For Pixar involvement, I just re-read it, it is in the Renderman Companion, in the last part of Pat Hanrahan foreword (May 1989).
"... *During this time, we also began a joint project with Silicon Graphics to work on a three-dimensional graphics library usable for both interactive graphics and high-quality rendering* ..." (the time he's referring there is the time when the RISpec was built) Not sure though if that joint project is IrisGL, or if it's something else actually... Thanks for sharing! Raphael On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 12:25 AM, Paul Martz <[email protected]> wrote: > Not sure about Pixar's involvement. > > The Genesis of OpenGL varies depending on who you ask. People inside SGI > say that OpenGL was driven by customer demand. Their users wanted to see > IrisGL deployed on non-SGI platforms. SGI tried this with a fee hardware > vendors, but the support was spotty, different vendors supported IrisGL in > different ways, and the same app did not run the same way across platforms. > So SGI came up with OpenGL and designed it in such a way that anyone could > support it well. > > However, if you talk to anyone in the PHIGS/PEX camp during the late > 80s/early 90s, they'll tell you that SGI was feeling threatened by the > widespread adoption of PHIGS/PEX, and decided to turn IrisGL into an open > standard ("OpenGL") in order to kill off PHIGS/PEX. > > PEX was an open standard adopted by just about anyone with X Windows on > their box, but SGI had not been invited to join the PEX consortium. So there > was some animosity there. > > Paul Martz > *Skew Matrix Software LLC* > http://www.skew-matrix.com > +1 303 859 9466 > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Raphael Sebbe > *Sent:* Saturday, April 04, 2009 3:28 AM > *To:* OpenSceneGraph Users > *Subject:* Re: [osg-users] SGI declares bankruptcy (UNCLASSIFIED) > > Jumping in... > Well, I would definitely be interested in getting more history background > about the original design of the OpenGL API. There was a collaboration > between Pixar and SGI in the late 80s, probably around the same time that > both IrisGL and the Renderman specification emerged. Pixar had been working > on this for some time, yet, I am unsure of how the whole process of OpenGL > (IrisGL) happened. Did Pixar propose the Renderman specification to SGI, > which then proposed a real-time api inspired on that? Or did SGI develop > this all internally and by chance came to some similar design? > > Raphael > > > > On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 10:42 PM, Paul Martz <[email protected]>wrote: > >> As the British punk band The Stranglers used to say, "Everybody loves you >> when you're dead." >> >> Sure, SGI did some things pretty well, but let us not forget they also did >> some things pretty poorly, and in my opinion were really not much better >> or >> worse than many other hardware vendors. >> >> Things they did well: OpenGL 1.0 was a masterpiece of design that took the >> graphics world by storm and utterly crushed several other competing APIs >> of >> the era. This is an API that is so well-accepted that it has outlived its >> creator. >> >> Things they didn't do well: Too much focus on the high end. Bad business >> decisions. No focus on open standards until absolutely forced to do so. >> Not >> able to keep pace with the industry (look where they are now). >> >> And marketing faux pas... When OpenGL 1.0 first came out, SGI marketing >> constantly repeated the notion that immediate mode was the most important >> thing in the world. (This was a direct slam against the PHIGS/PEX APIs, >> which were focused on retained mode.) At the same time, SGI was promoting >> their 1.1 million triangles/second hardware. However, all their demos had >> a >> performance HUD that clearly showed significantly less than 1.1m tris/sec. >> When pressed on this, they eventually published a benchmark that >> demonstrated 1.1m tris/sec, but it used display lists. Oops. >> >> Paul Martz >> Skew Matrix Software LLC >> http://www.skew-matrix.com >> +1 303 859 9466 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> osg-users mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org >> > > > _______________________________________________ > osg-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org > >
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