The collected works of Devil Master

Hello there, I've been curious about retro SGI machine ever since I've seen an Indigo 2 at a retrocomputing event, so i thought I'd ask a few questions here.
I normally satisfy my retrocomputing interest with emulators, but no program has ever emulated any kind of SGI machine, so the only way for me to run any kind of SGI software is to have a physical machine. My other interest is virtual reality, and this interest was born in 1991, but I have only been able to practice it since 2004, first with a pair of shutterglasses, then with various HMDs, making 3D software with DarkBASIC and Irrlicht. One of the first VR simulations I remember reading about was "La Città Di Giotto", an Italian software running on an Onyx machine and using a pair of CrystalEyes shutterglasses for stereoscopic effect.
Of course, buying an Onyx just for curiosity is out of the question, but I would still like to have an affordable retro SGI machine capable to generate stereoscopic scenes in real time.

Okay, here are the questions I have:

1) Which SGI machines support stereoscopy? My budget roof is 1000 euros.

2) What stereoscopic software is available for SGI machines?

3) There is a page at http://www.roosmcd.dds.nl/oldsite/index.htm explaining how to connect Asus VR100 shutterglasses to an SGI machine. I don't have Asus VR100 shutterglasses, but I have a pair of wired eDimensional wired shutterglasses, which connect to a dongle with a jack that is indistinguishable from a stereo headphone jack. The dongle, in turn, connects to a VGA-out port at one end, and to a monitor VGA cable at the other. Do you know whether this kind of shutteglasses can be connected to an SGI machine, and how?

4) Windows PCs have several drivers for stereoscopy, which intercept Direct3D calls and generate image pairs in various formats (pageflipping, side-by-side, over/under, HDMI-compliant and so on). Is there anything comparable for SGI machines and their graphical libraries?

5) Is Ian's SGI Depot ( http://sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/ ) a good place to buy an SGI machine?

robespierre wrote: All of the Silicon Graphics MIPS cpu workstations support stereo graphics, except for a few of the least-capable like the Starter Indigo and the 4D/70G.

Is the O2 included among the "least capable" platforms? Because I searched for a picture of its rear, and there does not appear to be an obvious way to connect shutterglasses.

robespierre wrote: API support is an integral part of GL and OpenGL, there are no "drivers". The application simply requests a stereo mode. As a consequence, the number of programs that support stereo is something like "all of them", including most of the screensavers.

But if it's the application itself that requests a stereo mode, then it should be rewritten to request it in the first place, or it will never do it. So they are not compatible "out of the box" and this automatically excludes every closed source application.

robespierre wrote: It's possible that you could connect consumer-grade glasses like that web page describes, but in 18 years of using unix workstations I've never heard of anybody doing it or verifying that the schematic is correct.

At least one person has done it.

Trippynet wrote: This thread might be of use to you. In short, you need the Presenter card for the O2.

Is this the Presenter card you're talking about?

What's everyone's opinion about PCs here? Yeah, so far, all computer I have that let me do significant work are PCs. But in the early 1990s I had an Amiga, and there was one particular demo I always liked: Enigma, by Phenomena. It was one of the few demos that showed polygonal scenes.

Recently I've seen it again, so I decided to create an improved version of it, as an experiment to see how far I could go with it. I've added a lot of general detail to the environments and objects, texture mapping, bump mapping, specular mapping... it was a lot of fun to make.

And here it is:


Soon, I'm also gonna release VRML versions of the environments it shows. I wonder if someone is ever gonna explore them with an SGI machine!

thegoldbug wrote: Very cool. Wish I had a clue how to even begin even something simple.

First, get a modelling program. For example, Blender is free and cross-platform.
Second, find a tutorial that explains how to do something simple and introduces new users to the interface of the program.
Third, after you assimilated the first tutorial, start experimenting yourself. Then find more tutorials, and alternate executing the tasks they explain with free experimentation. By now you should have realized if you like it or not, and if you do like it, just go with the flow and make whatever you want.

EDIT:
Now I made and released five VRML worlds based on Enigma Reloaded! Have you ever regretted that the original Enigma demo was not interactive and did not let you explore the locations it showed? Well, now you can explore them at will! http://devilmaster.altervista.org/enigma.html

I've done my slew of crazy things. Let's see...

- From 1999 to 2001, I bought (or asked as presents) original PS1 games, despite never owning that console, because I could emulate them.
- In 2000, after a spammer had pissed off a certain newsgroup for years, not even quitting after someone published his address and phone number, I phoned him at midnight, cussing and yelling at him for five minutes straight. He never posted again. Subsequently, I shared the recording of the call with friends and even made a techno remix of it.
- In 2013, I made and released a high-level emulator which runs software from a machine I've always been interested about, but I never owned (nor do I plan to own, because it would be way too expensive): the Commodore 65.

robespierre wrote: (Edit: I just noticed that it is also wrong on the "Octane/Onyx2" line: the port is DE9M, not female.)

Hmm? This photograph shows the rear of an Octane, with two female ports for stereoscopy. Can't find any picture of the rear of an Onyx2, though...

robespierre wrote: The stereo display is a built-in system feature and correctly-written software supports it.

Which programs do you know for sure to be "correctly written"? I know two of them: one is the VR simulation I mentioned in my first post, the other is OpenInventor. Any other?

Nice ride. But:

On a modern Windose PeeeCeee the scene can be viewed with Cortona3D viewer although its not recommended.

I've used Cortona 3D Viewer for years because it supports Direct3D 9 (and therefore stereoscopy) and never found anything wrong with it. Why do you say it's not recommended?

nongrato wrote: It's not 100% compatible with CosmoPlayer: different global light rendering, different collision detection.

Ah, so that must be why I could get out of the cart. In fact, the first time I just walked through the whole ride, because I couldn't find any lever or button to start the cart. Only later I discovered I was supposed to click on the Go arrow: maybe the design should've been a little more obvious?

I didn't know there was a version of CosmoPlayer for Windows. What 3D APIs does it support? And by the way, does the Irix version of CosmoPlayer support stereoscopy?

Is Allegro available for Irix? 'Cause if it is, when I get an SGI system, I'd port Hi65, my very own Commodore 65 emulator . Yes, that's 65, not 64.

EDIT: Allegro is available for Irix! http://liballeg.org/stabledocs/en/build ... ix%20Notes

I apologize if this is considered necroposting, but this thread is about something I want to ask. I found this page in the archived SGI site, which lists a lot of modes, and one (supposedly only available on V10s and V12s) has a note that says: "1280x492 at 114Hz available with V6 and V8".
Now, why would SGI include that information in a note at the bottom of the page, instead of the main table? I've read this thread, so I know about the pixel clock bug in V6s and V8s. Is that the reason, i.e. bad faith on SGI's part? As in "The table includes all resolutions we know to be working, and if you happen, by chance, to read the note (but we hope you won't), you'll find information about a feature that should be there in theory, but isn't"?

Also, is that kind of table available anywhere for all other Octane2 graphical solutions (SSI, SSE, MXI, MXE)?

This page lists Irix among the Unix systems Irrlicht exists for, but I've never seen any Irix-related downloads in the Irrlicht site. I'm assuming that one is supposed to compile it from the source, but in the Irrlicht forum, nobody has ever been able to tell me more about that, except that there is going to be trouble because of the endianness.
I thought that maybe they don't know much about that specific architecture, so can anyone here tell me more? Does a pre-made port exist, or would I have to do it myself?

Wikipedia confirms that VPro cards support up to OpenGL 1.2, but I've asked the same question in the Irrlicht forum, and the reply I got was:

Google says the card supports OpenGL 1.2, so yes, latest irr should run from source.

I've already asked them about this conflicting information, and so far they haven't answered. Where did you find the reference to OpenGL 1.5?

EDIT:

dexter1 wrote: (I believe Impact+TRAM will only support up to 1.2).

You are right in saying it's not supported, but the reason is that Impact+TRAM only supports up to 1.1 .

dexter1 wrote: When i ran the Demo program on my laptop, it displayed a few rendering options before the Demo starts. DirectX9, OpenGL, software rendering, stuff like that. OpenGL 1.5 was one of the options. That is why i assumed it ran only on systems supporting openGL 1.5 and up.

You're right. I just ran the Quake3Map.exe demo, and it does say 1.5. I'll ask for more information in the Irrlicht forum.

The first song is hilarious! Is the base available anywhere? I'd like to sing it at the local karaoke club to troll the audience.

vishnu wrote: Ha! Devil Master's new icon is from the video, outstanding ...

Actually, that's me, wearing a Z800 head-mounted display and Sony MDR-XD200 headphones.

I LOL at those who fear artificial intelligence. Has anyone here LOL'd at that load of baloney known as Roko's Basilisk?

I've noticed that many of the startup/shutdown sounds that can be downloaded from the Nekochan FTP suffer from low bitrate, low sampling frequency and lots of background hisses. Are there higher quality versions available anywhere?
If there are, where are they?
If there aren't, I've managed to increase the quality of some the available sounds, by resampling, filtering and equalizing them. Can I upload them somewhere?

I've noticed that the Indy start sound has a lower pitch in your new recording, while in the Octane start sound, the pitch is now higher. Which recording has the correct pitch?

I was browsing the wiki and I found the article about running SGI machines in headless desktop mode. The first thought I had was: "Wow, that's a really convenient way to avoid locating a compatible monitor!"
The second thought I had was: "Hold on, if data about what should be on the SGI machine's screen, as well as keystrokes and mouse movements, are being sent through a serial port... how much performance is lost?"

Really, isn't the serial port a huge (or should I say tight) bottleneck? If the SGI machine is constantly sending desktop data to the controlling machine, and the controlling machine interrupts the receiving stream for each keypress and mouse movement, what's the lag on such a setup? If I had to make a wild guess, I'd say the average performance is 5 frames per second, with a delay of .2 to .4 seconds between performing an action and seeing it performed on the screen. Is that close enough, or am I being too pessimistic? Or maybe... am I being too optimistic ?

Oh, I see. So what would the lag be? Would it be feasible, for example, to use a headless desktop configuration to run graphical demos?