Well, they did have decades of experience with real time 3D from flight simulators, so what could some johnny-come-lately's really do, especially when paired with the mightly Intel? (Well, didn't work out...[1])

I suppose if the chip hadn't been a stinker I suspect Real3D would've ended up being spun out of Lockheed Martin somehow as it doesn't seem a great fit for the rest of the business. Presumably the spinoff would have less embarrasing way of being sold to Intel on the cheap and having the tech used for (motherboard) intergrated "Intel Extreme"(ly bad) graphics.

[1] Although ATI wasn't exactly a startup by the 3D era, and 3DFX crashed and burned, so it wasn't quite "startups win".

TBH it was super impressive stuff at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/19970102114017/http://www.real3d...

Solid 60FPS in 1994 on the system's debut (and probably most famous) title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAcMqFTkAs8

Skunkworks