[ REQ 6112]: Geomview solaris -mp?

[L.Wood at surrey.ac.uk]

To: software@geom.umn.edu
Subject: Geomview solaris -mp?
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.95.970214155922.2164N-100000 at petra.ee.surrey.ac.uk>

Hi,

I've using SaVi on top of Geomview to render and explain satellite
constellations (see this month's IEEE Computer cover story for a
couple of graphics I produced). 

Unfortunately, being a wimpy engineer instead of a kick-ass
mathematician means that I get to run Geomview on a Sparc20 instead of
on an SGI, and manipulating a model of Teledesic (840 active
satellites each represented by three crossing squares) in realtime
loads the processor somewhat. This makes mouse glass-sphere control
an interesting feedback problem; I'm just going to have to learn Gcl
and script some flyarounds.

However, this particular Sparc20 has two processors, and the other one
is sitting pretty much idle. 

Would any improvement be seen if you were to add Solaris
multiprocessor support to Geomview? I'd expect I'd see more
significant improvements from getting a decent graphics card/switching
from standard X to threaded OpenGL for rendering if OpenGL turns up
with Solaris 2.5.1, but since sundgadoom vividly illustrated the
benefits of multiprocessor support and is believed by others to be a
true 3D application, I thought I'd ask anyway for the authoritative
answer.

Oh, and finally being able to see SaVi's wireframe continent outlines
with 1.6.1 is a bonus over 1.5.

Thanks,

L.

<URL:http://www.sat-net.com/L.Wood/><L.Wood at ieee.org>+44-1483-300800x3435