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ECTS 2000
By Kurt "Froglips" Giesselman
COMBATSIM.COM European Bureau ChiefEndor:
My next stop was Endor. This is a relatively new game controller company. I had 'discovered' them on Sunday and was fortunate to find my old friend Peter Kreft (ex-Thrustmaster technical support manager) in the booth. Peter and his colleague Bernhard Stutz showed me their line of high performance wheels. Endor has the Porsche license for steering wheels and Bernhard is developing an exact replica of the Carrera wheel for their next generation product.
Fig. 1 New Porche Carrera wheel (the Le Mans SE has real leather!)
Peter told me that Endor was creating a new division named Krautek that would be developing high-end specialty game control devices. I was hopeful this would include some flight sim gear. Peter said that would not be their first project but that they thought their first product would make a big impact in the gaming community. We hope that Endor will keep us and our readers tied into these new projects.
3dfx:
Fig.2 3dfx was high profile at the ECTS show
3dfx won the prize for the biggest banner. They also took the Award for Best PC Hardware at the show. I met with Andrew Humber, PR Manager, to discuss the success of the Voodoo5 5500 and the upcoming V4 4500 and V5 6000. Andrew told CombatSim that 3dfx was very pleased with gamers’ enthusiasm for the new Voodoo5 line of cards and they expected to be equally successful with the new line of entry level Voodoo4 cards. He admitted that the Voodoo5 6000 was aimed at the enthusiast market of gamers that wanted simply the best graphics that money could buy. 3dfx does not expect this card to enjoy large sales volumes with its near US$600 price tag. The introduction of the Voodoo5 6000 will bring even higher level FSAA and faster frame rates that will attract the hard core gamer.
The new V4 4500 will be the new entry-level card from 3dfx. No final price has been set but prices could be under US$200. The new 4500 and the 5500 will be available in PCI versions this fall for those without an AGP slot. Versions are also available for the Mac. This is big news for Mac users who are often lagging behind PC graphics cards by as much as a hardware generation.
