20 Apr
2006
20 Apr
'06
8:17 a.m.
Scott Quinn wrote:
Yep, that counts too :)
For instance,
some of the late 80's / early 90's hardware from the likes of
SGI are pretty impressive in abilities and architecture - using concepts that
have only hit the mainstream in the last few years - but of course they're by
no means 'earliest'...
What about mid-80's SGI? I have an '86 vintage system with 12x geometry
engines
and 32 bitplanes - granted it's not Skywriter/VGXT or Reality Engine,
but compared with other graphics from the time it's pretty hot.
Wow, that's not bad at all. My Tek XD88's a couple of years later than that
(and they were considered pretty hot on the graphics front) and is only 8
planes and the equivalent of 4 GE's. Although I've not seen Tek's model 30
XD88 (mine's a model 10) - that had 24bit visuals and may well have had a
similar spec to your SGI. I'm almost certain that it included z-buffer too
(but it *was* a couple of years later than your SGI).
I fear that it doesn't have a Z-buffer, though
(not completely sure yet).
Hmmm, is this an IRIS 3xxx machine (680x0 CPU)? The SGI IRIS FAQ seems to
suggest that bitplane bords could be chained together to make various
combinations of total planes. I would have thought that sort of modularity was
at the expense of more complex features like z-buffer though...
cheers
Jules