Hewlett-Packard announced new software that enables customers in graphics-intensive fields, such as engineering and graphic design, to collaborate with teams across geographically dispersed regions in real time.

Called HP Remote Graphics, the 3D graphics software lets artists, engineers and designers work with remote teams more easily and without the need to upgrade to an expensive 3D graphics card on each user's machine.

HP said the software can be used with workstations, notebooks or commercial desktop PCs, and lets customers collaborate on large 3D models, such as those in the digital content creation or computer-aided design (CAD) and engineering industries. It uses proprietary compression and decompression technology to enable sharing on graphics-intensive projects over a standard network connection with minimal lag time between the sender rendering and the receiver updates.

HP Remote Graphics software is expected to be available in October and will cost $399 for HP systems, including licenses for a single sender and receiver. Additional receiver licenses are expected to cost $99 each. The software runs on HP-UX 11.0 or later, Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP, and Red Hat Linux platforms.