Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!news
From: foo@erfordia.rice.edu (Mark Hall)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Question (silly?)
Keywords: raytrace, etc.
Message-ID: <1991Jan16.173249.13698@rice.edu>
Date: 16 Jan 91 17:32:49 GMT
References: <79641@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <5427@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@rice.edu (News)
Organization: Rice University, Houston
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In article <5427@idunno.Princeton.EDU> markv@taylor.Princeton.EDU (Mark VandeWettering) writes:
)In article <79641@unix.cis.pitt.edu> kwgst@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Filip Gieszczykiewicz) writes:
)>	What computer architecture would be required to support
)>	real-time (20-30 frames/sec), 800 X 600 (VGA), ray-traced,
)>	animation? 

    In a SIGGRAPH class (1985, "Image Rendering Tricks"), Turner Whitted
 said that one of his superiors at Bell Labs had asked him a similar 
 question, I think the requested resolution was 512x512. Turner was using 
 this as an example of an unresonable question. His response was 
 "take a 512x512 array of Cray-1's and put a red, a green, and a blue 
 light on each one, and fly overhead in a helicopter."

   In the class notes, he talks about other ways of doing fast animations: 
 "LAN-imation" (using lots of machines, each doing a small part of the scene),
 and "chain letter animation" (sending disks to 5 friends, etc., having the
 results sent back to you on floppy).  There was a TR from the university 
 of Utah (TR UUCS 87-014 by John Peterson) which discussed the history
 of such tricks. 

  - mark