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I have fond memories of the SGI machines - workstation and larger - I worked on in the 1990s and early 2000s. Octanes, O2s, Origins, Indigos, and so on. They w
by toddm 5y ago
I have fond memories of the SGI machines - workstation and larger - I worked on in the 1990s and early 2000s. Octanes, O2s, Origins, Indigos, and so on.
They were best-in-class for visualization, and when used with Stereographic Crystal Eyes hardware/glasses, 3D was awesome. We also rendered high-quality POV-Ray animations on an O2 in 1996, when the software was barely 5 years old!
My last big computing efforts were on a SGI Origin 2000 (R12000) in 2002, and the allure of that machine was being able to get 32 GB of shared RAM all to myself.
- reaperducer 5y ago3D was awesome Around 1990 or 2000, I was able to see how some of the big energy companies in Houston were using SGI machines' 3D capabilities. They'd have rooms about 10 feet square with projectors hanging from the ceiling that would take seismic data and render it on the walls as colorful images of oil deposits and different strata of rocks and gas and water and such. Using a hand controller, the employees could "walk" through the earth to see where the deposits were and plot the best/most efficient route for the drilling pipes to follow. Pretty much today's VR gaming headset world. Except, without a headset. And this was almost a quarter of a century ago. I can't imagine what the energy companies are doing now, with their supercomputers and seemingly limitless budgets.
- sleepybrett 5y agoI saw a driving simulator built with an actual car and a couple of reality engines driving projectors that were projecting on screens all around the car. It was a pretty impressive setup. Now you can probably build that out of forza, a decent gaming pc, and some hobbiest electronics.