Mac OS X Solutions for Stereographic Applications

SavoWood writes "In a realm which was (IIRC) SGI-only, a new tennant has moved in. It looks like the molecular biologists et al of the world will be able to send their SGIs off to the pasture and forget about the $500/yr. software updates, in favor of running their stereographic applications on Darwin/Mac OS X. A sales rep from Apple just sent me a press release with the link to StereoGraphics, a company that makes stereoscopic visualization products. Now, to send this message into the meat shredder of why you should do everything on SGI and how Darwin is just a playtoy... *GRIN*"

Comments

Stereographics and games

[spooje]

At RIT's computer graphics design program we've been playing around with stereoscopic images for about a year now. At first I was skeptical about intentionally giving people headaches (it's like focusing on those 3D paintings at the mall) but man you get some great results! At the moment I'm working on a 3D tank game in Director 3D and combining it with sterographic monitors (we have 2 IBMs with the monitors and stereo cameras). I haven't quite gotten it to work correctly, but man these games take on a whole new dynamic with an extra dimension! Since I'm about to graduate I've been kind of bummed I won't have the equipment to play with anymore, but now that there's a mac version I think I'll definately plunk down the cash to continue working. It may not be widely adapted yet, but in a few years some sort of real 3D with creep into most higher end games.

Re:A Unique Darwin Application?

[mkiwi]

Darwin is actually what Mac OS X users to do its dirty work. Darwin is the collective name of the Mach-O kernel and BSD4.4.

The kernel controls everything and the bsd layer is essential for software development. Without the BSD layer, the mac could not compile regular unix software or compile any software made in project builder.

What you refer to as "Mac OS X" is actually the quartz rendering layer and an application called the finder.

The point is that Darwin and Quartz make an incredible combination, making application development really nice. Someone could add a library that did the same work as Quartz's, but there's absolutely nothing that can compete with Quartz's rendering capabilities.

There's no comperable product on the Windows or the UNIX/Linux side, but anything built on a plain-old darwin system can have a regular kde/windowmaker/gtk/etc. with standard xfree86 libraries and headers.

Apple's new X11 server can replace the stardard Aqua window manager, if you know how. If you don't know how, you have no business even touching that functionality.

Another point: darwin can be run in its purest, UNIX form with xfree86. Startup will display the standard logging that anyone would see in a Linux system instead of the Apple logo. This can be done even if Mac OS X is installed, if you know how. Again, if you don't know how, you probably have no business complaining about Mac OS X.

Darwin w/ KDE can, and has been done successfully, on many systems, including my system. However, if one has the hardware to use Mac OS X and all its assorted components, what is the point of using software than isn't nearly as nice as Mac OS X?

Hurray for everybody!

[Nathan Ramella]

I guess the nine people who use this are so estatic they're busy getting price lists for switching to Apples rather than posting their adulation...