Javier Castellar (javier++at++sixty)
Wed, 7 Feb 1996 10:55:45 -0800
I agree with you in some of your points. I truly recognize the quality of some
of the new PC simulators. Some of them are applying very advance techniques
from the vissim expertise arena.
My point here is the amount of extra work applied in this simulators and games.
Most of them have been written in assembler, using up to the last hardware help
in the PC. My opinion is that it is not very frequent to see across our
Performer developers the same spirit of extending performer in a custom ways
like new texture paging algorithms, your own gl/ogl tricks, advance multipass
techniques, custom stress filters, custom oclussion techniques to avoid fill
limitation, clever precalculation of databases ... etc.
It is true that some developers are working in this way but it is not a general
strategy. It is very easy to see people awaiting the performer team to solve
application dependent problems and aswering his clients with : ... sorry,
reality engine cannot do it! ...
Things like getting fast texture mapping on Indys, 60 frames/second on a RE2
with 2RMs, texture paging in RE2 or a ESIG4000 level of database on a Crimson
RE is not very common.
One reason could be some lack of in depth information, but i believe that this
mailing list is a good example of good information interchange between SGI and
the developers.
Another reason could be the that some people is scare to extend performer both
in the application side and in the graphics side. One of the main features of
IRIS Performer is that you can use gl/ogl to extend it and your own
culling/isect callbacks to get better perfomance. How much people is using
perfly as is ????
>At least now with the introduction of the Impact this is changing a bit but
>I still believe that SGI is neglecting the low end 3D market.
Regarding the low end 3D market i disagree ... let me recall here the ULTRA64
(or Project Reality for Nintendo). I think that SGI is going to be main player
in low end 3D market both in hardware and software (we are talking about
millions of ULTRA64).
Maybe there is some gap between ULTRA64 and IMPACT but ... one step at a time.
-Javier
-- ************************************************************************* * Javier Castellar Arribas * Email: javier++at++asd.sgi.com * * * Vmail: 3-1589 * * Member of Technical Staff * Phone: (415)-933-1589 | 933-2108 (lab) * * Applied Engineering * Fax: (415)-964-8671 * * Advanced Systems Division * MailStop: 8L-800 * ************************************************************************* * Silicon Graphics Inc. * * 2011 N. Shoreline Boulevard, * * Mountain View, California 94043-1386, USA * ************************************************************************* "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetant" Hari Seldon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Aug 10 1998 - 17:52:22 PDT