4D/70 question

[jim frost]

>We have a 4D/70G which seems to run graphics very slowly compared to
>older Iris models.  Is there some test we can do (benchmark?) to find
>out if the G option is in fact installed and working properly?  Is it
>possible that the 4Sight windowing system is the cause of this slowdown?

We ran into this same problem when porting our application from the
3000's to the 4D.  The biggest slowdown we had was because the default
shading model was different; changing it to flat (we use the machine
as a blindingly fast 2D machine) was a substantial improvement.  Also,
check out the list suggested functions in the porting guide.  They say
that many of the 3000 compatibility functions run substantially slower
(10X is the figure they quote) than the newer ones.  We did find
improvements when using these functions, especially on GT's.  Be
careful -- the newer functions were not implemented in some of the
older gl libraries that were shipped; the original 3.01 release had
quite a few that would print out "<func> is not implemented".  3.01C
(I believe this is the current release) works fine.  The flight
simulator has many nice improvements, too.

The 3000's still seem to outperform the 4D's in some things, at least
with our product, but that may be a result of the design of our
graphics routines.

About 4Sight:  it's not the greatest, but compared to mex it's
fantastic.  If it only supported a meta key....

jim frost
associative design technology
madd at bu-it.bu.edu