Dr Colin Bridgewater (crccobr++at++nocrc.abb.no)
Thu, 30 Apr 1998 08:44:53 +0200
Apologies for cluttering up the ether with a lot of quotes, but your
message stands well together.
Tom Flynn wrote:
> How about an open-source (freeware if you insist on calling it that)
> implementation of Performer.
>
> An open implementation of Performer that's portable to other POSIX
> compliant operating systems....
My understanding is that Performer is optimised for SGI hardware. I use
it precisely *because* I don't have to worry too much about making the
most of the underlying hardware. Folks like Sharon and Angus work very
hard to ensure that... There are tricks that have to be made to squeeze
the utmost performance, but most people get by with a single code that
scales to different visuals, multiple processors, graphics board sets
etc etc at a binary level.
> Now a quick question about Fahrenheit: will Fahrenheit be open,
> system-independant and governed by an ARB consisting of industry
> leaders the way OpenGL is? There is a definite need for an open,
> system-independant, industry-wide scene graph API that has the same
> goals of Performer.
Well said ! Although, the vendors of World Tool Kit and OpenGVS (to name
but two) might debate with you as the to definition of "open".
The truth is that there are already APIs which can be used on both SGI
and Wintel platforms. If you want cross-platform compatibility for your
applications, try one of those. But you won't get the same high-end
functionality or performance unless you use a toolkit (in this case,
Performer) that is tuned for use on SGI hardware.
Regards
Colin
_______________________________________________________________________
Dr Colin Bridgewater crccobr++at++nocrc.abb.no Marine Oil and Gas Dept
ABB Teknologi AS, Bergerveien 12, PO Box 91, N-1361 BILLINGSTAD, Norway
work tel: +47 66 84 35 36, fax: +47 66 84 43 90, home: +44 1189 671713
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