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100 Million Pixels of Virtual Reality 190

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the holodeck-wannabe dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "It's ironic that Iowa State University (ISU) announced a big upgrade of its C6 virtual reality (VR) room the same day as SGI filed for bankruptcy. Back in 2000, this 10x10x10 foot room was powered by SGI Onyx2 computers. The new version of this six-sided VR room will use 96 graphics processing units from Hewlett-Packard. And with its 24 Sony digital projectors, the researchers at ISU will immerse themselves into images of about 100 million pixels in the most realistic VR room in the world. Of course, this upgrade is not cheap. But with this $4 million addition, this new C6 should lead to new advances in urban planning, genetics, engineering or unmanned aerial vehicles."
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100 Million Pixels of Virtual Reality More

100 Million Pixels of Virtual Reality

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  • (insert obligatory pr0n reference here)!

    100 million pixels of virtual pr0n... nope, no way to hide that at work!

  • New Advances in Genetics, eh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by bwcarty ( 660606 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:22PM (#15304222)
    Is that their slang for VR porn?
  • There has got to be cheap way to do this at home. I remember seeing Quake 3 on like 24 monitors, if you used projectors you should be able to do this cheaply and maybe better...
    • You could probably do it on the cheap, but better? These people aren't throwing out money for some half-assed system.

      OTOH, I don't see any reason why a person couldn't do this on the cheap and have something that's a few years behind (but since it's your own personal one, it's still cool). Hey, it may even be better than the one they are upgrading from 2000!:)

      They used a 10 foot x 10 foot room. No biggie, practically a big walk-in closet. Then come some projectors and computers with video cards driving

      • Re:Cheap (Score:3, Informative)

        by cr0sh ( 43134 )
        Actually, the CAVE room is a room inside a much larger room. Some space is saved by using mirrors and such to fold the optical path of the projectors, but sometimes this isn't desireable, as mirrors cause light loss (some of the light is absorbed by the mirrors - mirrors aren't 100% reflective). Things get really tricky if you are trying to project imagery on the top (ceiling) or bottom (floor) of the CAVE cubical...

      • Re:Cheap (Score:2, Informative)

        by reed ( 19777 )
        wireless mice designed for people giving powerpoint presentations are a nice cheap solution. E.g: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/product listns/US/EN,crid=1999,categoryid=371 [logitech.com]

        If you find one that's not wireless, it might be a whole lot cheaper.
        Also I used to have a finger mouse I got for like 2 bucks that had a little trackball on top for the thumb with the mouse button as trigger, but lost it.

        If you have some time and expertise, you can do some motion tracking with webcams. The lower the reso
    • Hm, 24 monitors, right? Not exactly MY definition of cheap, but there you go... More adequately something like three two four good projectors powered by a small yet powerful cluster is what I'd suggest.

      Anyway, welcome to the holodeck!

      • Re:Cheap (Score:4, Informative)

        by reed ( 19777 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @05:30PM (#15304666) Homepage
        If you're doing it on the cheap and only have three or four projectors, you don't need much of a cluster, just a three or four networked computers. Or, use two dualhead computers.

        You'll have a small amount of lag in the syncronization (network + OS + application software) but with some tweaking of the OS network configuration, or using some insanely fast system rather than a network (shared memory backplane?), you might get it to a few ms?

        If you want frame-by-frame synchronization you need some specialized equipment driving the projectors, stuff like this: http://www.es.com/products/image+generators/index. asp [es.com]

        (Anyone making a homebrew CAVE want to try using http://interreality.org/ [interreality.org] VOS software in it?)

    • Not so cheap (Score:3, Informative)

      by MrTester ( 860336 )
      Your missing a piece of this though.

      Its in 3d.
      Doing 3d is no big deal for a small screen when the viewer is in a fixed perspective, but when you ware walking around the room the images have to change to keep the proper 3d perspective. Doing all of that for a 6 sided room in high deffinition and on-the-fly takes some serious horse power.

      (BTW, I was in it in 1999 when it was 4 sided (floor and 3 walls))
      • It doesn't take "that" much hardware though.

        The toughest part is the software, which is usually very proprietary. I used to work in the planetarium field, and people like Evans and Sutherland were just rolling out massive, all-dome video systems. Usually these consisted of 4 projectors that would cover the dome in 3d. The computers that were running this stuff were pretty simple. One computer per projector, plus one computer that told the other computers what to draw. None of the computers were over 40

  • Drool (Score:3, Funny)

    by GmAz ( 916505 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:23PM (#15304231) Journal
    Can I get some play time of World of Warcraft in there?
  • A HUD for pretending to walk around town. No more reaching into the pocket to see what's playing. And the 21st century was such a letdown until now...

  • Nice picture of the room in TFA (Score:3, Funny)

    by plover ( 150551 ) * on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:23PM (#15304236) Homepage Journal
    "That's no moon!"

  • "/."-hype? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But according to Slashdot [slashdot.org] VR is useless hype.
  • At least ISU is spending somewhat wisely,but I have heard of some really stupid purchases. Such as spending 3k for Graphics design computers for use as word processors. And you wonder why tuition is rising and extreme rates..

    • Re:At least ISU is spending wisely (Score:5, Funny)

      by shudde ( 915065 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:51PM (#15304425)

      Such as spending 3k for Graphics design computers for use as word processors.

      Good to see your university is getting ready for Vista.

  • There is nothing this room can do that a decent set of VR goggles can achieve.
    The goggles would also have the benefit of being runnable on relatively standand class hardware.

    I mean, this thing has to produce a spherical projection for every single point in the viewers space, its got to be crunching far too much data.

    I personally don't see the benefits of this virtual magic carpet ride for the outlay required.
    • The engineers eat CPU on it for computational fluid dynamics codes, so it's not all waste.

    • Re:This looks really good, but also such a waste (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Niet3sche ( 534663 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:39PM (#15304339)
      There is nothing this room can do that a decent set of VR goggles can achieve. The goggles would also have the benefit of being runnable on relatively standand class hardware. I mean, this thing has to produce a spherical projection for every single point in the viewers space, its got to be crunching far too much data. I personally don't see the benefits of this virtual magic carpet ride for the outlay required.

      There actually are things you can do in the C6 that you cannot do with goggles. For one - and to name something that I know is implementable and implemented - you can track body posturing and position within the C6 to make the experience more engaging/real. Any pictures just do not do this justice; the "seams" shown in the picture are not nearly as obvious in the real thing. On that note, I will say that I've nearly walked into the wall before (on the old system), and missed walking into the screen by a matter of about 6 inches.

      With respect to your other comment, the part about interoperability (The goggles would also have the benefit of being runnable on relatively standand class hardware), sometimes you want and need specialized solutions to do great things. Just because you or I cannot hope to afford such a system doesn't invalidate the system.

      • Neat! Someone who's been there. What sort of stuff was running on the display? What was the purpose? Anything you can tell us would be good - the article was a puff piece with a pretty picture.
        • They don't track body position in the C6. They use the C4 for that, and that part of the setup is pretty buggy anyways. This page has a decent runthrough of the projects they do http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/research/index.php [iastate.edu]. Mostly it's industrial simulations for John Deere, P&G, etc. I worked on one art project there that was kind of neat, but it really suffered from the technology. Hopefully having some better hardware will let them do some more visually engaging stuff, although I sort of doubt it.

          • They don't track body position in the C6. They use the C4 for that, and that part of the setup is pretty buggy anyways. This page has a decent runthrough of the projects they do http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/research/index.php [iastate.edu]. Mostly it's industrial simulations for John Deere, P&G, etc. I worked on one art project there that was kind of neat, but it really suffered from the technology. Hopefully having some better hardware will let them do some more visually engaging stuff, although I sort of doubt it.

            • I know we looked at doing something similar from a company in CA for the art project I mentioned, but the "posture" thing is news to me. When did they start looking at that? The C4 was pretty non-functional when I left.

              • I know we looked at doing something similar from a company in CA for the art project I mentioned, but the "posture" thing is news to me. When did they start looking at that? The C4 was pretty non-functional when I left.

                Well, the project (Icarus) that I mentioned was completed this semester in HCI 575x (Computer Perception). Throughout the semester I have been hearing that we'd like to include a couple of cameras in the C6 for body posture/pose/position tracking. While I can speculate that this has some

                • I'd be interested to know how they filter out background images... if the C4 setup relies on the fact that the top and back views are dark and basically unchanging, I'd guess they would have a hard time adapting it to a fully immersive environment. If they've found a way to compensate for that, though, then that's really impressive.
    • There is nothing this room can do that a decent set of VR goggles can achieve.
      Except create a display with high resolution.

      I mean, this thing has to produce a spherical projection for every single point in the viewers space, its got to be crunching far too much data.
      Data crunching is realivly easy. The real bottleneck comes when you need to dispaly all the points.

      I personally don't see the benefits of this virtual magic carpet ride for the outlay required.
      Me either, and I'm working with (only) a

    • Re:This looks really good, but also such a waste (Score:4, Informative)

      by foxcorner ( 873288 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:47PM (#15304390)
      There are no head-mounted displays that will deliver anything like the pixel resolution of a system like this. You simply wouldn't get the detail. And, the data infrastructure for this kind of project (where the aim is to visualize complex data) is not possible on "relatively standard class hardware". Another thing: In a cave environment like this, if you turn your head, the graphics view is updated only slightly or not at all. With a head-mount display, the whole scene has to swing round when you turn your head. If there's any latency in head-tracking (likely) or graphics rendering (possible), then the cave is much less unsettling per head-turn than is the head-mounted display. Less nausea. And another thing: you get a much larger peripheral view in a cave, leading to better understanding of context. Undisclaimer: I work for HP. :-)

      • Re:This looks really good, but also such a waste (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Surt ( 22457 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @05:59PM (#15304813) Homepage Journal
        A head mounted display doesn't have to have that kind of pixel resolution. The input resolution to your brain is only about ~10 million elements in the eye, so with an up close goggle you can get away with something like 2-3 million pixels with no loss of detail. The head tracking issue is more relevant, though presumably you can again do better with a HUD because you can do fast inertial measurement at the head rather than having to use smart cameras to track. Then assuming you have an equal amount of processing power available to create the scene, the hardware required to render it to goggles will be much cheaper and more conventional.

    • Another post mentions tracking movement as a good reason for it you can't really use googles for, but I'll go one better.

      How about it's great for having more than one person in there and you can point at a spot and keep talking. With googles you'd both have to be wearing them and you'd have to describe to the other person the point you are looking at.

      At least that's what I thought of.

      • The trouble is that this kind of environment doesn't usually work for more than one person. Reason #1: The projections are calculated for the location of the head-tracked user's eyes. With the stereo goggles on, everything makes sense... for him or her only. Reason #2: A six-sided cave usually has back-projection on all surfaces, including the floor. A perspex floor supported only at the very edges is unlikely to take more than one or two person's weight.
        • #1 -
          Yes, though head-tracking is typically only done for 1 user, there are ways to set it up with multiple head-tracks and render/shutter multiple times per application-frame. Further, the difference between tracked/non-tracked users is really only an issue for objects that are near the 'screen' or would be 'inside' the walls. Large-scale or large-distance viewing is not affected since the binocular disparity is so small.

          #2 -

          The floor of the old C6 could handle 7-8 people safely, which is about as m
    • From the second image in TFA, you can clearly see the student is wearing some sort of optical device. These are most definitely not your standard "VR goggles".

      About 8 or 9 years ago, I had an opportunity to spend some late-night time in the original "cave" (predecessor to the C4 and C6). The optical device that was used at the time employed computer-controlled polarizing lenses, along with sensors to determine the location and orientation (i.e. where the user was looking). The flight simulator applicat

    • There is one thing a CAVE system can do that the vast majority of HMDs can't, which is to provide true immersion within the virtual environment. By "true immersion", I mean a field-of-view (FOV) and resolution of display that is beyond anything any current HMD can do. With the resolution of this system, I would dare say that for the resulting FOV the number of pixels per degree is probably pretty outstanding. Likely close to 20/20 visual acuity, something no HMD on the market can do.

      Certainly, there might b

    • If you know of a set of good color goggles that exceed VGA resolution, please submit them.
    • MY EYES! The goggles, they do nothing!
  • Let the porn jokes cue in...

  • Atanasoff-Berry Computer (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ISU is home to the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the first electronic digital computer.

  • One last lame post (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:33PM (#15304304) Homepage Journal
    All the previous posts are lame as hell. I shouldn't add another one, but I have to point out the misuse of the word "ironic". Somebody seems to think that "ironic" means "sad coincidence". No, it means "incongruous circumstances". (There's actually several meanings of "ironic", but this is the one that comes closest to applying.) There's nothing incongruous about this. SGI went bankrupt because their specialized hardware got replaced by commodity hardware. The new VR room uses commodity hardware. No irony here, move along.
    • SGI went bankrupt...

      It's like the University could have gotten a free ride, but they already paid...

    • Re:One last lame post (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Joosy ( 787747 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @05:08PM (#15304530)
      According to Merriam-Webster's [m-w.com] ...
      3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity
      Given that SGI powered the first version of C6, and that C6 is receiving a massive upgrade, it would be an "expected result" that SGI would benefit. However, the "actual result" is that they declared bankruptcy on the same day. It could be said that this is an "incongruity." So it is not unreasonable to say that this is indeed ironic.
      • That still isn't irony. At best, it's syncronicity.

        SGI stopped being a market power and is collapsing. The C6 needed to be upgraded. Rather than go with a flailing has-been, a different provider was selected.

        It is a coincidence that on the same day that they filed bankruptcy, the upgrade was announced - hence syncronicity, not irony.

  • HP GPUs? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ragnarok ( 6947 )
    Does Hewlett-Packard actually make GPUs? I would think they would go with some off the shelf chips from Nvidia or ATI, surely those can push more pixels than anything else and they would have the advantage of a relatively standard API (opengl for example).

    Is there some very specialised requirement I'm not seeing here?

    • Re:HP GPUs? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Niet3sche ( 534663 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:42PM (#15304366)
      Does Hewlett-Packard actually make GPUs? I would think they would go with some off the shelf chips from Nvidia or ATI, surely those can push more pixels than anything else and they would have the advantage of a relatively standard API (opengl for example). Is there some very specialised requirement I'm not seeing here?

      I can only comment about the API - we're using something that is a standard (for us) and that fills in as nice middleware: VRJuggler [vrjuggler.org]. It sits atop (among other things) OpenGL.

    • They used to make GPUs (fx series, like fx5, fx10, fxe, etc.) for PA-RISC systems but not anymore. HP Workstations are nVidia and ATI powered now.
  • Can it play Mario Clash [wikipedia.org]?

  • RealityLens (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Would be cool if they coupled this with some sort of video camera that has the capability to capture the images this room is capable of displaying like http://www.realitylens.net/ [realitylens.net].

  • Poor quality (Score:5, Funny)

    by plumby ( 179557 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:39PM (#15304345)
    For 100 million pixels, the graphics of those planes look pretty crap.
    • That's because the image you see on TFA is 1/1300 of 100 million pixels. I bet that 1600x1200 high-res porn wouldn't look so great at 39x39 either.

      (I'm kidding. Well, mostly.)
      • In the C6, you can drag a web browser over the portion of the shared desktop that shows the various screens. The window shows only as an outline until you release the mouse. I once dropped the goatse image 6 feet tall across the front screen when demoing an app for some friends.

        I'm a bad, bad person :-( / >:-)

    • Re:Poor quality (Score:4, Funny)

      by momerath2003 ( 606823 ) * on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:48PM (#15304403) Journal
      It's all about the gameplay.
    • that could also be the old SGI's rendering their last images..maybe that's why they needed the upgrade!
    • The screenshots are from the old system, built circa 2000, which has about 1/16th the resolution.

    • For 100 million pixels, the graphics of those planes look pretty crap.

      Despite the impressive sounding headline figures, it's not actually that high resolution at all. 100 million pixels is approx 16.7 million per side of the cube. Now I have some 4.2 million pixels sitting in front of me as I type this. So it's only about 4 times the pixels of my current desktop, covering a 10'x10' wall, which I can assure you is much more than 4 times the display area that I have. In fact, the VR room is only around 33dp

    • For 100 million pixels, the graphics of those planes look pretty crap.

      For 500 sq ft area (600 with floor), they'd need at least 300 million pixels to look realistic.
  • My computer screen has 1600x1200 pixels. 100 million pixels would be 52 of these screens. Let's say there are 4 walls - that's 8 screens per wall...big deal :P Let me get out my check book...

  • Link to article text here (Score:3, Informative)

    by Niet3sche ( 534663 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @04:48PM (#15304406)

    5-8-06

    Contacts:

    James Oliver, Virtual Reality Applications Center, (515) 294-2649

    Chiu-Shui Chan, Architecture, (515) 294-8326

    Eve Wurtele, Genetics, Development and Cell Biology, (515) 294-8989

    Mark Bryden, Mechanical Engineering, (515) 294-3891

    Mike Krapfl, News Service, (515) 294-4917

    /

    The most realistic virtual reality room in the world

    AMES, Iowa -- More than $4 million in equipment upgrades will shine 100 million pixels on Iowa State University's six-sided virtual reality room.

    (image)C6 battlespace

    (image caption)Jared Knutzon, an Iowa State University graduate student in human computer interaction, demonstrates how Iowa State's C6 virtual reality room can control the military's unmanned aerial vehicles.

    That's twice the number of pixels lighting up any virtual reality room in the world and 16 times the pixels now projected on Iowa State's C6, a 10-foot by 10-foot virtual reality room that surrounds users with computer-generated 3-D images. That means the C6 will produce virtual reality at the world's highest resolution.

    Iowa State's C6 opened in June 2000 as the country's first six-sided virtual reality room designed to immerse users in images and sound. The graphics and projection technology that made such immersion possible hasn't been updated since the C6 opened.

    The difference between the equipment currently in the C6 and the updated technology to be installed this summer, "is like putting on your glasses in the morning," said James Oliver, the director of Iowa State's Virtual Reality Applications Center and a professor of mechanical engineering.

    The new equipment -- a Hewlett-Packard computer featuring 96 graphics processing units, 24 Sony digital projectors, an eight-channel audio system and ultrasonic motion tracking technology -- will be installed by Fakespace Systems Inc. of Marshalltown. The project is supported by a U.S. Department of Defense appropriation through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

    The project began this spring with a prototype upgrade to one wall of the C6. The remainder of the work will continue throughout the summer. Oliver said the improved C6 will open in the fall. A grand opening celebration is being planned for the spring of 2007.

    A better C6 will be good news for the Iowa State researchers who study virtual reality.

    Chiu-Shui Chan, an Iowa State professor of architecture, has used the C6 to develop 3-D models of buildings, cities and workplaces. He's studying how virtual reality can be a tool to create a library of historical buildings, plan urban growth and test workplace efficiency.

    (image)virtual Beijing

    (image caption) A virtual model of the Xidan business district in Beijing can help city planners manage urban growth.

    Chan said the upgrade will improve the visual realism and interactive speed of his virtual reality applications. And that will enhance the sense of place in his applications and the effectiveness of his research.

    Chan said the C6's existing technology requires him to balance and sacrifice some of a project's size, speed, realism or human-computer interaction. "With the new system I won't have to worry about that," he said.

    Eve Wurtele, an Iowa State professor of genetics, development and cell biology, working with Julie Dickerson, an Iowa State associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has used the C6 to develop new ways to visualize data from as many as 22,000 genes. She's also developing a virtual cell project that shows cells in 3-D action to help students learn about photosynthesis and other aspects of cell biology.

    Wurtele said the higher speeds and better pictures will be a boost for her research and teaching.

    "This upgrade is fantastic for us," she said. "It's essential for our research."

    Mark Bryden, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, has used virtual reality to develop engineering tools that he

  • vr pr0n would probably be the first to capitalize and commercialize this technology. but i think it's the virtual sex industry that will totally redefine how this technology is used. we see it in cheezy 80's sci-fi movies (ok, cheezy sci-fi movies in general) all the time; virtual sex in a virtual world, with a virtual woman of your dreams. yikes...
  • The ISU press release does not mention it, but the new C6 will be driven by open source technologies such as VR Juggler [vrjuggler.org], OpenSG [opensg.org], and of course, Linux.

  • Coral Cache Here (Score:2, Informative)

    by Niet3sche ( 534663 )
    Cache [nyud.net]

  • I just dont get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tester ( 591 ) <olivier.crete@ocre[ ]ca ['te.' in gap]> on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @05:01PM (#15304486) Homepage
    I just dont get why multi-million dollar visualisation equipement create better research. And I've work in a HPC research center where we have a very nice 3D screen powered by a massive SGI.. And never saw it used to any significant research, sure its a nice toy and its a nice way to blow research dollars. But what a waste. And anyways, most of the time, most researchers where doing their visuation in their offices with their PCs and nvidia/ati cards and their consumer grade crts.. And I'm sure they could see plenty.
    • Men buy sport's cars, women inflate their boobs, and graphics researchers get bigger screens. Sure, there's been research that says tiny ass screens make people less productive, but I haven't seen anything that says that a huge ass VR wall will advance research in any way shape or form. It's one of the major short comings of graphics research.. sometimes we get so wrapped up in the wow-factor, that the user studies are never done to figure out if the images that are displayed are actually useful. Too man

    • Re:I just dont get it (Score:3, Insightful)

      by erko ( 806441 )
      But with only one wall, you can't walk around and look at an object or visualization the way you would walk around a pillar. You can't lean over things and look at them from directly above or below. With a six-sided CAVE, you can. Being able to naturally move around 3D data has helped researchers discover new things in the same data they've looked at before with other methods.

      Also, although the article's picture shows three visible screens, when you're in the C6, you don't see them as separate screens
    • I work as the head of visualization at an HPC center, and I have to say that you are right in many cases. However, there are plenty of times when such a facility, or a Powerwall, is warranted. Let me try to outline some of the use cases:

      1. Public relations, presentation. These facilities are used all the time to present scientific results to program managers, collaborators, funding agencies, and the like. Don't underestimate the power of these types of presentations. Though it's not "real science," the

  • next best thing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Device666 ( 901563 )
    Of course such a room is very interesting for information visualisation. I think the next best thing is to hardwire a computer to our brain so we don't need a room for so much resolution. And this also would benefit better use of augmented reality [wikipedia.org]

    I went to ISAR in 2000 [augmented-reality.org], in those days even SGI's weren't getting close to get all the computing force AR typically needs. I wonder how AR is now developing. AR is maybe more interesting for interaction designers to make virtual interfaces for objects from the

  • Poor SGI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by couch_warrior ( 718752 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2006 @05:29PM (#15304660)
    I used to teach system admin and hardware repair courses for the Origin2000 and Onyx2 at SGI, and when the class was in Mountain View one module was to visit the "Reality Wall". That screen had only 24 Megapixels projected onto a 120 degree wrap around screen, but even at that the flight simulator was so realistic that students would fall out of their chairs when the plane took a curve.
    Poor old SGI. They built amazingly excellent hardware, bleeding edge software, paid their workers well, treated employees like kings and customers like emporers, and donated heavily to the open source movement.
    So, of course they went bankrupt.
    Done in by the Microslop-ization of technology.
    We who were once the high preists of the cult of technology, wizards of electronic wonder, have become the janitors of the Microsoft plumbing, fit only to plunge out the cr@p that clogs the email pipes.
    By allowing slackers in our ranks to use shrink-wrap scumware to badly execute business functions cheaply, we have fallen from grace.

    • Poor old SGI. They built amazingly excellent hardware, bleeding edge software, paid their workers well, treated employees like kings and customers like emporers, and donated heavily to the open source movement.

      SGI did a lot of things like you mentioned well, but treating their customers well - was a mixed bag in my opinion. Support was top-notch, just at about NetApp levels.

      Let's talk about sales.

      SGI Salespeople seemed to be constructed primarily out of ex-Porn producers replete with coke spoons around thei

      • I had to program on an Onyx4. I'll light that candle when they send me a check for all my wasted time trying to get fucking Mips to compile C++ standard compliant code.
      • I think what you observed was part of the death-spiral.

        A shrinking customer based caused SGI to "eat its own children" so to speak. They raised prices on parts and support to try to squeeze more revenue out of existing customers, which only caused them to have fewer existing customers.

        That was, as you have observed, mostly the fault of cocaine-snorting marketing types.

        After all, if you don't admit that negative things are happening, you can keep ignoring them until disaster strikes.
  • I'll take that bet and raise you 104,800,000 pixels.

    http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/hiperwall/ [apple.com]

    204,800,000 pixels - sans any dead ones.

    Cheers,
  • 100M pixels on a 10' cube means 100000000 / (120 * 120 * 6) = 1157 pixels:inch^2, or 34dpi. Typical screen resolution is 72dpi, so this "VR" is less than 1/4 the resolution we're used to. Though viewing from approximately 5' distance in the room, rather than 2' on a PC, compensates quite a lot. OTOH, at least half those pixels aren't seen by a single viewer (behind them), and most of the rest are seen only outside the hi-rez foveas in the middle of their eyes' view field.

    I'd be more impressed with a 10' cub

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