Rob Jenkins (robj++at++reading.sgi.com)
Fri, 24 Dec 1999 11:42:15 -0000
I thought you'd be interested to know about a Performer application running
live on air on Millennium Eve as part of the 2000 Today program which will
be broadcast worldwide (see this link for detail of the program):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/millennium/tv_radio/2000_today.shtml
As the broadcast jumps between locations they will use a Performer app to
zoom from space, down to the location. The SGI press release has some
detail:
http://www-europe.sgi.com/global/uk/news/1999/p991222.html
Colin Middleton here in the UK Consulting group implemented this beast, in
the New Year he'll write up some discussion of the issues faced (and
conquered).
Some Performer techie details, the 'World Locator' app includes:
6 cliptextures: 2 hemi-spheres X (day, night, cloud).
4 pfASDs, two of which are drawn twice.
Custom ASD evaluation function.
3 rendering passes: day, night, cloud.
Blending to fade lights up across the day/night terminator.
Atmosphere/horizon haze, stars, Moon, Sun, lens flare.
The data set is colour matched and supplied by Arc Science
http://www.arcscience.com/ and includes at least ( maybe other insets that
I've missed out ):
Whole Earth 1KM /pixel
UK 200M /pixel
UK 30M /pixel
Chile 30M /pixel
New York 30M /pixel
Washington 30M /pixel
Times Square 1M /pixel
London 1M /pixel
Inner London ( Greenwich Observatory/Millennium Dome) 25 CM /pixel
I think the whole lot adds up to about 30 GBs of cliptexture, maybe more. At
the BBC we have 2 Onyx2 iR2, each with 2 RMs and 3 GBs RAM, the data is on
Ciprico 7000's.
Have a great Millennium Eve, see you in the New Year.
Cheers
Rob
Rob Jenkins
SGI Graphics Consulting
Tel 0118 925 7621
mailto:robj++at++sgi.com
http://www.sgi.co.uk
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Fri Dec 24 1999 - 03:42:26 PST