Findev

Last updated
Findev Inc.
Company type Public
TSX-V:  FDI
Industry Real estate investing
Founded2001
FoundersGavriel State
Headquarters
Toronto, Ontario
,
Key people
Sruli Weinreb, CEO
RevenueIncrease2.svg $2 million USD
Decrease2.svg $0.25 million USD
Decrease2.svg $0.5 million USD
Website findev.ca

Findev Inc. (formerly TransGaming Inc.) is a real estate investing company, with its head office in Toronto. It is involved in property development within the Greater Toronto Area. The company is aligned with Plazacorp, a property development company, which is its major shareholder. [1] The current CEO is Sruli Weinreb.

Contents

A former technology company founded by Gavriel State - who ran the Linux product division at Corel. TransGaming's Graphics and Portability Group was acquired by NVIDIA in 2015, paving the way to NVIDIA's first office in Toronto, Canada.

In 2016, TransGaming Inc. decided to change its business focus from technology and gaming to real estate financing. [2] In August 2016 its last remaining gaming division, GameTree TV, with its subsidiaries and offices in Tel Aviv and Kyiv, were sold to TransGaming Interactive UK Limited - a subsidiary of General Media Ventures based in the United Kingdom. [3] This company, now renamed to PlayWorks Digital Ltd., [4] carries on the former GameTree TV business under the PlayWorks name. [5] [6]

Former technology products

Cider

Cider was a technology marketed towards developers that allowed Windows games to run on Mac OS X. It shared much of the same core technology as Cedega but was designed for video game designers and publishers. Like Cedega, Cider was a proprietary fork of Wine.

At the 2007 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC07), Electronic Arts announced their return to the Mac, publishing various titles simultaneously on both PCs and Macs, using Cider on the Mac. [7]

In a newsletter dated 2007-11-13, the company announced that Cider's improvements will be merging back into Cedega.

GameTree Linux

GameTree Linux was a developer program dedicated to further developing Cedega, a compatibility layer for running Microsoft Windows games on Linux. There are games that run on Cedega but not on wine, and games that run on wine but not Cedega. Users that want to play a specific game usually look for it on the games databases available on the web. [8] [9]

SwiftShader

SwiftShader is a high-performance CPU-based implementation of the Vulkan graphics API. Its goal is to provide hardware independence for advanced 3D graphics. [10] It contains shaders and other Direct3D 8/9 class capabilities. SwiftShader was sold to Google in 2015 for US$1.25 million. It is currently used in Google Chrome as well as in Apple's Safari Web Browser to render 3D content. [11]

GameTree TV

In 2010 TransGaming launched their new app, GameTree TV, a cloud-based, on-demand entertainment platform for Smart TV. In 2012 TransGaming acquired the connected TV division of Oberon Media and integrated them into their GameTree TV platform. [12]

Digital rights management (DRM)

In a press release dated 2008-08-20, TransGaming announced that they "will utilize Sony DADC's SecuROM digital rights management (DRM) solution for all video game titles enabled through TransGaming's Cider portability engine for Mac games." TransGaming's use of SecuROM is notable because of the company's decision to use SecuROM technology for all Mac games enabled through Cider, irrespective of distribution channel (download vs. retail) and whether SecuROM was used for a game's Windows PC release. [13] [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenGL</span> Cross-platform graphics API

OpenGL is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wine (software)</span> Windows compatibility software

Wine is a free and open-source compatibility layer to allow application software and computer games developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Developers can compile Windows applications against WineLib to help port them to Unix-like systems. Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues. No code emulation or virtualization occurs. Wine is primarily developed for Linux and macOS.

Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the graphics card, allowing for hardware acceleration of the entire 3D rendering pipeline or even only partial acceleration. Direct3D exposes the advanced graphics capabilities of 3D graphics hardware, including Z-buffering, W-buffering, stencil buffering, spatial anti-aliasing, alpha blending, color blending, mipmapping, texture blending, clipping, culling, atmospheric effects, perspective-correct texture mapping, programmable HLSL shaders and effects. Integration with other DirectX technologies enables Direct3D to deliver such features as video mapping, hardware 3D rendering in 2D overlay planes, and even sprites, providing the use of 2D and 3D graphics in interactive media ties.

Cedega was the proprietary fork by TransGaming Technologies of Wine, from the last version of Wine under the X11 license before switching to GNU LGPL. It was designed specifically for running games created for Microsoft Windows under Linux. As such, its primary focus was implementing the DirectX API. WineX was renamed to Cedega on the release of version 4.0 on June 22, 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kodi (software)</span> Free software media player

Kodi is a free and open-source media player and technology convergence software application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most streaming media, such as videos, music, podcasts, and videos from the Internet, as well as all common digital media files from local and network storage media, or TV gateway viewer.

The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) is a subsystem of the Linux kernel responsible for interfacing with GPUs of modern video cards. DRM exposes an API that user-space programs can use to send commands and data to the GPU and perform operations such as configuring the mode setting of the display. DRM was first developed as the kernel-space component of the X Server Direct Rendering Infrastructure, but since then it has been used by other graphic stack alternatives such as Wayland and standalone applications and libraries such as SDL2 and Kodi.

SecuROM is a CD/DVD copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Sony DADC and introduced in 1998. It aims to prevent unauthorised copying and reverse engineering of software, primarily commercial computer games running on Windows. The method of disc protection in later versions is data position measurement, which may be used in conjunction with online activation DRM. SecuROM gained prominence in the late 2000s but generated controversy because of its requirement for frequent online authentication and strict key activation limits. A 2008 class-action lawsuit was filed against Electronic Arts for its use of SecuROM in the video game Spore. Opponents, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believe that fair-use rights are restricted by DRM applications such as SecuROM.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PhysX</span> Realtime physics engine software

PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free and open-source graphics device driver</span> Software that controls computer-graphics hardware

A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware.

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) is a series of integrated graphics processors introduced in 2004 by Intel, replacing the earlier Intel Extreme Graphics series and being succeeded by the Intel HD and Iris Graphics series.

CoreAVC was a proprietary codec for decoding the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video format.

Mac gaming refers to the use of video games on Macintosh personal computers. In the 1990s, Apple computers did not attract the same level of video game development as Microsoft Windows computers due to the high popularity of Microsoft Windows and, for 3D gaming, Microsoft's DirectX technology. In recent years, the introduction of Mac OS X and support for Intel processors has eased porting of many games, including 3D games through use of OpenGL and more recently Apple's own Metal API. Virtualization technology and Boot Camp also permit the use of Windows and its games on Macintosh computers. Today, a growing number of popular games run natively on macOS, though as of early 2019, a majority still require the use of Microsoft Windows.

nouveau (software) Open source software driver for Nvidia GPU

nouveau is a free and open-source graphics device driver for Nvidia video cards and the Tegra family of SoCs written by independent software engineers, with minor help from Nvidia employees.

Unified Video Decoder is the name given to AMD's dedicated video decoding ASIC. There are multiple versions implementing a multitude of video codecs, such as H.264 and VC-1.

Linux-based operating systems can be used for playing video games. Because many games are not natively supported for the Linux kernel, various software has been made to run Windows games, such as Wine, Cedega, DXVK, and Proton, and managers such as Lutris and PlayOnLinux. The Linux gaming community has a presence on the internet with users who attempt to run games that are not officially supported on Linux.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Android-x86</span> Unofficial port of the Android mobile operating system

Android-x86 is an open source project that makes an unofficial porting of the Android mobile operating system developed by the Open Handset Alliance to run on devices powered by x86 processors, rather than RISC-based ARM chips.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SteamOS</span> Linux distribution made by Valve

SteamOS is a Linux distribution developed by Valve. It incorporates Valve's popular namesake Steam video game storefront and is the primary operating system for the Steam Deck, Valve's portable gaming device, as well as Valve's earlier Steam Machines. SteamOS is open source with some closed source components.

Stage3D is an Adobe Flash Player API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration, within Flash games and applications. Flash Player or AIR applications written in ActionScript 3 may use Stage3D to render 3D graphics, and such applications run natively on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple iOS and Google Android. Stage3D is similar in purpose and design to WebGL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metal (API)</span> iOS, macOS, and tvOS graphics rendering API

Metal is a low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader API created by Apple, debuting in iOS 8. Metal combines functions similar to OpenGL and OpenCL in one API. It is intended to improve performance by offering low-level access to the GPU hardware for apps on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS. It can be compared to low-level APIs on other platforms such as Vulkan and DirectX 12.

Vulkan is a low-level, low-overhead cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing. It was intended to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. It is designed to support a wide variety of GPUs, CPUs and operating systems, it is also designed to work with modern multi-core CPUs.

References

  1. "Findev.ca | About Us".
  2. "Notice Of Special Meeting Of Shareholders To Be Held On September 16, 2016" (PDF). Transgaming Inc. August 23, 2016.[ permanent dead link ]
  3. "TransGaming Signs Agreement To Sell Its Gametree TV Business To General Medial Adventures". Toronto, Canada: Findev. August 16, 2016.
  4. "PLAYWORKS DIGITAL Ltd overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK".
  5. "About Us". TransGaming. Archived from the original on 2017-07-07. Retrieved 2017-07-17.
  6. "Support".
  7. AppleInsider | EA's new Mac games will demand Intel-based systems
  8. "Wine Application Database". WineHQ.org. Retrieved 2011-10-15.
  9. "GameTree Linux Wiki". Cedega. Retrieved 2011-10-15.
  10. SwiftShader, Google, 2023-01-11, retrieved 2023-01-12
  11. "TransGaming Announces Assignment of SwiftShader IP". Yahoo!. May 4, 2016.
  12. "TransGaming acquires Oberon Media's TV games division for $7M". VentureBeat. 4 January 2012. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  13. "Cider-powered games to get SecuROM DRM". Develop Magazine. 2008-08-22. Retrieved September 6, 2008.
  14. "TransGaming Adds SecuROM To Ciderized Titles". Inside Mac Games. 2008-08-21. Retrieved September 6, 2008.