VM Labs Licenses Nuon Interactive Entertainment TechnologyBy Jules Grant

1999 was definitely a year of hardware at E3. Sega Dreamcast looked impressive and made lots of noise. Voodoo3 and other new PC 3D accelerators were in evidence, as were a number of new peripheral twists. Nintendo, with their surprise ""Dolphin"" announcement, created quite a stir and thereby seem to have changed the hardware buzz from awe of the Sony ""Emotion Engine"" juggernaut to anticipation of Next Generation video game consoles in general. Very quietly, in an out of the way booth, VM Labs also made some significant announcements. I had a chance to sit down with Richard Miller, CEO of VM Labs (past Vice President, technology of Atari during the development of the Jaguar) to discuss Nuon and to see it in action. The first thing that Mr. Miller wanted to straighten out was what exactly Nuon is and with whom it is competing. There has been the conception, because of the impressive capabilities of Nuon, that it is in direct competition with the upcoming crop of Next Generation consoles. This is not, in fact, correct. The Nuon processor can be easily and economically embedded in the next generation of digital video products, such as DVD players and set-top boxes. It is expected that digital video will replace current analog players over the next five to ten years. The market for such home entertainment products is many times greater than the market for dedicated gaming consoles. VM Labs hopes to achieve total market penetration with the Nuon technology and with that access be able to bring interactive entertainment to the masses far beyond the scope of what dedicated game consoles can achieve. The announcements that were made are significant towards this goal. First, Toshiba reconfirmed their commitment to embed the Nuon technology into their next generation entertainment devices. Second, InterActual Technologies, Inc. and Panasonic Disc Services Corporation (the companies that manufacture most DVD home movies) have announced their cooperation in creating authoring tools and replication services. This will make it easy for movie studios to expand DVD movie content, adding such features as web site interaction, customized user interface and video games. Besides interactive entertainment and gaming applications, Nuon also allows for Internet and email. Also, VM Labs announced a list of game developers that includes THQ, Attention to Detail, Adrenaline Interactive, Logicware, Acclaim, GT Interactive, Simon and Schuster Interactive, Sunsoft and others. What these developers are seeking is access to a market that they otherwise would not reach; those people who purchase home entertainment products but do not purchase dedicated game consoles. People like my Dad. As for the games themselves, Mr. Miller showed off a number of games in development, that include a very N64ish cartoon racing game called Merlin Karting that features King Arthur and Merlin. He also demonstrated a brilliant recreation of Tempest, created by the legendary Jeff Minter, as well as a vehicular combat game. What was interesting was the very different look of each of the games. Mr. Miller explained that the games were each developed with different programming libraries. The Nuon processor, as well as having the power to decode digital video and audio, is capable of executing in excess of 1.5 billion instructions per second. The Nuon development team has created a variety of high-level libraries (one similar to the N64 libraries, one similar to PSX libraries, a ray tracing library, etc.) for developers, as well as a processor instruction set and system architecture that actually gives developers full control over the system. Nuon is not as effective at rendering polygons as dedicated Next-Generation consoles, but provides developers much more flexibility. Nuon is capable of supporting a whole range of graphics effects and algorithms such as voxels, plasma, procedural textures, parametric modeling, particle systems and even some ray tracing. Mr. Miller expects that the freedom of development will promote creativity in developers. Richard Miller expressed his confidence that the hard core gaming audience would purchase Nuon embedded home entertainment products, not in competition with their Next-Generation game consoles, but as complement. The real excitement, however, is over the ability to reach a mass audience that has never before had access to interactive, electronic entertainment in their living rooms. The first Nuon products should begin appearing in 2000. I for one will be looking for the Nuon symbol when I get around to purchasing a DVD player.