Mike is employed at Intel as a senior software engineer in Intel Research & Development.
For the past two years I have been working on 3D internet media. We
developed and shipped a plugin for
Macromedia Director
and
Shockwave
which provides
3D rendering and
simulation features. If you look at the "credits" window in Director
8.5, you'll see my name listed.
My speciality was the Scheduler component — it's not very visible, but it is a critical piece of the simulation system, and is tied closely with scripting, collision detection, file streaming, and animation. I wrote a chapter for Games Programming Gems III entitled Scheduling Game Events (section 1.1) based on my simulation work at Intel.
We are currently working on next-generation 3D technologies, as well as a CAD file format standard.
I worked on the 3D Realistic Sound Experience (3D RSX) project when I first started at Intel, developing and releasing the "Refresh Release".
After the Refresh release, Microsoft was interested in the RSX technology, as they were working on 3D extensions to Internet Explorer and their DirectX library. I spent about a year reworking RSX into "DirectSound 3D Retained Mode" for shipment with the next version of Windows, but the project was cancelled before we shipped anything.
RSX was a successful product and was ultimately sold to Rad Game Tools. It is still available as part of their Miles Sound System.
After RSX, I worked briefly on 3D streaming file formats before moving on to my current work.
I worked for Viridian Systems (formerly Data Micro Systems) for about two years, from 1994 through 1996. While there I worked on projects to use X Terminals to access Windows NT servers, a real-time industrial controller software, and research work on "net meeting" software. They were a small startup and are now out of business.
When I was too young to know any better, my uncle Chuck hired me to computerize his business. This was back in 1989 or so. I recommended he buy a Unix system (Dell 386 with Unix System V) and let me develop a DMBS for his inventory and accounting. At that point I had two years of college with Pascal and FORTRAN on the mainframe, and had studied C and C++ on my own, so I was eager to do something in the real world. It was an interesting experience, and I learned a lot, especially about biting off more than I could chew. In the end, after nearly a year of development using C and a bare-bones DMBS library, I conceded defeat and he purchased some professional software. But he fell in love with Unix and considered it an excellent purchase, so at least I got one thing right! I consider that the true start of my career and it did more than anything to convince me to finish college and get my degree. I will always be thankful that be believed in me enough to let me try.
