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From: rblewitt@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (Richard Blewitt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Animation in Engineering
Message-ID: <18210@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 11 Apr 91 20:18:07 GMT
References: <1991Apr11.185903.20701@ariel.unm.edu>
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 50

In article <1991Apr11.185903.20701@ariel.unm.edu> nwickham@triton.unm.edu (Neal C. Wickham) writes:
>Expires: 
>References: <1991Apr11.130015.24076@ariel.unm.edu> <2314@swrinde.nde.swri.edu>
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>Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
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>In article <2314@swrinde.nde.swri.edu> kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) writes:
>>
>>It is very clear that you haven't used an SGI machine...
>>
>>This stuff is available on MS-DOS machines which have the SGI graphics
>>engine installed in them. The local SGI user's group here in San
>>Antonio was given a demo of the PC hardware last week. It is pretty
>>nice. Too bad you have run MS-DOS to get it.
>
>How much money are we talking about?  ...for SGI?

Lots of $$.  The lowest end Personal Iris is in the $10-15K, and a
decent Personal Iris setup will run 25-40K.  Of course there are
also large file servers with the unbelievable VGX graphics system
for about 500K.  

>Is it really better than an Amiga where Amiga was designed for graphics with
>the blitter and all?

The "graphics" in Silicon Graphics is there for a reason.  Nothing
tops them, period.  Their geometry engine is so good that IBM
licenced them for the RS6000 series.  The movie industry has been
using them for a while to create increadible F/X (ie. the water
creature in the Abyss).  To give you an idea of the speed of these
things, imagine lightwave 3D, if the renderings were in real time.

>What about a low end system that might cost much less on Amiga?

If this is possible, I'd love to have one.  The closest thing like
it is Videomaster 32 (whenever it gets released).  On the plus side,
Videomaster 32 will have true 24 bit double buffering, the SG's go
to 12 bit to do double buffering ( at least up to the GTX graphics
line, I don't know about VGX)

>What about the potential of this with the Toaster?

An SG with a toaster? Not practical, because it would cost too much.
It is possible to send the output to video, if you add an expensive
board.

Rick