(1995) Taos Systems parallel processing board for VR arcades - Spyfish game

[Megadrive1988]

http://i.imgur.com/Aw0P9tK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/94kSwBb.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/qce3V2I.jpg

I remember reading this back then in '95. Really interesting stuff.

I couldn't find much on the interwebs so I had to find the article.

Taos Systems board
*Pentium 133 with 28-64 MB RAM
*4x PowerPC 603 CPUs @ 100 MHz each with 32 MB EDRAM (embedded or not I dunno)
*4x 3Dlabs GLINT 300SX / 300TX graphics accelerators @ 50 MHz
each with 32 MB local buffer RAM and upto 32 MB VRAM if needed
*457 Mb (MB or Mb?) bandwidth for EDRAM / VRAM
*500,000 polygons (V1) or 1,200,000 polygons (V2) with GLINT 300TX
*640x480 minimum resolution
*50 FPS
*1 GB HDD
*CD-ROM

The shots of the Spyfish game are kinda interesting, wish there was a video.



Some of few online tidbits I did manage to find:

Tao Systems Ltd, London creator of the Taos distributed operating system, is in process of turning the economics of arcade virtual reality systems upside down. The company is working on an underwater action adventure game called Spyfish that uses a Pentium motherboard with a 100MHz PowerPC 603 supported by a 3D Labs Ltd Glint chip plugged into each of the four Peripheral Component Interconnect slots, with Taos running across the ensemble. Each PowerPC handles a quarter of a 24-bit colour display putting up at least 640 by 480 pixels, and the system is being designed to generate between 500,000 and 1.2m polygons per second, running at 50 frames per second. The PowerPCs will each have 32Mb of fast private memory, each Glint will also have up to 32Mb of buffer plus up to 32Mb video RAM, the Pentium will have 28Mb to 64Mb to store the game logic and support a 1Gb disk and a CD-ROM. To create a virtual reality version of the game, the hardware will be duplicated, and the company reckons that by using all off-the-shelf components and the power of its distributed operating system, it will be able to create an arcade game that far exceeds the performance of, yet costs no more than, today's low-end virtual reality arcade games. As with Doom, the game engine and the polygon engine are completely separate from the image generation, so that they can be used in future, completely different, games, and the company plans to bundle the image generator with the next release of Taos, so that games developers can write to the interfaces of the underlying engines.

http://www.cbronline.com/news/tao_systems_plans_high_end_virtual_reality_game




Trevor Boult

1993 – 1997
Project Co-ordinator for Tao Systems Ltd. Tao (pronounced Dow) Systems is the creator of Taos, a massively parallel operating system. I was involved with day-to-day management of various teams and making status reports to the Tao board regarding the development of Spyfish arcade game. Created various underwater landscapes for Spyfish using 3D Studio V4.

http://www.tboult.co.uk/work_history.html

 

[f two bnp]

This is indeed interesting and kinda weird, although arcade machines have always used rather curious hardware, I think this takes the cake though.
Nothing ever came out of this? I would have liked to see some real time screenshots or videos, but heck those prerendered shots smell 90's .

 

[Stiletto]

Added to the (unofficial) MAME Undumped wiki:
http://mamedev.emulab.it/undumped/index.php?title=Spyfish

 

[swaaye]

By EDRAM they likely meant Enhanced DRAM. Or EDO perhaps.

 

[Megadrive1988]

By EDRAM they likely meant Enhanced DRAM. Or EDO perhaps.

Yeah.

 

[dananorma]

By EDRAM they likely meant Enhanced DRAM. Or EDO perhaps.

yes

 

[Davros]

have you emailed this trevor boult dude ?