Tech Soft America And Hewlett-Packard Announce Distribution Agreement For Hoops 3d Application Framework - Product Information

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Nov 6, 2000

Tech Soft America (TSA), a provider of OEM graphics technology to the engineering software industry, and developers of the popular HOOPS(R) 3D Application Framework (HOOPS/3dAF), and Hewlett-Packard (HP), have announced a program to freely distribute the HOOPS/3dAF libraries for personal use on all HP VISUALIZE Workstations running the Linux OS.

The inclusion of the HOOPS development libraries complements the recently released HP VISUALIZE fx5 and fx10 graphics accelerators for Linux, and drastically simplifies the development of high-performance 3D applications for the Linux platform.

This distribution agreement further extends HP's commitment to providing high end graphics solutions to the Linux community, and augments Tech Soft's recently announced "Free 3D for Linux" program.

HOOPS/3dAF provides a flexible architectural foundation, based upon a suite of modular application components, which enables the rapid development of design, visualization, and engineering applications for Windows, Unix, Linux and the web. HOOPS is the core graphics component in over 100 commercial applications from many of the leaders in CAD/CAM/CAE, Scientific Visualization, Business Graphics and Earth Sciences software. In addition, HOOPS is used in hundreds of personal use and internally deployed applications. Since the announcement of TSA's "Free 3D for Linux" program, thousands of Linux developers have downloaded the HOOPS libraries, enabling them to quickly produce advanced commercial grade 3D graphics applications.

Munir Mallal, Software Planning Manager for HP stated, "We are pleased to be complementing our industry leading hardware acceleration on Linux with fx5 and fx10 with HOOPS/3dAF. In partnering with Tech Soft we are able to give developers a high-level, commercial-grade software tool for developing high-performance applications able to take full advantage of our robust hardware. The combination of HOOPS' strength as a graphics development tool and the acceleration power of our fx family will no doubt be popular for developers and end users alike."

"We have been impressed with HP's commitment to advanced graphics technologies for Linux, and their rapid delivery of the fx5 and fx10 products. HP's distribution of our libraries with their latest hardware reinforces HOOPS' position as the de facto standard for graphics development on Linux," commented Ron Fritz, Managing Partner for Tech Soft.

In addition to inclusion with up coming HP VISUALIZE workstations, HOOPS for Linux is available for download from TSA at www.hoops3d.com. Developers may freely use HOOPS for personal use development. Those wishing to license HOOPS for commercial use, or to port their HOOPS/Linux application to additional platforms may contact TSA directly for complete licensing details.