Angus Bond (bond@stereosgi.neur.cwru.edu)
Tue, 7 Sep 1999 17:39:59 -0400 (EDT)
>From my standpoint, there are two solutions for the development of
volumetric-oriented applications: Make or Buy. SGI Volumizer is
one of a few solutions that a developer can buy. Others include
AVS and IDL. Each Buy-Method has its own pros and cons.
Regarding, SGI Volumizer, its biggest pro is its speed on the
SGI boxes that support it. Its cons are limited portability,
even among SGI products, and its relative infancy.
I think that it would be great for the software development
industry if someone could generate a portable software library
for handling volumetric images in an efficient form. It would
be even nicer if such a software library could take advantage
of any available hardware acceleration. If such a library
were available, I would not need to devote resources to
re-inventing the wheel, so to speak.
I confess that I have not used SGI Volumizer. Because of the
needs of our application, we have chosen to Make our solution
instead of Buy. I had hoped that SGI Volumizer would be generic
enough to use for future development, but by closely following
the dialog in the SGI Volumizer list server, I have noticed that
any real capabilities are restricted to high-end SGI machines.
For the time-being, our application will stay home-grown.
In summary, I believe that you should raise your sights above
limited SGI-specific solutions. You are limiting your potential
market by concentrating only on high-end SGI boxes.
Sincerely,
Angus Bond
> From: "Robert L. Brown" <rlb@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com>
> To: "Nigel W. John" <n.w.john@mcc.ac.uk>,
> "Joe Quinlan" <jquinlan@qstick.engr.sgi.com>
> Cc: <info-volumizer@corp.sgi.com>
> References: <9909031855.ZM22478@qstick.engr.sgi.com> <37D37A9A.611815A9@mcc.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: OpenGL Volumizer Update
> Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 22:27:11 -0700
>
> > Can you say anything on the availability of Volumizer on NT? Is this
> > still anticipated for the beginning of 2000 as an extension to
> > Fahrenheit?
>
> As you know, OpenGL Volumizer works best on machines that have good
> hardware support for volume visualization: Impact and IR graphics, for
> example, and less well on machines that don't: O2, for example.
>
> If we were to release a version of Volumizer for NT, what graphics would
> you want it to run on? The technical issues of porting Volumizer to NT
> are nearly trivial, with the exception of optimizing for this or that
> graphics hardware. Are you asking for an all-software version, with the
> correspondingly poor performance?
>
> The same issue exists for Linux, by the way.
>
> So the technical challenge is not whether Volumizer runs on this or that
> operating system, but what graphcs hardware it runs on hand how
> optimized for that graphics hardware it is.
>
> Bob
> --------------------
> Robert L. Brown, Ph.D. rlb@sgi.com
> Engineering Manager, Graphics APIs
> SGI
-----------------------------------
Angus Bond
bond@stereosgi.neur.cwru.edu
bond@modex.com
+1 216 844-8963 lab/office
+1 440 834-1414 answering machine/fax
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