CompuServe Messages

Alan… I'm one of those lucky guys to have access to a SGI. We have an Indigo 2 with Extreme Graphics, a 150 MHz CPU and we're running Alias Studio v.6.0. In my experience, I'm pretty sure we can continue to work on other stuff while the SGI is rendering (raycasting or raytracing). As far as comparison goes (Pentiums vs SGIs) I don't think they (PCs) are there yet. SGI is now selling a base Indy for around $5495 (list) with a 100 MHz CPU. You can bump that to 150 or maybe 200 these days. Put it this way, if you're going to invest over 20K in a business machine for the video game business, the route seems to be SGI. Our video game development division in the UK uses a combination of 60 Indigos and 3 or 4 ONYX's to develop our games, and it still takes quite some time to develop a complete Nintendo cartridge. They also use PCs with emulators to actually punch code… but definitely not for graphics. I don't do game programming so I can't really answer those questions, but I do model a lot and also do some animations of those models (mostly toy mechanics). My advice to anyone considering spending 20K or more on a system is to have an SGI/Alias (or Wavefront/SoftImage) rep visit your facility, set up a hands-on demo. Usually, an applications engineer will be there to demo any facet of the hardware and software, and you'll be amazed. We went this route and after seeing a AD "expert" try to create an animated, raytraced sample toy project (he gave up after an hour), we knew that the SGI was the way to fly. BTW, the Alias AE had the same exact toy done and animated in just about an hour and a half… fully raytraced. Of course at about three or four times of a couple of dual P90's, we have to keep the blue box busy to justify it's purchase. So far, so good. All this said and done, I am really keen on trying to use tS 2.0 at home and maybe importing some work into the SGI. There are two of us using the SGI now, and both of us would like to have one at home <BG> but we know that's impossible! tS looks like a possible alternative if we can get proficient with it. If you can get to SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles later this Summer, I would heartily suggest that you spend a couple of days there and make sure you sit with a good software rep and try _ALL_ the SGI software options. Again, no knock on tS, as I bought it on the spot last SIGGRAPH because I was amazed. Unfortunately, it's tough learning two systems, and I confess that most of our attention has gone to the Alias/SGI combo :(! \\\. ========================= >-==<MIKE(>=– >-==*- / the price