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SGI announces port of IRIS Performer
SGI just announced a Linux porting effort for IRIS Performer. Performer is an OpenGL-based scene graph library optimized for visual simulation; it's used in areas like military and commercial flight simulation, as well as the rides at DisneyQuest. Release is expected before the end of 1999.
Performer is designed to drive the fastest graphics hardware and run the most demanding graphics apps in existence, so this is very good news.
Last I heard Farhenheit was the mixing of Microsoft's Direct3D and Open GL. Microsoft is heavily involved in its creation and is putting parts of it into all future DirectXes. I doubt Microsoft would allow a port of it to Linux. As for COM, I think that KDE people are making a functional equivelent called KOM.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
http://www.sgi.com/fahrenheit/home.html
If you look at the menu you will see the item
OpenGL: The road ahead
As I remember wasn't that the name of Bill's book?
I sense a conspiracy here. (If you like conspiracy theories look in the MaximumPC Issue One, there is a theory about MS holding down SGI while Intel takes over nVidia, sticks it to 3Dfx, and then support D3D only so OpenGL on windows dies and the John Carmacks of the land are punished for not using D3D.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Has anyone noticed a similarity between TummyX and
the infamous Borris of comp.os.linux.advocacy fame? TummyX seems to have a better command of English than comrade Borris, but the preponderance
of 'geee's and missing function words is striking.
BTW, I've compiled a fortune file of Borris quotes -- perfect for noseguy. Email me if you're interested.
-ckm
rot13 the email address.
Ok, I see your point, But my Apps are Sims not RTFPS games. [/:-)
However from the looks of it Performer will
do just fine for most of my needs for a Ogl
wrapper.
Thanx for the link
> However from the looks of it Performer will
> do just fine for most of my needs for a Ogl
> wrapper.
If SGI is porting Performer to Linux, I can't
imagine why they wouldn't be doing the same
for Fahrenheit as well. And Fahrehneit will
(hopefully) be a much better 'wrapper' for
OpenGL, although it sounds obcene to call an
API with such capabilities as just a wrapper.
The only thing that worries me is the fact
that Fahrenheit uses COM. I've been out of
the loop with the Linux world for a while now.
Is COM or some sort of COM available for
Linux? Microsoft agreed (?) to have COM ported
for IRIX. I am not so sure how agreeable
they will be in doing the same for Linux.
An SGI Fan
Go look at them again. The number of polygons onscreen in some of those shots are orders of magnitude better than anything the q3 engine can do on today's PCs. q3 is an excellent engine, but its hamstrung by the hardware it runs on. Even the biggest, baddest ass PIII with a TNT2 can't come close to an Infinite Reality2.
I've had an nice interview with a SGI
;-)
employee, and you don't know how
close you are to the truth...
You can expect -a lot- more from SGI!
And yes, IRIX isn't on the list
In 5-10 years Linux will rock and
M$ will drool over the specs...
I'm sorry I can't give any more details,
the interview has to be reviewed first.
3w3 R an 3l33t hax0r. 3y3 ph33r 3w3 and j00r p0ss3.
unF
Is this in fact an Open Source release, or just a Linux port of a commercial product?
How does she like waiting 5 minutes for StarOffice to load? Or how does she like it when X crashes? ;P
Ok, with 1400K of free physical memory (out of 96M total) it took ~20 seconds. And X hasn't crashed on her yet. I run *a lot* of software and I'm thinking of getting an additional 128M. That would certainly speed it up. Don't buy cheap no-name brand components for any computer. That'll often cause failure in Linux, because Linux actually uses it where win barely does. See the Sig11 FAQ for the facts on that.
She *hates* 98. I put in a new NIC and let win install a driver for it, which causes a blue screen on startup, and the network doesn't work. Rather than mess around with it, I let Linux do it properly.
It doesn't handle not being shutdown very well (powerless etc)
It handles it fine, especially for a server where you don't have to press 'enter' a bunch of times for no reason. Nice list of options there: press enter to continue, or turn off your computer and never use it again.
Any serious server should have a UPS anyway.
Oh yeah, I've had to use VC++ at a previous job and hated it. KDevelop is only at 0.4 and isn't nearly finished yet. But it's quite useable for me so far.
It makes sense in a way, having the Linux standard base, then companies such as Sun, SGI, IBM? including value-added components on top. If this scenario comes into play, there will be a above-line, below-line divide with everything below the line being free (and coincidently similar functionality to a certain unnamed OS). Companies are not stupid, after seeing what integrating browsers can do to the competition, they're going to return the favor in spades.
As for Java, it will be interesting to see how far Sun/IBM will push that barrow in their server centric platforms. The question that Linux has to face is
a) What modularity/extensions will be supported (kernel+application) in the future
b) How do applications talk to each other in a coherent language (XML?)
c) Can one increase complexity while maintaining stability?
I don't know about others but IMHO component technology is still relatively painful to use. Either that or I'm so far behind the learning curve all I can see is a brick wall to bash my head against.
LL
C2 compliance is still a hurdle that Linux has to get over to be used for some of this type of work. For some work the government might require a C2 OS. When/If linux meets then I would consider linux for that type of work.
Open Inventor has already been ported.
You can buy it from TGS.
It's a bit pricey, though. (surprise)
There are also a couple of open source implementations ( Scene and Coin), in varying stages of development:
I think it's a little rediculis to say that someone is a microsoft employe just beacuse they prefer MS, or think there products arn't shit.
before I installed this shitty $16 winmodem, that monopolizes my CPU, windows *never* crashed (and this was windows 98 to. Now I get these weird errors where the screen goes blank and the kb stops working, but I can still hear the MP3 i was listening to... (this only happens when i'm online and listening to an mp3))
There's no reason to think that MS employese *dont't* troll this place. after the second (or was that the 3rd) Mindcraft tests, the number of *pro* MS posts rose very sharply.
you know who I think is an MSer? that william wallice guy, the one who's sig is "Why are so many startrack fans UNIX lovers, when was the last time you heard a captan say 'computer bring up the command line'" (note, this dosn't actualy make any sense, but whatever)
although he does make a lot of non-ms related posts as well.
well it's 3am and I've been trying to get that damn new quake3demo to squeeze through my 44,000kbps pipe, witch dosn't like to stay connected to the internet. whatever
_
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You are quite right. Performer is not an application, it is an API. It should allow graphics applications suited to this type of programming paradigm to maximize performance from Linux systems without requiring the developer to have the same level of expertise or spend the time which would otherwise be required for this kind of performance.
It should also facilitate the porting of a number of high performance graphics applications to Linux. You must understand that any application which sits on middleware like IRIS Performer must implement vast ammounts of functionality from scratch to be ported to another platform if the API does not exist there. Now Performer WILL exist on Linux. Do not underestimate the value of having this API ported to Linux.
INDEED!
This spring I was at a seminar where we discussed Linux usage for our military government projects.
One of the most important pieces of our puzzle didn't exist for Linux. Now this situation has changed overnight. SGI can expect paying customers for this Linux product.
We have been evaulating Linux carefully since december last year but now we will probably have to scramble and assemble a few Linux only departments. What a pleasant work it will be to recruit these Linux Geeks.
According to their roadmap, there is an SGI/Linux compatibility library to be in-place by 2003.
I had thought that this would just let Irix run Linux programs (perhaps with recompile), but it
might just be two-way (or the other way around!)
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I warned you, didn't I?
I'm just posting for the first time. Checking to see if the formatting is correct.
Have a nice day.
ps: does this LINK work?
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
I was a MS employee.
sorry about my post, got VERY excited when i saw no one had posted anything concerning this artical. im glad many companys are offering applications and support for linux. i run win98(ewww) and Red Hat 6.0, im new to linux but i love it. the only thing that i feel is holding linux back is applications and hardware support. with more and more companies taking notice of linux and developing products and suporting it i feel that it will become a major competitor in the mainstream OS markes for not only servers and workstations, but also family desktops. hmmmm, mow if i could only get my hands on a copy of IRIS Performer, i might get into cool new stuff...who knows....and sorry bout the post again.
As I understand it, Performer can be builtup
under OpenInventor. So why not do it right
and release OpenInventor4Linux.
Any one have more info on this[mongoose]?
It is good to see SGI taking a leadership role in advancing graphics and OpenSource for Linux. To expand a little bit on their roadmap (http://www.sgi.com/fahrenheit/support.html)
... While a number of developers currently using IRIS Performer will be able to migrate to the new Fahrenheit Scene Graph API, we do not foresee the first version of Fahrenheit meeting the needs of the entire marketplace served by IRIS Performer. That being said, SGI will continue to invest in enhancements to IRIS Performer in support of real-time applications and the Onyx2 marketplace for the foreseeable future.
IRIS Performer
IRIS Performer is primarily aimed at developers of real-time, multiprocessed, interactive graphics applications
I hope that the new Farenheit APIs can be massaged to retrofit the Performer APIs (though anything mixing multithreading, real-time and fast graphics is sure to be mind-numbing). The challenge for the developer community now is to work out higher-level control/interaction systems and interface them with OpenGL scene graphs. One interesting trend is the use of physics based worlds (see MathEngine http://www.mathengine.com/main.htm) as the need to cleanly separate the physical reality from the representation and display reality.
Given that game boxes such as Sony have recommended the use of Linux, it will be interesting to see whether general purpose PC-based boxes are relegated to development for single-tasked appliances or whether "convergence" means everything will be mixed up.
SGI do make some nice hardware. For example, their R10K supports hardware-based performance monitoring. I just hope their products remain price-competitive to justify the premium. If the computer industry can be compared with the car, then we have the consumers (Ford/Mazda, Intel, AMD) versus the specialists/industrial (Volvo, SGI, IBM). However, learning to drive in one should make it easier to cross over to the next level (no foreign instructions, custom gear boxes or lockin licenses). That's why I think we should applaud SGI for porting their APIs across and why it should benefit the computer industry as a whole.
LL
This really makes my day. :) This brings us a step closer to getting linux boxes in the visualization lab at school. I can't wait for Maya, that would complete it, we'd pretty much go totally with new linux boxes then unless there were some major reasons not to. I love it... :)~
Where?
Ok, I just got home in a cab (you know why :-)* ) and what you said prompted me to reply about applications.
:-)* ) is that applications are currently available under Linux, and therefore any *NIX. I'm currently praising KDE, because it has so much potential (try KDevelop, I now depend on it. Also check out the documentation, wow) as an API and a way to bring Win users over to the light side.
I've been running Linux since '93 do I've got quite a bias. However, advocacy in the way I do it works (especially when talking to programmers).
My mother used excel since the Win3.1 days until I bought a new PC that included Lotus Smartsuite 97. She was hooked. She never looked back on Excel. I moved her to my brothers Win computer so that she could use 1-2-3 because LILO often dumped her into the Linux console if she waited too long (5 seconds). This confused her and I was often woken up from hangovers to help her get into Win or attempt to recover from a BSOD.
Recently (a couple of months ago) I installed SuSE. She loves it. Linux doesn't crash on her and she's happy with StarOffice. I'll soon show her LyX, which I'm sure she'll take to. She avoids my brother's Win machine simply because it crashes. And the vnc server simply blew her mind. I also installed a PHP/MySQL site I developed at school and now she has access to a contact database from anywhere with Internet access.
The way many programmers think (if they don't, they should) is 'Will my mother use it?' I think Linux currently has that capability as long as there is an admin (me, in this case) who can solve problems.
Just a year ago, I would never have pushed it on her. Times change, and she's happy for it.
She loves the 'no crashing' idea, because she's plain sick of blue screens. When I told her it didn't have to be like that, she was all ears.
So my point (I'm currently 'under the infulence' so please excuse typos, etc, if you've been in this state
ESR said that someday people won't tolerate crashes anymore. It's starting to happen.
Rock on,
Of course, their huge contribution so far is (the promise of) XFS. Linux and other OSS systems are stealing a few years of progress from that; a journaled file system is a big step towards being truly enterprise ready.
The reason I predict we'll see more from these folks is that one of their VP's (Beau something-I-can't-spell) came out earlier this week and said that there'll only be three OSes in ten years, and IRIX ain't on the list. Assuming that SGI's planning to be around in a decade, and assuming that they're not stupid enough to want to pay the MS-Tax for their entire server line, they have a vested interest in seeing Linux evolve.
Of course, personally I think VP Beau is wrong; I have a feeling that IBM/Sequent's new "next gen UNIX" offering is going to crash and burn on the launch pad -- the potential market's got to be really leary of anything resembling another splinter of UNIX. I can't imagine why they're wasting their time with it and not contributing to Linux; you'd think the suits would have learned by now that you can't play on Microsoft's terms and win.
In any event, I'm looking forward to seeing more quantum leaps with companies donating their "best of the breed" niches to the Second Coming of UNIX. I think the rate will pick up as more companies finally realize that they can't turn back the tide of NT by themselves, and that Linux is their only realistic hope to avoid becoming Just Another Windows OEM.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Folks, please read about Performer first! Yes, it's an awsome set of tools to create high-end (read: professional, not just another Quake) simulation software. It is not an application, nor is it graphics software. Also, it's been around for a long time, most screenshots of software made with Performer libraries are old, very old. Several date back long before PC users even have the Pentium processors.
As long as SGI is giving products away,
it would be nice to see some hobbiest
initiatives for older MIPS machines, such as
IRIX 5.3 and performer 2.0 at least.
Even along the lines of DEC's OpenVMS
hobbiest licensing for current products.
SGI is adding VALUE to linux, not just more
software, like other offerings. Return the
value to loyal customers, and enthusiast too!
lets not get to paranoid, but look at TummyX's posts in his userinfo...
Tummy, I know for a fact and I am not just saying this off the top of my head but, I know that you work for microsoft.
/. .
I'm a hacker and I looked at your packets when you sent this message. I have never seen any of your posts untill microsoft hired the new linux hit team. This is more proof that your an MS employee.
One of the top Microsoft executives used to go on Compuserve and create fud on the OS/2 board. Did you get any ideas from this guy?
Your identity was revealed when the mindcraft/ms funded zdlabs fud tests were shown.
I could tell by your content of the posts that your attentions were to convert as many linux users as possible or create some doubt to divide us. We are only a small % of the total linux users here at
Go find another way to create fud and I am totally aware of your next fud attempt from a ms employee. The database test which is going to be next will not work. BOy I love being a hacker:-)
Hmmm how did I find this out?
I used Performer for a year and a half at a previous job and it is excellent! I'm glad to see they're porting it to Linux. Now I just have to get after them about a BeOS port... :)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.