Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rice!sun-spots-request
From: tday@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Tim Day)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: SPARCstation flight simulator (seen at SIGGRAPH)
Keywords: Software
Message-ID: <7379@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 3 May 90 16:24:39 GMT
Sender: news@rice.edu
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 15
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 149, message 10

At the SIGGRAPH trade exhibition in Boston last year, the most impressive
demo on the Sun stand was a flight simulator flying over real DEMs
(digital elevation models).  I did ask for some info on it, but never
heard anything.  Does anyone actually have a copy of this?  Has anyone
seen it since?  Does Sun sell it?

I did try writing my own, but could only do wireframe without hidden
surface removal at reasonable speed through Sunview; simple back-to-front
rendering with polygons was too slow (yes, I was double-buffering, using
pw_lock and writing directly to the screen; the GX doesn't seem to
accelerate retained canvases).  The Sun demo also seemed to be rendering
the DEM at a resolution dependent on distance, which probably speeds
things up a fair bit.  Don't know if they were accessing the GX chips at a
lower level as well...  I have't been able to obtain a copy of the elusive
''GX Technical Note'' to find out anything about this.