From: Joshua Larson-Mogal Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: SGI Evangelist, etc., etc. Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 21:33:34 -0800 Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Normally I would just keep my thoughts to myself, but I simply can't understand the vehemence with which Bob has chosen to attack Silicon Graphics. Robert Jacobson wrote: > > From: cyberoid@u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) > > Just a point of order. > > In an earlier post, I called to question SGI's press release's > focus on the negatives regarding virtual worlds. John Wann > replied (first quoting me), > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > >Does it help to keep reiterating this point? Haven't we been contrite > >long enough? It's time for some strokes for what we have accomplished. > > .......We're in the marketplace and must start delivering, not tinkering > >in > the lab to achieve the 99th percentile of perfection. > > This is pretty rich given that Bob seems to have strenously denied > (both through this medium and public meetings) that there have ever > been any problems. When was this "contriteness", or does he mean the > rest of us "running around in labs" trying to sort out the legacy left > by the massive explosion of virtual promise ("promise you virtually > anything") in the early 1990s. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > I doubt that John Wann has read very much if anything that I have > written. Had he, he would have seen that I have been one of the > harshest critics of hype in our field -- but not at the cost of > promise and hope, two essential conditions of human endeavor. People > in our field have eaten a lot of crow, much of it ingested at our own > hands; we don't need corpora- tions to tell us that we're sucky. If I'm not mistaken, Worldesign, Bob Jacobson's company is indeed incorporated. Why are his thoughts any more valid than those of Silicon Graphics? Just because Worldesign is the "little guy" and SGI is the big, evil corporate behemouth? I would hope not. We should all be able to state our thoughts on the field without fear of pernicious flaming. Silicon Graphics doesn't call anything "sucky". We simply want to help people understand that creating effective, safe VR applications is HARD! Being hard, it means that you just can't do it with any old computer or any old software. Applications must be efficient and must take full advantage of powerful compute and graphics hardware. We just don't want to see VR die an early death (like the early promise and failure of AI) due to excessive claims. > > Skepticism at SGI has a long and healthy history and, because of the > company's central role (at least until now) as the sole source of > usable technology, has seriously affected progress in our field. Affected? Has our development of the fastest graphics systems on the planet been such a detriment? We at Silicon Graphics are as aggressive as possible at bringing out high-performance graphics systems that meet our customers' needs. Onyx RealityEngine is widely accepted as the VR platform of choice because real applications demand real performance. If those customers of the Onyx systems could have used a PC, they would have. But VISUALIZE graphics wasn't enough...neither was CREATOR graphics. And neither will any of the new crop of low-cost 3D boards for PCs. They're all great for interactive graphics, but not for VR. In fact, most developers of REAL applications tell us that even RealityEngine2 is not fast enough. They don't say that it's not cheap enough - that's implicit. Everyone, including us, would to offer a high-performance VR machine for $10K, but it's not practical today for those doing real work. For games, sure. Heck, the Nintendo Ultra64 would make a great VR machine, guaranteeing 30Hz performance in real-time simulated worlds. No, Bob, for most real applications, people are looking past RealityEngine2 to our new InfiniteReality visualization systems. Are they cheap? No. Can they render complex virtual environments not possible on other machines in real-time? Absolutely. THAT is why people come to SGI. Not because they had no other options, but because we had the BEST options. We did then, and despite the influx of new 3D graphics systems, we still do, from IMPACT to InfiniteReality. > As they say, the proof is in the pudding and after eating all our > spinach, it's time for some dessert. Sorry Bob, the fact of the matter is that VR is still in the early stages of development. There is still much that we don't understand in the areas of cognitive perception. There are still no standards. Tracking and Display technologies are still quite immature and even graphics systems like InfiniteReality are suitable only to certain applications and are still inadequate for others. We have to build the gravy train before we can ride it (with apologies to non-Americans who may not catch the inference). You may have a business to run and want to cash in now, but we don't think it is time for anyone who isn't willing to take a long, hard look at what is possible today and evangelize and invest in the possible while educating people about the not-yet-practical. Optimism is good, Bob. Just not foolish optimism. Respectfully, Josh -- Joshua Larson-Mogal Manager, Enabling Technologies Group Advanced Systems Division Silicon Graphics Inc. 2011 North Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94039-7311 M/S 800 Tel: (415) 933-1460 Fax: (415) 964-8671 Pager: (800) 745-5748 (US/Canada Only) or Pager: (415) 254-9247 E-mail: mogal@sgi.com