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by ur-whale 1710 days ago
> mind blowing if you remember how powerful computers in 1994

In 1994, SGI workstations could pull off this kind of stuff rather effortlessly, the only "tricky" part was to get the LOD algorithm right.

So not that mind-blowing in practice.

It would only amazing if Terravision ran on a stock PC (did it?).
1 comments
the-rc 1710 days ago
Jones and Tanner created clip mapping, first in SGI hardware, then in software. That's what made Keyhole and thus Google Earth possible on consumer machines. Is the allegation that it was all stolen? They could have invalidated SGI's patents. And no, Terravision didn't run on a stock PC, it ran on Onyx hardware. Plus it relied on an ATM connection! Even then, the demo has a bunch of glitches and gaps, plus the zooming is so slow, all of which doesn't look like superior technology for Intrinsic/Keyhole to copy.
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ur-whale 1710 days ago
> Onyx hardware

Yeah, IIRC, those were the high-end of the SGI line, very beefy machines for that time, especially for I/O and graphics, so I stand by my comment.

[EDIT]: And thanks for clip mapping reference. For anyone interested in dynamic LOD algorithms, here's the paper:

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1145/280814.280855

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