3D in general is still finding its feet in the computer world. there are all sorts of UI issues, and the hardware is just now getting to the point where mass deployment is feasible. But the potential is there--3D shared interactive games, for example. There was a company, NewFire, that was doing a very fast VRML engine that was good enough for interactive games.
Aside from that, VRML can be used as a file format for swapping 3D files around with others. The history of 3D is one of one-off tools optimized for one particular environment by one particular company.
It's not FreeBSD--it's a Mach modified version of the Mac 2.x kernel with a BSD 4.4 Unix interface. Not quite the same thing, since it picks up some things like Mach messaging. Apple could port to Linux easily enough if they wanted to; YB runs on top of NT, after all. But they probably won't. If they wanted to play in the x86 market they would have released an x86 MOSXS version.
There's a project to do exactly this, run OpenStep apps on Linux. See www.gnustep.org. Portions are fairly far along. The big holdup is the Display Postscript interpreter, which is tricky to write, and which a lot of things depend on.
Adobe has screwed Apple by refusing to license DisplayPostscript on reasonable terms, so Apple itself is having to rework their graphics system. The "user" version of MacOSX won't be out for a year at least. I suspect longer. In the meantime you have to plunk down $1,000 for the software, plus a couple grand for an apple machine to run it on. it's got some good tools that are worthwhile if you're an apple shop--you can netboot MacOS clients from a server, and WebObjects is a tres cool web development tool. While I'd cough up some extra bucks for a little convienience and ease of use over Linux, I wouldn't cough up that much. They'd have to sell it at a price point of a couple hundred bucks or so, in a non-crippled configuration--capable of having a comipler and web server and nfs server and sendmail running on it--before it would be very interesting.
Apple is technically capable of releasing Rhapsody/MacOSX on Intel, but won't. They're back to being a hardware company.
That misses the point, though. The whole reason for the SGIs is 3D performance, and at that they rock. The 3D graphics performance is significantly better than the HP Kayak boards. The only thing that really beats it is the Intergraph Wildcats, and they cost more. Since main memory can be used as texture map memory with little or no performance hit, you can do riduculous things like use a gigabyte of memory for texture maps. Try and do that with an 8 MB graphics card. So SGI is selling very high performance 3D at a decent price.
If you don't want to do 3D, these are not machines for you. If you need very high graphics performance and are willing to pay a manageable premium for it, these are good machines.
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3D in general is still finding its feet in the computer world. there are all sorts of UI issues, and the hardware is just now getting to the point where mass deployment is feasible. But the potential is there--3D shared interactive games, for example. There was a company, NewFire, that was doing a very fast VRML engine that was good enough for interactive games.
Aside from that, VRML can be used as a file format for swapping 3D files around with others. The history of 3D is one of one-off tools optimized for one particular environment by one particular company.
>Could you point me at a copy of the source code
> for NeXTSTEP's enhanced objective C compiler >(based on gcc)?
Sure; look in the gcc distribution. From the "contributors" section to the gcc distribution docs:
* NeXT, Inc. donated the front end that supports the Objective C language.
It's not FreeBSD--it's a Mach modified version of the Mac 2.x kernel with a BSD 4.4 Unix interface. Not quite the same thing, since it picks up some things like Mach messaging. Apple could port to Linux easily enough if they wanted to; YB runs on top of NT, after all. But they probably won't. If they wanted to play in the x86 market they would have released an x86 MOSXS version.
There's a project to do exactly this, run
OpenStep apps on Linux. See www.gnustep.org.
Portions are fairly far along.
The big holdup is the Display Postscript
interpreter, which is tricky to write, and
which a lot of things depend on.
Adobe has screwed Apple by refusing to license
DisplayPostscript on reasonable terms, so
Apple itself is having to rework their graphics
system. The "user" version of MacOSX won't
be out for a year at least. I suspect longer.
In the meantime you have to plunk down $1,000
for the software, plus a couple grand for an
apple machine to run it on. it's got some
good tools that are worthwhile if you're an
apple shop--you can netboot MacOS clients
from a server, and WebObjects is a tres cool
web development tool. While I'd cough up some
extra bucks for a little convienience and ease
of use over Linux, I wouldn't cough up that much.
They'd have to sell it at a price point of a
couple hundred bucks or so, in a non-crippled
configuration--capable of having a comipler
and web server and nfs server and sendmail
running on it--before it would be very
interesting.
Apple is technically capable of releasing
Rhapsody/MacOSX on Intel, but won't. They're
back to being a hardware company.
That misses the point, though. The whole reason
for the SGIs is 3D performance, and at that they
rock. The 3D graphics performance is significantly
better than the HP Kayak boards. The only thing
that really beats it is the Intergraph Wildcats,
and they cost more. Since main memory can be
used as texture map memory with little or no
performance hit, you can do riduculous things
like use a gigabyte of memory for texture maps.
Try and do that with an 8 MB graphics card. So SGI is selling very high
performance 3D at a decent price.
If you don't want to do 3D, these are not machines
for you. If you need very high graphics performance and are willing to pay a manageable
premium for it, these are good machines.