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From: rick@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Graphics systems used in visualization
Message-ID: <2043@med.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 4 Sep 90 03:06:03 GMT
References: <25593@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Sender: news@med.stanford.edu (USENET News System)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Stanford University, Department of Geophysics
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In article <25593@boulder.Colorado.EDU> grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu writes:
>Our department recently got a NSF educational infrastructure grant for
>developing a scientific computing & visualization course for
>undergraduates.
>So far, we've come to the conclusion that the SGL library is The Way
>To Go for student developed applications. Likewise, Wavefront is the
>current rave for animation.

If you want to concentrate on the problem of the best way to convert
scientific information into shape-color-motion, consider one of the emerging
visualization toolkits such as AVS or SunVision.
Then you can spend less time on programming on spin that part off into a
separate graphics programming course.  One the toolkits could emerge as a
standard, but it is too early to say.

I suggest PHIGS (or Foley's SPHIGS) to SGI because it is at a higher level
of abstraction.   Again you spend less time on programming and more on
understanding visualization.  PHIGS is runs on several different workstations.