VIRTUAL ACTORS

The lead in 3-D gives SGI a critical advantage. Basically, people find it easier to understand pictures rather than raw data. That's because half the human brain works like a graphics computer, rendering a 3-D world from 2-D images sent by the retina, says Richard Mark Friedhoff, author of Visualization: The Second Computer Revolution. So when a computer presents information visually, people can focus on the problem at hand. Says Friedhoff: "Visualization is the central driving economic force in the computer industry today."

It's no wonder customers quickly created hundreds of applications for SGI's 3-D graphics--many of them jobs never envisioned in 1984 when SGI sold its first workstation. At the University of Toronto, medical researchers use SGI computers to visualize the physics of cell surfaces to better understand diseases and immune responses. Most of the major commercial aircraft companies employ SGI machines to model airflow around a craft--without spending the time and money to construct physical models and test them in a wind tunnel. Ford Motor Co. uses hundreds of SGI machines to visualize future car styles and simulate crashes.

Then, there's film. In countless movies from The Abyss to The Mask, a comedy due out July 29, SGI gear has turned special effects upside down. Where once each frame was painstakingly created using physical models, now software running on SGI equipment can create whole action sequences automatically--even virtual actors. While making The Crow, star Brandon Lee was killed before filming was completed. The movie was finished by using SGI equipment to digitally insert Lee into the new footage. The same techniques are making SGI a favorite on Madison Avenue, where agencies are using its gear to create dancing crackers, rubber phones, and other attention-grabbing graphics for TV commercials.

Hollywood provides more than just good PR. Says McCracken: "That market is stretching the rubber band the furthest for us in technology." In other words, says Thomas A. Williams, special-effects chief for Industrial Light & Magic, producer of the Jurassic Park special effects, "We drive them crazy." McCracken expects entertainment sales to double, to $400 million, in fiscal 1995.

Movies are only the start of SGI's move into entertainment. The deal with Time Warner Cable, a division of Time Warner Entertainment Co., could take SGI equipment wherever the cable system stretches. In the Orlando test, up to 4,000 homes will get stripped-down SGI workstations to surf through such interactive services as movies on demand, home shopping, and videogames.

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