Re: Performer at ITEC

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Brian Corrie (bcorrie++at++cs.anu.edu.au)
Thu, 23 Apr 1998 11:09:26 +1000

I said:
>> I, and I am sure many others,would be very interested in hearing about SGI's
>> roadmap for Performer, Optimizer, OpenGL, OpenGL++, etc., with respect to
>> Fahrenheit. Is it possible that some details could be posted to this list
>> (from you or someone else at SGI) as well. We were hoping to see an initial
>> release of OpenGL++ in the next couple of months, but according to the
>> OpenGL ARB meeting minutes from March 9-10
>>
>> (http://www.opengl.org/ARB/Notes/Meeting1.2/meeting_note_10-03-98.html)
>>
>> Kurt Akeley (at least so the minutes say, I wasn't there...) says that "SGI
>> will no longer be able to push OpenGL++ (though they have no objection to
>> others picking up the work). Resources are committed to work with Microsoft
>> and HP on the scene graph and large model visualization APIs." Does this
mean
>> that we will be waiting for the Fahrenheit scene graph as opposed to
>> OpenGL++?

Angus replies:
> Yes, but this isn't really bad news. In many respects the engineering
> goals of Fahrenheit Scene Graph are compatible with what OpenGL++ would
> have been.

I agree it isn't bad news from the point of view of having a new, unified
scene graph API. The confusion comes from what is going to happen and when
(see below). I haven't seen any mention other than the ARB notes given above
that SGI was not going to release OpenGL++ as intially intended. Has an
official statement been made?

>> We have been
>> developing some software under the assumption that OpenGL+ would be
available
>> sometime near the middle of this year.This has a fairly significant impact
on
>> some our plans and I have not been able to find out any information through
>> our normal SGI channels.
>
> I won't comment on the time scales but work already undertaken is being
> leveraged so this is not a step backwards. Were you hoping to use a beta
> test or a release version of OpenGL++ in your original plans?

The timescales involved are our main concern. We were under the impression
that an OpenGL++ release, at least a beta version, would be out RSN, and the
first real release would be around August or so. I realize that one can not
rely on dates like these, but we were assuming that they would be relatively
close and we haven't had any indication otherwise (although it is a bit hard
to keep on top of these things from here). The Fahrenheit time frame moves
things well into next year which does cause some problems for us. We need to
get a slightly clearer picture of what is going on in this respect so we can
decide in what direction to move. The only picture we have at the moment is
wait until Fahrenheit arrives, with no clear path between now and then. What
is Fahrenheit going to look like and how can we move towards that API given
the technology we have now (Performer, Optimizer, Cosmo3D, OpenGL). We thought
we had a clear picture in this respect, but...

Cheers,

        Brian

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