From: Jerry Isdale Subject: Re: PROD: Question about VR hardware and authoring kits Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 09:41:31 -0700 Message-ID: <337353BB.6FF8@illusioninc.com> Organization: Illusion Inc > In article > Joshua Swamidas writes: > > JS> We have a limited budget to buy a good machine and the > JS> software ($15-18,000 Cdn). There are so many options out there so Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote: > If you are lucky, you may > get an O2, all your software, a SpaceBall, CrystalEyes glasses and > still have change enough for pizza. > An O2 plus spaceBall plus CrystalEyes plus software plus some pizza (no beer or soda) for less than $18,000Cdn ??? Will that O2 include memory, disks, monitors, keyboards, mice? Maybe a used and abused O2? For much less than that you can get a decently working VR system out of either an NT or 95 box (and still be able to use the same system for doing other work - what recent released office software is available for SGI boxes for less than $500? that can read/write files from your co-workers?) I'm sitting at a Dual-Pentium Pro WinNT 4.0 system with 4Gb disk, 128Mb ram, sound card, dual-Ethernet boards and a 21" monitor. That much cost us about $6,000US last fall. I just bought 20 similar boxes (ok, so they have 1gb disks an 15" monitors but they are for the installation, not developers) for under $2000. (add 1k for 4Gb disk upgrade, 1.8k for 21" monitor and we're back at maybe 4k). With the release of P-II and MMX boxes, P6 system prices are falling fast. MMX is not terribly useful for real VR systems, since it co-opts the floating point registers. If you want to work in integer (or fixed point) its great, but not for general 3d graphics. Now add say a good 3dfx based graphics board (the mid range boards from Quantum or maybe even one of the SLI boards) for $1-3k. You're up to $7kUS. That leaves a lot of room for commercial (or freeware) software and VR peripherals (btw, I got a couple homebrew gloves/glasses if ya want em.) Another nice thing about the PC architecture vs SGI is that is a lot easier to add weird hardware. How much does a multi-channel digital+d/a-a/d board run for an SGI box? How well does an O2 handle sound generation inside while running graphics? Can you add a $200 sound board and get decent 3d sound? Dont get me wrong. I wouldnt mind having an O2 or some other high end SGI box around. However, I would rather the company/school be able to pay salaries or buy some other "toys" to augment the system. Jerry Isdale