3do

company, games, standard
a set of specifications created and owned by the 3do company, which is a partnership of seven different companies. these specs are the blueprint for making a 3do interactive multiplayer and are licensed to hardware and software producers.
a 3do system has an arm60 32-bit risc cpu and a graphics engine based around two custom designed graphics and animation processors. it has 2 megabytes of dram, 1 megabyte of vram, and a double speed cd-rom drive for main storage.
the panasonic 3do system can run 3do interactive software, play audio cds (including support for cd+g), view photo-cds, and will eventually be able to play video cds with a special add-on mpeg1 full-motion video cartridge. up to 8 controllers can be daisy-chained on the system at once. a keyboard, mouse, light gun, and other peripherals may also some day be hooked into the system, although they are not currently available (december 1993). the 3do can display full-motion video, fully texture mapped 3d landscapes, all in 24-bit colour. sanyo and at&t will also release 3do systems. sanyo’s in mid 1994 and at&t in late 1994.
there will be a 3do add-on cartridge based on the powerpc to enable the 3do to compete with sony’s playstation console and sega’s saturn console, both of which have a higher specification than the original 3do. the add-on is commonly known as the m2 or bulldog. it should hit the shops by christmas 1995 and will (allegedly) do a million flat shaded polygons per second.
3do home (http://3do.com/).
usenet newsgroup: news:rec.games.video.3do.
(1994-12-13)