 
            clip</font></li>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> several Web browser windows 
            </font></li>
        </ul>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">running on:</font></p>
        <ul>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> dual 300MHz Pentium IIs</font></li>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> an IDE hard drive</font></li>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">64 megs of RAM</font></li>
          <li><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">a standard video card</font></li>
        </ul>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">At this point, the CPU monitor 
          finally showed both CPUs working full force, but performance was<i> 
          still </i>much better than any demo that I've ever seen that comes close 
          to being as fatalistic as this- the audio was perfectly smooth, the 
          videos (all <i>seven</i> of them!) were chugging away at nearly full 
          speed, and the system responded to mouse clicks on menus instantly.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Of all the things the Be 
          OS does right, its unprecedented support for pervasive multiprocessing 
          is most impressive. Linux is only beginning to approach stability in 
          multiprocessor environments; NT fares slightly better, but performance 
          does not scale well with more than four CPUs; Mac OS X will offer limited 
          multiprocessing support; and Windows 95/98 offers none whatsoever.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Be OS has been designed 
          from the ground up to support multiple processors, and the entire system 
          is threaded in a manner that allows for efficient distribution of tasks 
          between processors. For gaming, the ability to do this well reveals 
          unveils a world of potential. Consider a game that takes advantage of 
          the Be OS's internal networking- the ability of the OS to network multiple 
          CPUs in one machine. In such a scenario, a player could open two copies 
          of Descent on one machine and have them play against each other - each 
          with a different IP address. Rendering tasks can be offloaded to one 
          processor while another handles physics. The possibilities are endless, 
          potentially limited only be imagination.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Be OS is very new, and 
          it's by no means perfect. There are plenty of rough spots that need 
          to be addressed before it's practical for a large number of users to 
          try it (such as increased hardware and applications support and time-tested 
          bug fixes and tuning to the core system). In this regard, the Be OS 
          is in even worse shape than Linux, which at least has a very strong 
          and growing user base, and the support of several large software companies 
          (<a href="http://www.corel.com">Corel</a> and <a href="http://www.oracle.com">Oracle</a>, 
          amongst others) that will help propel it forward.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unfortunately, it will be 
          very difficult for Be to make significant inroads into the PC industry 
          due to the simple fact that there are few programs that are designed 
          for it, and few systems that are currently supported. id is currently 
          working on a Be OS port of <b>Quake</b>, and others may follow suit. 
          Hopefully they will. If the Be OS catches on, prospects for higher quality 
          gaming on PCs will be dramatically improved. If not, at least the other 
          OS vendors will have a system to look to for inspiration.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">All of this PC talk is not 
          intended to completely overshadow the console world, of course. The 
          Sony Playstation and Nintendo 64 are still alive and kicking, and exciting 
          new developments in the console world are fast approaching.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The future of console gaming, 
          however, has been dramatically influenced by the developments in the 
          PC industry. The line between console and computer based systems has 
          been blurred for a while, but things are about to get even more complicated. 
          No one would argue against the statement that the original NES and Sega 
          systems were clearly distinct from PCs in their internal workings and 
          software support. Both used solid-state media and processors that were 
          designed expressly for audio and video processing. They had unique programming 
          environments that were very different from PCs. There was simply no 
          mistaking the NES for a PC.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The CD and modem add-ons 
          to more recent console systems, however have incorporated PC technology 
          into consoles for added flexibility to compete with PCs. No system epitomizes 
          this trend more than the forthcoming Sega Dreamcast system, which is 
          a console system that is essentially a very specialized PC.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">On the outside, the Dreamcast 
          looks like a modernized console system. It's a single unit system, replete 
          with controllers and AV-out cables, which attaches to a television set. 
          Enough to satisfy the basic definition of a console system. However, 
          the Dreamcast's guts very closely resemble a PC. The Dreamcast uses 
          Microsoft's Windows CE operating system as its core logic, and DirectX 
          as part of its API. There is a low-level Dreamcast API underneath CE, 
          but the vast majority of system functions can be accessed through CE 
          and DirectX, which means programming for the Dreamcast is little more 
          than a porting job.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">On the hardware front, the 
          Dreamcast uses a 128-bit Hitachi processor that has been heavily tuned 
          for graphics operations, an NEC 3D accelerator chip, a Yamaha sound 
          processor, a 12 speed CD-ROM drive, and a 33.6Kbps modem. These components 
          have been implemented with the purpose of providing extreme gaming performance, 
          but they closely resemble the basic architecture of a PC.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> In an interesting development, 
          the Dreamcast will incorporate a small, PDA-like device, dubbed the 
          Visual Memory System (VMS), which is essentially a hyper-powered version 
          of the memory cards that are used by the Sony Playstation to store data.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1">(<a href="index7.php" target="">continued 
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Illustration &copy; 1998 Mike Sanzone. Play Where You Like! is &copy; 1998 
      Jeff Solomon. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so don't 
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