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From: Mark_Giuffrida@UMich-MTS.MAILNET
Newsgroups: mod.computers.apollo
Subject: Real-time 3D simulation
Message-ID: <1313536@UMich-MTS.Mailnet>
Date: Mon, 26-May-86 12:07:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: UMich-MT.1313536
Posted: Mon May 26 12:07:32 1986
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>           Does anyone has ever done any real-time 3D simulation using
>           SUN3 or Apollo? Please give details. Thanks.

I am not an expert on 3-d real time graphics, but I have done some
on the Apollos 2 years ago.  At the time neither Apollo nor Sun had
a graphics engine and because of that it made real time graphics
unsuitable (unless your database had 10 vertices or less).

Now the situation has changed dramatically.  Apollo now has a graphics
engine which eats up GMR code (based on PHIGGS).  To give you an idea,
these are the statistics I have heard:
   Silicon Graphics Iris - 60,000 clipped transformed 3d vectors/second
   Apollo DN580 - 100,000 clipped transfored 3d vectors/second

At the ADUS user's society, I saw the 580 in action.  It is very
impressive, but they only have wire framed objects at this time.
It is their plan to put the shaded polygon's into microcode by
summer (or late summer). When this is completed it should be the
top performer on the market today for 3d graphics in my opinion.

                               -- Mark Giuffrida (U of Mich)
                               markg%umich-mts@mit-multics.arpa