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SGI Release Iris 2.3 for Linux
Thanks to Allan over at SGI for letting me know that SGI has just released IRIS Performer for Linux. It's version 2.3 and it's free for download. If you want the program or more information, they've IRIS page for Linux up and running.
I remember playing with earlier versions of this software under IRIX a couple of years ago, and it was pretty impressive. I will definitely have to download a copy of this to play with under Linux.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They (SGI) went out of their NT business since they cannot diferentiate themselves against other NT vendors. In which way SGI plans to diferentiate within Linux community? Their IRIX applications flood will stop one day or another.
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** Disk Space Requirements for IRIS Performer: Nearly 125 MB of disk space is required (30 MB temporarily and 95 MB permanently).
** Other Product Dependencies for IRIS Performer: To be functional, IRIS PerformerTM 2.3 requires that you have the following items installed on your Linux system:
* glibc 2.1.1
* XFree86 3.3.3.1
* Mesa
* Motif® installed
I wonder if there is any chance it will work with Lesstif.
See the FAQ.
I get a blank page when I hit the download link. It does not seem slashdotted, just that link won't work.
There aren't even screenshots, though I did find a gallery of images made with it here.
There are some tutorials with some partial shots, (like this one) they are here.
You are probably referring to the perfly utility, which is "just" a viewer app.
...) you will find Performer useful. If you are not in the visualisation business you won't find it useful. (E.g. I don't find MS Word useful - I'm not a secretary)
Performer is not an application, its an API. A library. An API that sits on top of OpenGL (which is very very low-level) and allows you to do scene graph visualisation. It is not a 3D modeller or whatever. It is an API to do scene graph visualisation and it's the best API to do scene graph visualisation.
If you need this (simulate new builings, towns, interactive walk-thru,
I continually laugh every time I hear these people talking about how whether this is useful or not, it fortells linux's rise to power... all of us dedicated linux guys have stopped fortelling it because it's already happening. Linux is set to become the dominant OS, or if nothing else than prepare us for the influx of *nix os's. If Linux doesn't become #1, then some other nix will. There are far too many nix os's for that not to happen. Anyone interested in counting all the distributions / full-blown OS's of unix and unix-like operating systems? That oughtta be a fun and time consuming project. Anyway i'm drifting... my point was that ported software isn't really news, it's expected that this will happen... it's more of gratification for all of us linux guys :-) we were RIGHT all along, hehe.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
SGI's X server is a thing of beauty, but this is largely because SGI's graphics hardware is leaps and bounds better than anything you'll see on a PC.
No, it doesn't come with source; rather, it's distributed under a standard binary-only freeware EULA:
:(
1. Grant Of Limited License; Software Use Restrictions In consideration for your acceptance of the terms and conditions of this Agreement, SGI will grant to you a personal, non-transferable and non-exclusive right to use and execute the Software, without right to sublicense the Software. You agree that you will not modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any portion of the Software.
Maybe we'll get some source in the future, but the clauses about reverse-engineering, modifying, decompiling and disassembling would seem to say, "Don't hope for it"
Well it's great to have some development libraries for the SGI video hardware without having to pay for them, now that SGI no longer makes video hardware. Sort of like getting to look at the source code to Mozilla after Netscape folded up, getting to look at the source code to Hexen after Quake III came out. They're consistantly products that the developers gave up on because the users didn't care about them anymore. And so I don't really care about IRIS performer even though it's still nice to not have to pay for something.
I can only agree that the term "databases" is an overloaded one. In the context of IRIS Performer it refers to the data structure (in memory, a file, whatever) containing the geometry and visual state [texture, material, lighting, etc] of the scene to be viewed. In many cases the "database" refers to the in-a-file version of that data, and the "scene graph" refers to the in-memory representation. Most data of this type is created using sophisticated 3D modelling tools such as MultiGen, Maya, etc., or is gathered from sensors and/or satellites. IRIS Performer's job is to render it all REALLY FAST. Sorry that the 'screenshots' area is sooooo out of date, most of those images date back from the first versions of Performer circa 1992. There's some much better stuff now :-) for example see one of our partners http://www.aechelon.com
I've seen quite a bit of confusion on /. about Performer, why it's a good thing, why is SGI so stupid / brilliant, etc. so I figured that I'd summarize some of the key points that are most important to me as a graphics guy who does a lot of graphics-newbie indoctrination. For true Performer-heads reading, remember that I'm being purposely "high level", so feel free to add detail that I'm glossing over.
Background: I'm an SGI hack from way back (not all the way back, but close) with lots of hours logged on everything except their most recent Origins and Onyx2's. I was migrating my IrisGL (OpenGL hadn't been invented yet) code from C to C++ when the original Performer 1.0 framework starting wandering out of the labs. Since then, it's much more OOD - OpenGL and C++ have greatly increased its usefulness without over "object"ing it.
Here are some of the things that Performer can give you quickly (i.e., not much more complex than Performer "Hello World"):
[This is getting long so I'll wrap up.]
Why does Slashdot and the rest of the Linux crowd care? Well, the premier all-around computer graphics company is handing you their flagship visual simulation framework and saying, "we hope you have a good time." The marketability of Linux just went up by orders of magnitude - simple example in my field, it counters HP's arguments that they're a better buy for military simulations. "Gosh, you're more expensive than Linux / IRIX and not as powerful. Why exactly are you better?"
Why does SGI care? The one place they've always lost is marketing - in a word, they stink at it. They need the groundswell from the popular marketplace. So, be loud. If you try it and like it, say so. If you find things that you need or don't work, complain loudly and constructively.
Also: be quotable. Make sure that it's very obvious that you're a *nix-head running SGI software. Give them the ammunition and SGI will produce high-coolness useful power for all of us.
-- Doctor Bob
As it sometimes turns out when trying to make documentation simple (and so that it ALWAYS works) some "clever exceptions" are left out figuring people who know about such things will just go do them....
So more specifically Performer doesn't actually REQUIRE Mesa, it just requires something called libGL.so.3 and libGLU.so.3 in your LD path that implements an API reasonably similar to that of OpenGL. If you have a libGL.voodoo.foo sitting around somewhere that implements an accelerated OpenGL binding for Voodoo, by all means just create some symbolic links (from libGL.so.3) to it, and force the install. That, in a similar nutshell, is how we get the accelerated TNT2 libs to work along with it too..
So then, with 10 lines of code, I could create Mr. Singing-dancing Paperclip, the last remaining "Killer App" that the pundits say we need in order to become a viable force on the desktop? Apparently, this is much needed.
Actually, I love the commitment from SGI, I just wish it was all GPL. Then we could have some fun with embedding parts of the source in applications.
I think it's just a matter of time before about 5 products show up that use the API. Then I get to have some fun.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Avid and SoftImage are wildly different beasts in a completely different market space -- they are used to render animations "off-line", with image quality being paramount and frame rate an absolute non-issue. They're also more geared towards the user interface (for the animator) than towards the run-time visuals (for the pilot). The finished animations go into movie F/X and TV commercials.
This is all a long-winded way of saying, whatever is going on with animation packages like Avid & Maya & SoftImage & etc. is occuring in an area totally unrelated to IRIS Performer & the Modelling, Simulation, and Imaging (MS&I) industry.
It's not a world that's had much exposure in Linux yet though (before today! :-) but with IRIS Performer being released for Linux now, other MS&I kits like MPI's Vega just having been announced as coming soon, and SGI's general impetus towards bringing its graphics firepower into the Linux space, I think we'll see a lot more in this area in the times to come.
Regarding "a shift from visualization workstations to internet servers": this isn't the case, there's been no such shift. Many of the same capabilities of our systems that make graphics work well (bandwidth, I/O, and the myriad features in IRIX) are also very well suited for servers & the internet, so we're nailing all three birds here with the same basic R&D stones.
More specifically, SGI is focusing its efforts on three business areas, which you're free to abbreviate as S, G, and I ... :-)
- High Performance Systems: (aka: SERVERS)
- Visual Computing Solutions (aka: GRAPHICS)
- Broadband Systems (aka: INTERNET)
You're welcome to read more about this (informally) in the Friends of Performer Meeting Summary that I posted after SIGGRAPH last August. There's also quite a lot of official information about our strategy linked off the front page of www.sgi.com.Scalable, high-performance servers for HPC, technical computing, and Business Intelligence Applications.
Solutions for collaboration, visualization of complex data and media-rich content creation. This is where IRIS Performer and our high-end graphics systems fit in.
Internet infrastructure products with "appliance-like" features for broadband content, applications, and services.
You talk from fear-based logic. Every huge success in business is based on bold actions.
For the past 10 years unprofessional marketing has proven superior in winning a consumer base. Just hype your product, announce releases prematurely, invade public boards with anonymous infiltrators, support computer magazine reporters with products and money, fake scandals, spread FUD, etc.. etc. It's a loong story, and you've probably heard it all before.
With these tactics, you may get an edge over competitors. Even those with superior products. You generate a contagious wave of people willing to buy your products. The problem is just that not every business in the industry has been willing to go to such lows as some companies have. In fact, due to their high profile, they couldn't afford such a thing! These companies has been suffering under the general ignorance of the public.
Luckily for these high profile companies, low tactics always backfires someday. People are waking up recognizing themselves as victims. Ultimately they will retake responsibility, not letting business giants rule their lives anymore.
The future of computing lie in increased openness, collaboration, interoperability, quality and providing services. Because this is what consumers will want. Also, types of applications that has proven their worth will be cheaper as it is with every established technology. Maybe even gratis in many circumstances, certainly in Open Source projects.
If you still wonder why giving out free downloads, think of it as an investment in the future. The future for companies will not be delivering products, but leading the development. As it should have been from the start.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
You know whenever you see the "cool computer bit" on a TV show, it's always some guy sitting in front of a big screen, and he's got a model of a doo-dad, and he's twisting it around and spinning it, and stuff? I just got all the IRIS stuff, and lo and behold, my workstation now looks like the "cool computer bit" on all those TV shows.
So, it's kinda lame, comparatively, but I love it anyway. :-)
BTW, it's a Dell Precision 410 (dual P3), with a TNT2, and once I linked the hardware driver correctly, it runs like a charm. Thanks for making my day a little cooler.
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Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.