Date: Mon, 18 Sep 95 09:23:36 -0700 From: Peter Rothman Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: ANNOUNCE: Amber Virtual Environment Development Tool Begins Shipping DIVE LABORATORIES, INC. 2501 Mission Street Santa Cruz CA 95060 408-469-1720 408-469-1722 FAX e-mail: info@divelabs.com Web Site: http://www.divelabs.com Defense Conversion Enables Virtual Reality for the Masses Technology from Advanced Army Simulators Now Available in Low Cost Virtual Reality Development Tools For Immediate Release Monday September 18, 1995 Contact: Peter Rothman DIVE Laboratories, Inc. 408-469-1720 e-mail: info@divelabs.com Web Site: http://www.divelabs.com Santa Cruz, California -- DIVE Labs announced today that it has begun shipping the WindowsNT version of its Amber virtual reality development system. DIVE Labs' Amber software, a platform independent virtual environment development system, was originally developed for use in high end military simulations. Amber is a virtual environment development system which currently supports OpenGL under Windows NT and IRIX, as well as a real-time server implementation. The software also supports head tracking head mounted displays, spatial audio, advanced graphics accelerators, reads both VRML and NFF object files, and allows for the development of distributed virtual environments using a client server architecture over TCP/IP networks. According to Peter Rothman, President of DIVE Laboratories, "Amber represents the culmination of our work for the past three years on a variety of projects for the military brought down to a consumer level. The beta version of the Amber is available as shareware free of charge from DIVE Labs World Wide Web site (http://www.divelabs.com). The commercial version of the product will is available directly from DIVE Labs for $149." The Windows 3.1 and Windows95 versions Amber will ship in the first week of October, and the SGI version will begin shipping October 15th. DIVE Labs has announced breakthrough pricing for all of its products. Windows versions of Amber will sell for $149 and workstation versions for $199. Future releases of Amber will include support for the Sun GX and ZX graphics workstations, and a visual basic version for Windows platforms. DIVE Labs is taking advanced orders for these products for $99 (Windows) and $149 (SGI) until the products begin shipping. According to Mr. Rothman, this breakthrough in pricing for virtual reality development systems was made possible by converting technologies originally developed for use by the Department of Defense to commercial applications. "Because most of our R&D costs have already been paid for by our government and corporate clients, we don’t have to pass these costs on to developers." Amber is a true object oriented environment which supports inheritance and other object oriented programming techniques, and has features and capabilities previously only available in development tools costing thousands of dollars. Amber environments support communication between participants and complex interactions with virtual objects via a protocol originally developed for military simulation. Using Virtual i/o’s i-glasses and DIVE Labs server software, developers can create immersive on-line environments for entertainment, conferencing, or other business applications. ### ### ###