Early concept of Daytona USA at Summer CES 1993. Not on Model 2 but Compu-Scene ?

Take a look at this @ the 2:31 mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIsYIp3wknY


This is what I believe it might be, a concept of Daytona USA. Is that running on the Model 2 board, it's possible, but I don't believe it is. I believe that footage may have been running
on a General Electric Aerospace Compu-Scene image generator. Well, by then it was probably under Martin Marietta, since they bought GE Aerospace that year, two years before
Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed in 1995, creating Lockheed-Martin, who then formed Real3D.

Some background on why I think that 1993 CES concept demo of Daytona USA was running on a Compu-Scene IG:

http://www.thg.ru/smoke/19991022/print.html

 

I think it was just a CGi movie, nevertheless nice find!

 

The demo on compu-scene hardware was done in 1990 when sega were developing model 1 & it featured formula 1 racing cars. Model 2 hardware didn't exist then, they were still working on model 1.
Daytona USA was released in 1993, so it's very likely that what they showed was running on model 2.

There is a rumour that virtua racing started out as a test for model 1 and wasn't meant to be released & it was Daytona USA that was going to be the first model 1 game.

 

Who cares what it was running on. The fact that it's an early version of daytona Aracde is an amazing find. I've never seen that before.

 

The video is cool, but the OP focused the thread on what hardware it was running on & not that the video exists.

 

That's not likely. It looked completely realtime. Just a matter of realtime, on what hardware.

 

Exactly! Amazing find!

 

Yes, but later in that interview:

It's not that I don't see it as an incredibly awesome find. Late last night I was searching for the first showing of the actual Daytona USA game at one of the amusement shows like the AMOA Expo.
Instead I stumbled upon that video of Summer CES.

While I knew this was really great to find something, it wasn't what I expected. So then I thought, well that doesn't look exactly like Model 2 graphics, you know, the "Model 2" look.
It's obviously realtime, so I wondered if it was a prototype of Model 2 or maybe the image generator where Model 1 and Model 2 were born from.


Anyway, yeah, I guess I should just be happy I found something not widely seen before

 

It looks really early. Nice find!

 

I remember a magazine article regarding CompuScene that would have been printed around the time of the first Model 2 games appearing in the media, though for some reason all I'd ever been able to find were screenshots of the earliest Daytona USA arcade prototype and some preliminary target renders - not the original concept, which that footage appears to be. I'd genuinely lost all hope of anything from this one showing up, so thank you very much for sharing that YouTube link!

From what I can recall, Yu Suzuki passed a copy of the CES videotape to Hayao Nakayama, insisting that his team collaborate with Lockheed on developing an arcade board around the same technology. He supposedly got the green light not just because of his previous hits using the "SuperScaler" process, but due to a thesis he previously wrote at college about the application of three dimensional graphics and simulations in the field of interactive computer entertainment.

So, much of the initial research for Daytona came from literally over the road of Lockheed's Florida building? I'm willing to guess that as with Indy 500 later on, the AM departments were involved mostly to help design the fictional tracks, based on their experience at creating such circuits. Of course, it seems the actual Daytona course also evolved slightly into the (dare I say far more iconic?) 777 Speedway... presumably this was either Suzuki's idea or the work of Toshihiro Nagoshi.

Considering his past effort with Power Drift, I suspect the handling mechanics of Daytona were heavily influenced by Suzuki, as he also supposedly ordered delaying the release of SCUD Race after sitting down at a prototype cabinet then asking for a pen and paper, making notes of how the group responsible could significantly improve the steering even at such a late in production to make it far more like other highly popular arcade racing titles like Daytona, Ridge Racer and Sega Rally.

 

No problem. I pretty much found it by accident.

Perhaps yeah, but this has to go back earlier than 1993 Summer CES.


https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/sci.virtual-worlds/z82hvwK-zl0/KB7DqXlCIrUJ

Date: September 30, 1992

General Electric Aerospace was not under Lockheed at the time. GE Aerospace helped Sega with the creation of the Model 1 board. The above agreement almost certainly pertains to what would become Model 2.
Obviously "photo texture" is about texture mapping. GE Aerospace was bought out by Martin Marietta in 1993, the year Model 2 appeared with the initial release of Daytona in Japan.

GE Aerospace / Martin Marietta upgraded Model 1 with more polygon performance and more importantly, texture mapping chips, resulting in Model 2 and of course Daytona USA.




An article from the Washington Post in 1993:

http://tinyurl.com/mxs6vz7

So GE Aerospace / Martin Marietta were helping Sega upgrade Model 1 into Model 2, rival simulation company Evans & Sutherland was helping Namco with getting texture mapped graphics of its own,
which resulted in the System 22 board and Ridge Racer.

Martin Marietta even made the game Desert Tank on Model 2, for Sega.
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/flyers_video/sega/16020801.jpg


Lockheed wasn't in the picture until 1995 when they merged with Martin Marietta, thus Lockheed-Martin.

 

I'll start by apologing for making a few beginner's mistakes in my earlier post - the pitch to Nakayama must have been earlier than October 1992 as that's when Virtua Racing came out as the first title for the Model 1 board, which means Sega and "Lockheed" were already collaborating on hardware by then! However, as you can probably already tell, I refuse to make any similar apology for confusing Lockheed with the pre-merger Martin Marietta since my knowledge of this company's history is virtually (no pun intended) non-existent... I'm working on it, though!

 

Regardless of what hardware it's running on, these videos are AWESOME! That is clearly the Daytona track being rendered there.

 

Very smooth 3D for 1993. must have blown few peeps away :wink-new:

 

x

 

That must have been a big pain in the ass and only suitable for some future billy blanks boot camp followers.

 

Sonic Spinball was probably "target footage" created on Amiga hardware, as Sega Technical Institute used this practice a lot back then. I seem to recall they did exactly the same thing with Sonic Xtreme (at a similarly early point in its development - possibly even when it was still intended for the 32X) plus Comix Zone and the project that was based on the Sonic animated series.

 

Yeah, it's actually pretty straight forward.

General Electric Aerospace helped Sega with the Model 1 board in the very early 90s.

GE Aerospace was bought out by Martin Marietta in 1993. They upgraded Model 1 into Model 2 with higher performance and texture mapping.

Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed in 1995, thus forming Lockheed-Martin.
With all of that combined technical know-how, engineering talent and IP related to 3D graphics, Lockheed-Martin formed their own graphics company/division, Real3D.

That led to an all new class of image generators / simulators / cards, including the mid-range Real3D/100 PCI card (which never really launched), the high-end Real3D/Pro-1000 image generator, which is what the Model 3 board was based on (with 2 GPUs).
As well as, in a joint effort with Intel and Chips & Technologies, the low-end "Auburn" chip better known as i740 for Intel motherboards and Lockheed's consumer StarFighter add-on cards.

Note: The consumer Real3D product, announced in 1995 or 1996 was originally thought to be Real3D/100, with its geometry processor, graphics processor and texture processor. It turned the consumer product was not the same thing. It was lower-end, plus it launched late, in early 1998. i740 could not compete with Voodoo 2. The performance was closer to Voodoo 1 with better image quality. It suffered badly in benchmarks compared to its 1998 competitors.

Intel eventually bought Real3D from Lockheed Martin, in 1999 IIRC. However ATI swooped up many former Real3D engineers and ATI opened a design center in Orlando, Florida, the former offices of Real3D.
Nvidia hired some former Real3D people, but I don't think as many as ATI did. It was *mainly* because ATI acquired ArtX, the ex-SGI startup that designed the GameCube Flipper GPU, plus to some extent,
the influx of former Real3D staff, that ATI was able to stand up to Nvidia in the early-mid 2000s. That rivalry continues to this day with Nvidia and AMD.


Believe me, I am no expert, not even close. I just go by things such as press releases and credible reports I've read over the years. There isn't really much in the way of rumors regarding these things. It's merely part of the consolidation of the 3D graphics industry during the late 90s and early 2000s.

 

Thanks for posting! Daytona USA is one of my FAVOURITE games so it was really cool to see this video!

 

I was just looking at an old video I have of the arcade version of Daytona USA, and I was wondering about something. If Daytona USA were released in 1993, why does the title screen say ©SEGA 1994? Similarly, Virtua Fighter 3 was supposedly released in 1996, whereas the labels on the board say ©SEGA 1995.