When UK-based Division, Ltd., started its American branch in Redwood City, California, it added an office in Chapel Hill in 1994 to be closer to home.
Home, that is, to the Pixel Planes technology created by UNC-CH researchers. A number of such small companies or company branches have sprung up in the Triangle as a result of the research carried on at local universities, usually with the help of university personnel. (For example, UNC-CH research professor Nick England, of the computer science department, has been a part of so many computer-based business ventures that his friends now call him "an entrepreneur's entrepreneur.")
The Pixel Planes machines that hooked Division, Ltd., are graphics processors designed to render images immediately-or in "real time." The machines are made to solve one of the toughest graphics problems for virtual environment systems, a problem one researcher calls "making pretty pictures, fast." Creating complicated, photograph-quality computer images can be done, of course, but it takes time, sometimes hours or days. When computer graphics in a virtual-environment system attempt to keep up with the speed at which a person sees and reacts to his surroundings, the images created necessarily must be much cruder. For now, anyway.
Pixel Planes' creators Henry Fuchs, John Poulton, Steve Molnar, and John Eyles, were "discovered" by representatives from Division, Ltd., at SIGGRAPH '92, one of the largest annual computer graphics conventions in the industry. Division, Ltd. was manufacturing graphics hardware and virtual reality systems. Because UNC-CH's design was superior, Division heads chose to locate a U.S. office in Chapel Hill, obtaining a license to use UNC-CH technology.
Former graduate students John Austin, Doug Schiff, Trey Greer, and John Rhoades were the first to join the enterprise in Chapel Hill. They set up in a small group of offices on Franklin Street in January 1994 with the license to develop the next generation of Pixel Planes technology into salable products. Austin is now President of Division, Inc., the U.S. branch of the company.
In two years the staff in Chapel Hill has increased from four to about 25. Three of the Pixel Planes team's four members -Poulton, Molnar, and Eyles-have been brought on board at Division while retaining employment at the University.
While university researchers develop the experimental models, Division employees are working on the product version of Pixel Flow technology. Pixel Flow is an upgrade of Pixel Planes 5, the latest image-rendering machine in the Pixel Planes series. Pixel Flow uses a technique called "image composition" to create two or more partial images that combine on-screen, doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the speed at which the machine generates images.
The machines are manufactured for customers of Division's software products such as McDonnell Douglas and Ford Motor Company, who use the technology for modeling prototype vehicles and equipment. The technology gives these companies the ability to try out certain maintenance processes on a virtual engine or feel the distance from driver's seat to glove box in the interior of a prototype car. Pixel Flow could replace the graphics in the current system with a more detailed, faster-moving display.
Division employees spend a good deal of time at the UNC-CH computer labs collaborating with students and engineers there on the new designs. The company has also sponsored a fellowship for a graduate student in the department.
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Last modified: 5/20/96