De facto Standard 3D Toolkit from TGS is Enhanced for VRML, Microsoft Visual C++ and MFC Developers

Business Wire, June 14, 1996

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 14, 1996--Template Graphics Software Inc. Friday announced immediate availability of Open Inventor(TM) for Win32 version 2.1.2 for Digital Alpha, Intel, MIPS(R) and PowerPC platforms running Windows NT(TM) or Windows 95(R).

This release is the fourth update of Open Inventor for Win32 from TGS in the past year, and includes the Interactive Visual Framework (IVF(TM)), a 3D/VRML extension to Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC)(R). IVF is developed by TGS and bundled by Microsoft(R) on their Visual C product.

TGS revealed that applications developed using Open Inventor for Win32 with IVF have been distributed to more than 300,000 Windows NT and Windows 95 systems in the past year, and that Microsoft has delivered the IVF 3D extension to MFC to more than 150,000 developers worldwide.

Since introduction in May of 1995, the TGS product has become the de facto standard commercial 3D toolkit for C and MFC developers creating interactive graphics applications.

Open Inventor for Win32 v2.1.2 includes a number of important new features over the 2.1.1 version, including:

Multi-threading support within SoWin and IVF

8-bit fonts (Latin 1, etc. Standard Open Inventor is 7-bit

ASCII only)

Multi-byte Character Sets (MBCS) for International fonts

(Kanji, etc.)

Multi-language character set mapping

Support for Visual C 4.0 and 4.1

Compatible with Windows 95, Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0b2

Compatible with OpenGL(R) 1.0 and 1.1 from Microsoft

Open Inventor was developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. and is source-licensed to TGS, the largest third-party supplier of Open Inventor for PC and UNIX systems. Open Inventor v2.1.1 from TGS is available for DEC, HP, IBM and Sun UNIX platforms.

"The acceptance of our integrated 3D Windows products by Microsoft developers coincides perfectly with the explosive growth of 3D hardware for PC systems. With Pentium and RISC processors, the reality of 3D desktop platforms is at hand," said Terry Baker, president of TGS.

"Open Inventor for Win32 and IVF deliver a component architecture which fits perfectly into C , MFC and ActiveX environments, giving developers an unmatched range of options for incorporating 3D into interactive applications."

TGS has developed industry-leading extensions to Open Inventor to take advantage of 32-bit Windows platforms. In June of 1995 TGS enhanced Open Inventor to support the Internet 3D standard VRML, making the toolkit the first VRML SDK. TGS added value to Open Inventor also includes: -0-