At the TiLE (Trends in Leisure and Entertainment) show in London this week, advanced graphics specialist SGI claimed it has made a significant development in image realism for the interactive entertainment market, with the launch of the InfiniteReality3 (IR3) graphics engine for the Silicon Graphics Onyx2 visualisation workstation. Onyx2 InfiniteReality3 provides a powerful image generation system for immersive, real-time 3D graphic experiences. The solution will be used for planetariums, heritage visualisation and science centres to create multi-channel virtual environments where groups of users can interact directly with seemingly realistic surroundings. Onxy2 InfiniteReality3 handles high-resolution images using 256MB texture memory and improved texture mapping techniques. This, says SGI, will yield a four-fold increase in image quality over the previous-generation InfiniteReality2 (IR2).
