Stardent's Application Visualization System (AVS) on SGI boxes ??

[James Helman]

>From what I've seen AVS looks like a prototype, albeit a good one, of
what a visualization environment should be.  It will be quite some
time before AVS or its successors actually have enough capabilities to
match custom, application specific, scientific visualization software.
But for a general purpose tool, it's not bad.

At a recent demostration at Stardent, they indicated that AVS is being
ported to Dore for use on the Ardent Titan machines.  The port
involves the writing of a graphics independent level, which should
make it easier to port to other architectures.  I too would like to
see AVS on our 4D machines.  When or whether it will happen is
anybody's guess.  Even Stardent and SGI may not know yet.

Also, the problem with porting prototypes is that the original may be
changing so fast that the porters can't keep up.

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics			P.O. Box 10494
Stanford University				Stanford, CA 94309
(jim at thrush.stanford.edu) 			(415) 723-4940