From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Yamanari)
Subject: Re: SGI-GL in Windows NT??
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 01:52:40 GMT

In article <pathak-080193094020@virtual.mitre.org> pathak@mitre.org (Heeren Pathak) writes:
>In article <dlcogswe.726380388@vela>, dlcogswe@vela.acs.oakland.edu (Dan
>Cogswell) wrote:
>> A guy I work with told me today the Microsoft has bought the rights to
>> include SGI-GL with Windows NT and will be including it in an upcoming
>> release!  This is quite an  advantage over OS/2 and brings NT to
>> workstation level, in my opinion.  If NT will have GL standard, I will
>> most likely be switching over from OS/2.
>> 
>What's the big deal?  IBM has had a license for GL for quite a few years. 
>They bought this license for the RS/6000.  If GL becomes that big a deal, I


	Did they ever do anything with it on the RS/6000?


>am sure it could be put into OS/2 also.


	IBM is almost schitzophrenic in this regard.  Their corporate
	nose is very good--they are able to sniff out the truffles
	and dig them out by paying enormous licensing fees.  But then,
	after getting them home, they put thm on the shelf and let them 
	rot.

	IBM was the first company to pay several million dollars to a
	little company a few years back that produces one of the
	most elegant GUIs available--but never did anything with it.
	Now NeXT is porting it themselves.  Meanwhile, we're stuck with the
	WPS.  Some people like it.  I *hate* it.  I'd rather have 1.3's.

	MS, on the other hand, generally uses that which MS licenses. 
	The only exception I can think of is the SGI GL, which they
	licensed for Win31 almost a year ago.


>BTW, where did you come up with the notion that GL is a standard.  GL
>happens to be a very popular rendering language mainly because SGI controls
>a large part of the graphics market.  


	It's a standard, just a small one.  What it does do, though,
	is make porting programs from SGI UNIX to Windows NT without
	developers having the impossible task of basically implementing
	the SGI library in the process of porting.  And NT runs on 
	MIPS based machines. 


>However, it is far from an official
>standard.  In fact, there is a fair number of people who do high
>performance graphics who don't like the GL rendering model.  The GL
>rendering model is great for rendering but animating a rendered object is
>difficult to do efficiently with GL.


	Fair, but that just means that we need to throw more hardware
	at the problem.  SGI got where they are today by throwing 
	impressive hardware--a lot of it.


>> I'm pretty shocked. 
>
>Why?  GL provides high-powered graphics on an SGI because there is HARDWARE
>support for it. 

	NT running on a MIPS machine from SGI would have just that
	support.  Besides, we already have linedraw and bitblt hardware
	on PC's.  How long before the others start to emerge?  

	SGI used to make a (disappointingly slow) graphics card for the
	PC.  I wonder if they still do.


> Since NT is an OS, GL will be yet another way to render
>images under NT.  


	Finally a *decent* way.  One wonders why MS didn't implement 
	TruePage as the NT imaging model, but (who can guess why big 
	companies do silly things).  


>Maybe it will form the basis of NT's 3D rendering API but
>it won't provide for fast graphics unless hardware support for GL is also
>available.


	Hardware support, assuming that MS actually *does something* with
	the GL will appear almost immediately.  


-- 
      Blaming "society" for your problems is like blaming clouds for rain.
 ---  boycott == coercion == censorship == closed mindedness == cowardice  ---
	      "Psalms 23:1  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."  
		Shepherds are for sheep.   -----      Pain teaches.
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