Re: GeomView Related Question

[slevy]

XGL is probably not what you're hoping for.  It's readily available --
I believe a version of it is bundled on all Suns since 4.1.1 -- but it's
not an emulator for SGI's GL.  Rather it's Sun's attempt at a 2D & 3D graphics
library.  Given the limitations of normal Sun hardware (e.g. typically 1-bit or
8-bit displays, no provision for double buffering), it's not too awful,
but not terribly helpful either.  It will do lighting, Z-buffering, etc.
if asked and will dither onto 8-bit color displays.  It takes advantage,
when it can, of hardware assists like the fast polygon and vector drawing
offered by the GX card.  Unfortunately the hardware speedups can only
apply if you're asking for non-lighted, non-Z-buffered lines and polygons.

[By the way, there still isn't an XGL geomview.  Maybe someday.  Geomview
uses an intermediate library (mg) which has drivers for specific
implementations, like SGI GL, NeXT Quick Renderman, & Sun XGL.]

You can buy Iris GL implementations for Suns.  At least two companies do this:

   Nth Graphics, Ltd.  (1908-A Kramer, Austin, TX 78758
			(512)832-1944, sales at nth.com)

They have a GL emulation library built on top of Sun's XGL.  As such it shares
all the limitations of XGL.  We got a demo disk from them; I wasn't impressed
but they might be worth looking at.

   Du Pont Pixel	(2000 Edmund Halley Drive, #290,  Reston, VA 22091
			 ((555) 555-5555)

They have a GL emulator too, both software-only and one that
uses their add-on graphics hardware which plugs into a Sun.
I don't know whether their software implementation can take
advantage of Sun hardware (e.g. GX); most likely not.
I liked these guys better (after talking to them at SIGGRAPH) than Nth
Graphics, but don't know much about them either.

	Stuart