ABSTRACT
Even though there were good reasons to believe that the Talisman project would come to market too late to be competitive by it’s projected launch in May 1997, Bill Gates was still considering its viability, just as he had back in his previous email exchanges with St. John in February. Even though the initial thread that Gates had started was somewhat focused on Talisman, he was laying out some of Microsoft’s strategy in the 3D arena, which included considerations of using OpenGL as a base for a standard API. In response, John Ludwig wrote to Torborg asking for details about the OGL discussion that Gates’ referenced. Reading Abrash’s memo, it seems likely that it was the source of Torborg’s conclusions, or at least that he and Abrash had been communicating given that their assessments of OpenGL’s strengths and advantages and Direct3D’s weaknesses and deficiencies were identical.
