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by sjm-yc-acct 2808 days ago
SGI's 3D APIs, OpenGL and Open Inventor, were sublimely innovative. Some of us are even trying to keep Open Inventor alive:

https://bitbucket.org/Coin3D/coin/wiki/Home

https://common-lisp.net/project/clive

I wish more tech businesses were about the greatest common factor, and not the least common denominator. If I could find a place like SGI to work, I would camp on their doorstep until they let me in.

1 comments

The thing about SGI back in the day was that it was more fun to work in TV, movies, geology, weather forecasting, serious computing at a respectable university and so on. I never aspired to work for SGI but knowing how to turn the behemoths on and type a few commands kind of got me working in disciplines that normally required extraordinary levels of study and professional dedication, e.g. meteorology.

I am glad that Open Inventor lives on!

However, IRIS Explorer, remember that one? That was awesome and I wish it existed today. My peak time for playing with IRIS Explorer was when I had my first SGI box, an early purple box Indigo. I think I had the super-deluxe 'Elan' model, but that was still under-powered for Iris Explorer. In latter times when I had a small fleet of Onyxii and O2s at my disposal I didn't have access to IRIS Explorer.

NAG in the UK bought IRIS Explorer and didn't port it to more modern computers. At least this was a better fate than what happened to CosmoWorlds, this was sold to Computer Associates who killed it.

In an odd way I think that the world was better when it cost $100000 to have a decent computer on your desk. You valued your time more.