Microsoft Corp has used SIGGRAPH 98 in Orlando, Florida as the launching pad for its new 3D graphics technology. As ever, rivals fear Microsoft’s latest venture could cement the company’s desktop stranglehold. Once code-named Chrome (CI No 3,377), the 3D technology has been re-christened Chromeffects. It’s aimed at CD-ROM, DVD and web developers, and Microsoft promises a software developers kit by August 17. Chromeffects uses extensible markup language (XML) tags to describe how 3D objects should be animated locally. This saves content providers from having to send a fully rendered object over the net. The initial demand Chromeffects is expected to focus on its potential for 3D web advertisements. Later, Microsoft predicts that developers will use the software to render databases in three dimensions. What’s upsetting critics is that Chromeffects is based on Microsoft’s proprietary DirectX application programming interfaces for 2D, 3D, audio and video effects. As such, it is unclear whether users running Apple’s Mac OS or free operating system Linux, for example, will be able to access web content that relies on the technology. Microsoft exacerbates the interoperability difficulties by throwing in a couple of proposed standards like its vector markup language (VML), a clear rival to the PGML standard put forward by Adobe, Netscape and Sun. Still, the new Windows 98 feature is not likely to pose an immediate threat to rival operating systems on the web, since Chromeffects is not by any means a mass consumer technology. Would-be users must run Windows 98 on a 350MHz Pentium or better with 64MB RAM, a 100MHz bus and an accelerated graphics port. Microsoft says it wants to limit distribution of the technology to PCs with appropriate specs, which means selling solely through hardware vendors. No client software will be released over the internet. Whether even the Redmond giant can popularize a net technology without net word-of-mouth remains to be seen. Certainly the usual suspects have fallen into line, with everyone from Intel to Intervista hailing Chromeffects as the greatest human achievement since the last Microsoft product launch.
