E3 Hardware Roundup by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson
	Ten days later we are still trying to dig through the material that we brought back with us from E3: whether intellectual in nature or in print form! Our "Best of" series has already covered much of the intriguing or revolutionary hardware offerings for 1999, but there are still a few items that haven't been mentioned. To rectify that oversight, this hardware roundup will bring you up to date. Video Accelerators John Reynolds has covered the new video hardware, but it's worth mentioning that the Savage4 boards have a particular genius about them. The texture compression work that they do makes them particularly well suited for displaying large scenes. Watching the Creative Labs board in operation, the difference using texture compression in Quake II and in a first person shooter (whose title I don't recall) was quite incredible. I believe I mentioned in one of my first notes from the floor that I spoke with a tech at 3dfx who admitted under threat of death that Voodoo 3 WOULD show up in single board SLI form this fall. The SLI version will sport 32 meg of RAM and around 50% speed increase over a single V3 3000. Will we see a dual SLI configuration? Most likely, the answer is yes. This configuration would be two single SLI boards, for a total of 64 meg of RAM. The Matrox G400 MAX was my choice for best video of the show. The combination of speed and features like their dualhead display system made it a winner. TNT2 Ultra was present in abundance and is unquestionably a great video product. Click to continue		UR Gear Headset and Feedback and Control Devices UR Gear was showing their virtual reality headset, and Interact was showing their new feedback cushion and a development model of their feedback vest. The vest is very different from the one marketed in 1997 by Aura Systems, and was a very early prototype. I spoke with a technician about the shooter and sim market and what I would hope to see in a vest feedback device. The UR Gear headset is innocuous but may revolutionize the way you change views in your favorite sim software. You simply place the headset on (complete with built in stereo sound), and it projects an infra red beam to a tracking device that sits on top of your monitor. You program the headset according to the view commands in your sim. Simple! Now, when you turn your head slightly left, your view pans left. Tilt your head up slightly, and your view pans up. The sensitivity of the device is user configurable, and normally only a slight head movement (maybe ten degrees) gives you a 90 degree pan. The MSRP is around $99 US. As if that wasn't enough, we looked at a new gaming mouse from Thrustmaster, and a force feedback mouse from Logitech. The first was nice, but the second was nicer. Now you can be controlling your favorite shooter with a feedback device, a great idea. Or select a ship in Harpoon IV that is hit by a missile and feel the impact. No, it won't be for everyone but combined with a feedback vest it might be cool. Go to Part II
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