Post #894198

2026-03-30 22:05 UTC

Never looked at the specs of the original SGI RealityEngine, and holy shit https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/166117.166131 this is completely bonkers for 1993. Just look at these boards! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealityEngine#/media/File:SGI-re2-ge10v.jpg (this is actually a RealityEngine 2 Geometry Engine) and a Raster Manager board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealityEngine#/media/File:SGI-re2-rm4.jpg no wonder these things cost $infinity

Replies (6)

@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 22:07

They had 8 geometry engines (first image) and either 5, 10 or 20 Fragment Generators (second image) why, yes, every FG had a copy of _the entire texture memory_

Open ##1489172
@FunkyBob@chaos.social 2026-03-30 22:13

@rygorous So many i860s! From one of those times intel took a risc...

Open ##1489273
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 22:30

@rygorous Interesting: "true HDTV (1920 x 1035) resolution" I wonder where that specific rez came from. The 1.85 ratio seems common in cinema, but then they combined it with 1920 wide.

Open ##1489274
@BenHouston3D@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 22:41

@rygorous I got to try one at Canada’s NRC in summer 1998 with lcd shutter glasses on - I think it did head tracking in a cave installation. They (NRC) had the largest installation of SGI machines in Canada at the time. I spent the summer writing software for the O2.

Open ##1489283
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-03-30 22:48

@rygorous "In February 1995, SGI reduced the entry price of Reality Station to US$179,540" "Reduced" and "entry price" are doing a lot of heavy lifting here. At the time, a brand new Ferrari F355 cost $128k.

Open ##1489284
@bosak@flx.masto.host 2026-03-30 23:16

@rygorous I worked then for Sun, SGI's friendly competitor for the engineering workstation market just down the road. We had them beat for financial systems, but weren't any competition at all when it came to graphics, especially animation. Nobody else was, either.

Open ##1489295