Power Series

From: Christopher Smith <csmith_at_amdocs.com>
Date: Fri Dec 28 11:50:19 2001

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Foust [mailto:jfoust_at_threedee.com]

> What Mark is saying is that there's at least two different kinds of
> rendering, and people sometimes chose SGIs for one reason but
> not the necessarily the other. One, you might like to have
> fast processors and hardware acceleration of textured polygons
> for the real-time view of your 3D data. Example users would
> include military simulation, virtual reality, flight simulators, etc.

True enough. Also true that these days, SGI-style graphics hardware is
usually more necessary for the "scientific visualization" crowd, than for
animation. Most animation I've seen done recently was (at least in bulk)
rendered non-real-time, probably on a render-farm of some kind.

> The second group, 3D computer animators making special effects
> and movies, they not only need the real-time stuff during
> the modeling stage, but they also appreciated the raw horsepower
> when it came to rendering, which is usually a purely software-based
> operation.

Of course, originally, SGI (and possibly Intergraph) was the only game in
town ;) These days other manufacturers have graphics that may be "good
enough," especially if you can't afford an (what is it now?) "Infinite
Reality 2," or the like.

> If you pick up an old SGI box, if you were extremely lucky
> you might get an old animation package that does the modeling
> and the rendering. They were usually keyed to the SGI box's
> unique CPU ID. You might get the CDs but no key, and you're
> out of luck.

Unless you have a debugger and some spare time ;)

> I must remind the younger folks out there that as recently
> as less than ten years ago, you'd see animators taking out
> six-figure loans to buy the SGI and software they needed to
> run their shop, for just one or two animators. :-)

Again, SGI was likely the only thing you could get as recently as "less than
ten years ago" that had the graphics power for even the "modeling" stage.
People have begun to take 3d acceleration for granted now that they have
their Matrox GWhiz 5, or their Nvidia TTL 3, or whatever. :) Nobody stops
to think where people got the power to do the kinds of operations for which
these things allow you to use a standard (read: piece of junk ;) intel
peesee (and more) several years past.


> On the other hand, SGI distributed lots and lots of source
> code and demos, and had a few unkeyed applications that may
> run on the box you got if you get the CDs. These include
> real-time interactive demos and apps. They'd give away
> these annual "Hot Mix" CDs at trade shows by the stack.
> I have a bunch I should eBay someday.

Got one or two, myself, and they're amusing if nothing else. I've also
downloaded the "FSN" filemanager from SGIs FTP site, which is entertaining.
(for the uninitiated, this is the 3d file-manager that they showed in
"Jurassic Park."

> Given that SGI Indy boxes are going for less than $100 these
> days, if you ever had an itch to see what they were all about,
> you no longer have any excuses.

Personally, I wouldn't get an Indy with 8-bit graphics if I could help it,
which means you'd pay slightly more than 100 in most cases, but that's still
not bad at all.

On the other hand, Indys don't have much graphics horsepower. I'd recommend
something with at least a Z-Buffer, myself. Indigo2 is a really good deal
these days.

... and let's face it, a graphics subsystem isn't a graphics subsystem
unless it takes at least three boards ;)

Regards,

Chris


Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
 
Received on Fri Dec 28 2001 - 11:50:19 GMT