Re: 98' NT SGI Intel workstations ...

New Message Reply Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

David Blythe (blythe++at++banshee)
Wed, 17 Dec 1997 02:40:54 -0800

| > | My question is: Will (or how well will) OpenGL++ handle multi-pipe
| > | rendering? I liked Inventor, but ridiculous work-arounds were
| > | required to do multi-pipe rendering because of how things were
| > | handled internally -- something that was never fixed.
| >
| > Since the people working on OpenGL++ include people working on Performer
| > and Inventor, it seems reasonable to give them the benefit of the doubt
| > when it comes to understanding the capabilities of Performer and Inventor.
|
| Actually, apart from the person I talked to, I had no idea who was
| on the OpenGL++ team -- that person was not from the Inventor or
| Performer groups, and I thought most of the Inventor people went to
| do VRML, and the Performer people were doing Performer.

To clarify a little further, Performer, Optimizer/Cosmo3D, ImageVision and
OpenGL++ (as well as the device independent parts of OpenGL and OpenGL for
Windows), are all being maintained or further developed (depending on the
current disposition of that project) within the same (small) software
organization -- Advanced Graphics Software. Open Inventor, while not
originally developed by this group of people, is being maintained within
the same organization. All of the people work in close proximity of one
another and many have worked on more than one of the above toolkits. Its
true that lately many of the Performer people have been tied up with
Performer 2.2, but that doesn't stop us from talking to them, looking at
the source code, running benchmark races, etc.

| > The point of having an alpha process with an early release is to fix flawed
| > architectural aspects early, not entrench a bad design. To answer your
| > question, multi-pipe rendering is an important feature and that includes
| > handling pipe & channel specific state.
| > -db
|
| I am relieved by your statement. In speaking out about my concerns,
| I hoped to both, get a more definitive answer, and make it known that
| multi-pipe rendering is important to even the "non-Performer" class
| of programmers.

Yes, this is quite clear to us. We have many customers that want to
use Inventor and Optimizer with multiple pipes. We are definitely
learning important lessons from all of the toolkits and making the effort
to incorporate those lessons into future designs.
        thanks
        -db

| Thanks,
| Bill
=======================================================================
List Archives, FAQ, FTP: http://www.sgi.com/Technology/Performer/
            Submissions: info-performer++at++sgi.com
        Admin. requests: info-performer-request++at++sgi.com

New Message Reply Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Aug 10 1998 - 17:56:26 PDT

This message has been cleansed for anti-spam protection. Replace '++at++' in any mail addresses with the '@' symbol.