Iris Vision - The Forgotten 3D Revolution

The Forgotten 3D Revolution

3D graphics hardware was a relatively new prospect for microcomputers at the time, and was unknown in the IBM personal computing world. 3D graphics software was mostly associated with PowerAnimator and Softimage or niche applications on the Amiga 3000, such as Video Toaster and Lightwave, or the Macintosh Quadra, such as StrataVision, and 3D graphics hardware was frequently associated with UNIX machines. In contrast, in the IBM personal computing world, VGA was just barely coming into the spotlight when IrisVision came out on the market. IrisVision presented an alternative few had ever imagined on the Intel platform: that of a 3D platform that used MS-DOS as the base operating system.

AutoDesk quickly realized that they could capitalize on this graphics subsystem and released their most successful CAD and 3D production products with support for this card, among them AutoCAD (Revisions 12 and 13) and 3D studio 2 through 4. Eventually support for Microsoft Windows would be developed but without much ado as hardly any software on the GUI system would take advantage of the card.

Despite all this, IrisVision fell into relative obscurity, as IRIS GL hadn't reached its pinnacle as the de facto 3D API then was PHIGS, and few people had any real idea of what to do with 3D graphics (outside of the CAD industry). Another attempt to port SGI hardware to the PC platform would not occur until the introduction of the SGI Visual Workstation.