davek@Stardent.COM (David Kamins @stardent) (03/02/90)
The following is in response to the various conversations between Ian Hoyle, James Helman, Sam Fulcomer, and Tony Facca regarding Stardent's AVS: AVS provides end-user scientists and engineers with a rich set of visualization capabilities in a fully reconfigurable, extensible environment. It is not intended to compete with "custom, application specific, scientific visualization software" (James Helman), but rather to enable the scientist or engineer to achieve a fast and reliable solution to a broad range of visualization problems without programming. AVS is not a prototype - it is a fully supported product. Version 2.0 was distributed to all Stardent 2000 users, and will be distributed to all Stardent 1500 and Stardent 3000 users in about a month. AVS currently supports two rendering libraries, PHIGS+ and Dore. The "graphics independent level" (James Helman) has been a part of AVS since its original design. The recent port to Dore has substantiated the value of AVS' portable architecture - it was quick and painless. Stardent has not ported AVS to an Iris (re Tony Facca's mail). AVS Source code licenses are available only to Stardent customers and system vendors with whom we've entered into a contractual agreement. We have many exciting porting plans underway, although it is too early to make a general announcement about these. David Kamins (davek@stardent.com) Manager, Visualization Software Stardent Computer Inc. (Newton)