Sharon Clay (src++at++rose)
Sun, 21 Dec 1997 21:53:22 -0800
!!!!!!! Ring in the New Year with IRIS Performer 2.2 !!!!!!
IRIS Performer 2.2 is now released and available for shipping.
IRIS Performer 2.2 brings out the best of the
entire SGI product-line of graphics subsystems running IRIX version 6.2
or a later. OpenGL and IRIS GL on IRIS GL native platforms are both
supported. IRIS Performer 2.2 also includes upgrade compatibility
subsystems for 2.0 and 2.1, 2.0.5 and 2.1.3, respectively.
IRIS Performer2.2 uses the new N32 ABI in the default execution and
development environments and supports O32 and 64-bit operation as well.
New features in IRIS Performer2.2 include:
o Cliptextures - bigger and better than before!
Cliptextures can now be up to 2^23 texels on a side.
You can have multiple cliptextures - even really big ones,
and give up memory for the lower unused parts of the stack to make
it all fit. The configuration files are much simpler and friendlier.
There are utilities to help you write your own cliptexture config
files in case you want to do something custom.
Cliptextures in IRIS Performer 2.2 support multipipe operation with
automatic updating of the texture in local texture memory for all pipes.
o Active Surface Definition (ASD) in libpf provides applied to
smooth LOD morphing of terrain. No more tons of sub-pixel polygons
at your horizon! ASD also works seemlessly with the really big
cliptextures and provides automatic management of the cliptexture
stack for visible LODs. ASD in IRIS Performer2.2 supports multi-channel
operation, alignment of features to the ASD terrain or surface, and
automatic paging of sub-regions for very large terrains.
o Flux buffers for asynchronous computation of dynamic data
IRIS Performer 2.2 includes several new features for the improved
representation and evaluation of dynamic data. pfEngines allow the
description of operations -- such as morphing, blending, and bounding
box computation -- to be performed on specific objects or buffers of
data. pfFluxes are dynamic evaluated objects the contents of which can
be computed by pfEngines and used as geometry or transformations any
place where fluxed data is allowed. Asynchronously generated data is
rendered when available in a frame-accurate manner.
o pfCompute process for pfASD and pfFlux/pfEngine computation
IRIS Performer2.2 provides a new process for the asynchronous
computation of dynamic data.
ASD morphing is computed in this process.
o Asynchronous light-point computation in a separate light-point process
o Support for calligraphic light points and calligraphic hardware
o OpenGL Shadow support and improved projective texture lights
o Fast image format loader
The new libpfpfi image loader (and writer) will let you convert your
databases to this new fast-loading .pfi format. You can store
your MIPmaps in this format for custom MIPmap generation and for
faster texture paging.
o Video Textures on DIVO, Sirius, Octane, and O2
Check out the new pguide/libpf/C/movietex.c.
o Video Channel management and Dynamic Video Resizing (DVR) for dynamic
resolution (from 2.1). IRIS Performer 2.2 give you an interface for
general output video channel management. Additionally,
DVR, provides a real way to manage overload due to pixel fill
limitation. InfiniteReality allows for the resolution of an output
channel to be changed dynamically in real time, allowing fill-limited
application to draw to a smaller viewport as load
increases. IRIS Performer manages the details, as well as provide
automatic and user-controlled load management utilities.
Multi-channel DVR works in 2.2 (was buggy in 2.1).
o Graphics timing from within the graphics pipeline (from 2.1) using special
InfiniteReality timing support for better real-time load management
o Updated Programmers Guide and the new Getting Started Guide
The online documentation includes these books plus C and C++
reference guides.
o API search tool
This API search-tool uses html technology to provide searching of
the IRIS Performer class hierarchy, man pages, and sample code.
This is located in the performer_tools prouct included with
IRIS Performer2.2.
IRIS Performer 2.2 includes in addition to the main product CD,
o The Friends of Performer CD
A full CD of over 500MBytes of sample code, databases, games,
device drivers, and movies contributed by the Friends of Performer,
companies and individuals with services of general interest to the
IRIS Performer community. This CD is distributed as a DATA CD
so that you can inspect files directly off the CD and copy of what
you want.
o The Yosemite Demo CD
The Yosemite Demo CD contains the cliptexture and ASD data for
a flythru of the Yosemite Valley using the IRIS Performer 2.2
sample application, clipfly. The data is provided compressed on
the CD so that you can fly it (slowly and at low-resolution)
directly off the CD, or decompress the data onto disk for a
real hi-res 60Hz experience. The source for the decompressing loader
is provided on the CD for your own use.
The .5m image data is provided courtesy of the National Park Service and
Delphi International. The 30M elevation data was from USGS.
The features of IRIS Performer 2.2 were demonstrated fully at this past
I/ITSEC97 in Orlando, Florida in the first week of Dec. We give much thanx
to the many beta partners that have been running this release and that have
helped us develop these features and bring them to completion and now for use
by all. We hope that this new release of IRIS Performer will further enable
you to new heights of visual simulation!
Sincerely
The IRIS Performer Team
Read on for ordering information!
Product Codes:
-------------------------
SC4-PERF-2.2
IRIS Performer 2.2 Software
Includes the 3 CDs (Product, Friends, and Yosemite)
and online documentation (reference pages and books).
Hard-copy versions of the books must be ordered separately.
M4-PERF-2.2
IRIS Performer 2.2 Documentation Only
Includes a Programmer's Guide (750 Pages)
Includes the new Getting Started Guide (275 pages)
(Need extra printed documentation sets?)
SR4-PERF-2.2
IRIS Performer 2.2 Right To Use
For people who need to run performer on multiple development stations
but don't require a CD and Manuals for each one.
This is for the second through Nth copies, not the first.
Upgrade Policies:
-----------------
If you have a software support contract with SGI's Global
Customer Satisfaction Division and have previously bought a copy
of IRIS Performer, then you can an order a copy of IRIS Performer2.2
at no charge. We should get this pushed to you automatically this time
but just in case, here is the support number to call and order it:
However, you do have to call and order it so here is the number:
800-800-4SGI (upgrades)
However, if you get the push upgrade, you only get the CDs. You still have
to explicitly ask for the manuals.
The basic product (SC4-PERF-2.2) does not include the manuals and is
CDs only. The hard-copy manuals you order separately (M4-PERF-2.2).
The manuals were heavily upgraded with large chapters on new features and
old chapters updated. The Getting Started Guide is also all-new and
may be of help to old-timers to for quick reference in a smaller book.
We strongly recommend getting at least one copy these manuals. You get the
on-line versions with SC4-PERF-2.2 which are very useful for quick
reference and following of reference links. You can also print chapters
from the on-line insight tool. However, you'll probably want one real
full hard-copy set for real reading.
New Purchases:
--------------
If you are buying an InfiniteReality and have not previously bought
a copy of IRIS Performer, or, do not have a support contract,
you can purchase your copy of 2.2 through tele-sales at
1-800-800-7441 (new purchases)
or through your sales representative.
Note that printed manuals are ordered separately.
We also recommend that you get a support contract so that we can
easily update you with new versions!
General Overview of IRIS Performer2.2:
--------------------------------------
IRIS Performer provides a powerful and extensible programming
interface for creating real-time visual simulation and other
interactive graphics applications.
IRIS Performer 2.2 is designed to bring out the best of the full
SGI graphics product line. There is direct
support for advanced features of the iR, such as very large MIPmap
textures (up to 2^23x2^23 texels) for geospecific texture (called
Clip-mapped textures), dynamic video resolution to control pixel
rendering load, active surface definitions for efficient meshing and
morphing of terrain, graphics pipeline instrumentation for tuning and
optimization, fast database loading, and other iR advances. At the same time,
IRIS Performer2.2 applications will run without recompilation to take
advantage of special features and tuning on the IMPACT and O2 graphics
platforms.
IRIS Performer 2.2 is based on the industry standard OpenGL graphics library
and also supports IRIS GL on IRIS GL native platforms. IRIS Performer 2.2
requires version 6.2 or later of the IRIX operating system.
IRIX 6.2-6.5 operating system features and REACT and POSIX extensions are used
to form a uniquely powerful suite of tools and features for creating real-time
visual simulation applications.
IRIS Performer consists of two main libraries, libpf and libpr,
and three associated libraries, libpfdu, libpfutil, and libpfui, and
the extensive libpfdb collection file loaders.
The basis of IRIS Performer is the performance rendering library
libpr, a low level library providing high speed rendering
functions based on pfGeoSets, efficient graphics state control
using pfGeoStates, and other application-neutral functions.
Layered above libpr is libpf, a real-time visual simulation
environment providing a high-performance multi-processing
database rendering system that takes best advantage of SGI's
shared-memory symmetric multiprocessing and CPU architecture.
For performance reasons, libpr and libpf are compiled into the single
libpf library. However, the header files, development, and documentation
of these libraries is kept separate for clarity.
o Utility Library (libpfutil)
Completing the suite of support libraries is libpfutil, the IRIS
Performer utility library. It provides a collection of
convenience routines implementing tasks such as smoke effects,
MultiChannel Option support, graphical user interface tools, X
and IRIS GL event collection and management, and traversal functions.
Added for IRIS Performer 2.2 are:
- extensive utilities for loading and managing databases with cliptextures
and sample routines to create and read active surface definition data
structures.
- utilities for loading and construction ASD structures
- a new real-time extensible process manager (pfuProcessManager)
- a basic texture manager framework (pfuTextureManager)
o Database Loaders (libpfdu and the libpfdb database loaders)
The database libraries use the facilities of libpfdu,
libpf, and libpr to import database files in many popular
industry standard database formats. These loaders also serve as
a guide to developers creating new database importers.
The PFA and PFB formats can read and write any valid Performer scene graph
and the binary PFB format loads geometry are rates exceeding 150000
triangles per second, up to two orders of magnitude faster than many
of the other loaders. Added for IRIS Performer 2.2 are:
- the fast paging image format, pfi, to complement pfb
- OpenWorlds(tm) VRML 2.0 demo loader from DRaW Computing
- Optimizer native format loader, csb
- loader-independent DSOs that contain database operators that operate on
files after they are loaded.
o The User Interface Library (libpfui)
The libpfui library contains user interface building blocks
for creating manipulators and user-interface components common to
many interactive applications. This library has both a C and C++
API and is IRIS GL/OpenGL independent.
o Sample Source Code:
For aid in application development, IRIS Performer includes
sample application source code ranging from simple programs to
illustrate particular features to the comprehensive, GUI-driven
file viewer perfly. In IRIS Performer 2.2 there are additional
comprehensive sample applications for cliptexturing with clipfly, and
ASD with asdfly.
Getting More Information:
-------------------------
For further information, check out the IRIS Performer WWW Page
in SiliconSurf. The URL is:
http://www.sgi.com/Technology/Performer/
The IRIS Performer 2.2 relnotes and API overview will be there ASAP.
Be sure to check out the gift source code as we update these periodically
with new-improved versions and bug fixes.
You can also contact our Product Marketing Manger:
Stacy Maller, stacym++at++engr.sgi.com, (650) 933-5164
The OpenGL APIs Marketing Manager:
Shawn Hopwood, hopwood++at++engr.sgi.com, (650) 933-7325
and the Engineering Manger:
Sharon Rose Clay, src++at++engr.sgi.com, (650) 933-1002
-----{-----{---++at++ -----{----{---++at++ -----{----{---++at++ -----{----{---++at++
Sharon Rose Clay (Fischler) - Silicon Graphics, Advanced Systems Dev.
src++at++sgi.com (650) 933 - 1002 FAX: (650) 965 - 2658 MS 8U-590
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