3-D graphics formats are currently all the rage among hardcore gamers, and what gamers are playing with today, the rest of us are dealing with on the Web and in our work apps tomorrow. The same applies to high-resolution graphics formats. Imagine if, for example, an Excel chart could use animations showing change over time; how cool (and useful) would that be? "Unrealty" is a software program that uses the Unreal game engine to create 3-D "walkthroughs" of real estate sites. Microsoft is working on GDI+, a groundbreaking graphical user interface that will make 3-D capability an integral part of Windows' operating system. Predictions are for graphics chips with 50 million transistors to hit the market within two years -- and you can believe all that power won't lay fallow. Today's (and tomorrow's) new game graphics will inevitably bleed over into our word processors and Web design programs.

One popular graphic format that is poised to make a splash in the Web world is PNG, or Portable Network Graphic. PNG graphics are already supported, sort of, by the two main browsers MSIE doesn't support the advanced features, and Navigator requires a plugin). It's been a format in development since its inception in 1978, but Compuserve's GIF format hit the market first and became ubiquitous. Unisys, who owns a patent on some of the technology that made GIFs possible, has been throwing its weight around in various courtrooms since 1994, so a replacement for GIF files that won't put money in Unisys's pockets is the obvious solution. Hence the burgeoning popularity of the PNG format. Keep up with PNG news at www.freesoftware.com/pub/png/pngapps.html.

Unisys didn't achieve much with its abortive efforts to claim a copyright on the .GIF format, but Forget Technologies may have more of a case with its similar efforts towards the .JPG/.JPEG format. We'll see how this plays out.