grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) (09/03/90)
Our department recently got a NSF educational infrastructure grant for developing a scientific computing & visualization course for undergraduates. I'm on the hardware/software evaluation committee. We're currently expecting to use several general purpose computing machines (IBM RS600, DEC DS5000's HP, etc) and a couple of graphics systems. One aspect of the class is scientific visualization. Student will both use commercial systems and develop software using graphics libraries. So far, we've come to the conclusion that the SGI library is The Way To Go for student developed applications. Likewise, Wavefront is the current rave for animation. Are these impressions true, and are there other packages that are fairly standard and possibly more widely available? I would prefer comments from people actively working in the field, or from techs working for the various companies making rendering hardware or software. Thanks in advance. Dirk Grunwald -- Univ. of Colorado at Boulder (grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu) (grunwald@boulder.colorado.edu)
markv@gauss.Princeton.EDU (Mark VandeWettering) (09/04/90)
In article <25593@boulder.Colorado.EDU> grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu writes: >So far, we've come to the conclusion that the SGI library is The Way >To Go for student developed applications. Likewise, Wavefront is the >current rave for animation. Well, perhaps. Certainly I would agree with the SGI libraries for student development, they are relatively straightforward. >Are these impressions true, and are there other packages that are >fairly standard and possibly more widely available? > >I would prefer comments from people actively working in the field, or >from techs working for the various companies making rendering hardware >or software. I have spent the past week reviewing the apE system produced by Ohio State Supercomputer Center. Its really quite nice and should be available in the late Sept. timeframe for a nominal fee. It runs on virtually all workstations and is quite a nice system. Check it out when it is available Mark VandeWettering
rick@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini) (09/04/90)
In article <25593@boulder.Colorado.EDU> grunwald@foobar.colorado.edu writes: >Our department recently got a NSF educational infrastructure grant for >developing a scientific computing & visualization course for >undergraduates. >So far, we've come to the conclusion that the SGL library is The Way >To Go for student developed applications. Likewise, Wavefront is the >current rave for animation. If you want to concentrate on the problem of the best way to convert scientific information into shape-color-motion, consider one of the emerging visualization toolkits such as AVS or SunVision. Then you can spend less time on programming on spin that part off into a separate graphics programming course. One the toolkits could emerge as a standard, but it is too early to say. I suggest PHIGS (or Foley's SPHIGS) to SGI because it is at a higher level of abstraction. Again you spend less time on programming and more on understanding visualization. PHIGS is runs on several different workstations.