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SGI announces port of IRIS Performer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fun-with-porting dept.

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.

2 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Expect more from SGI by Skyshadow · · Score: 4
    Actually, I think that we can expect to see a lot more from SGI over the next few years.

    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.

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    Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
  2. Re:Why not do Inventor First? by Performer+Guy · · Score: 5

    I am a developer on the Performer team at SGI. IRIS Performer is not built under or over Open Inventor it runs on OpenGL. It cannot be used with Open Inventor within an application although it can load Inventor file formats into the scene graph. To support older SGI systems it can also run on IrisGL by linking to a different set of libraries. Mongoose is just a project code name so Performer on Linux is nicknamed mongoose.

    IRIS Performer and Inventor have quite different design objectives. Performer focuses on maximum Performance and scalability (fast hardware, multiple processors and multiple graphics pipes), Inventor is designed for ease of use and user manipulation of 3D data. Performer also has more of an emphasis on features and file formats required by the simulation and training industries.

    For tutorials on how to program with Performer as well as lots of screen shots & source code of some advanced Performer demos see:

    http://www.dorbie.com/

    This should give you a taste of the kind of graphics empowered by IRIS Performer and how you go about writing code for them using the API.