diff --git a/doc/introduction.html b/doc/introduction.html index 7493aa4e0..0df724b75 100644 --- a/doc/introduction.html +++ b/doc/introduction.html @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ from implementing and optimizing low level graphics calls, and provide many addi rapid development of graphics applications.

-The project was started as a hobby by Don Burns in early 1999, as means of porting a hang gliding simulator written on top of the +The project was started as a hobby by Don Burns in 1998, as means of porting a hang gliding simulator written on top of the Peformer scene graph running on IRIX to what was then a humble Linux PC. In mid 1999, Robert Osfield began helping out with the simulator development and ported the scene graph element to Windows. In september 1999 the source code was open sourced, and the openscenegraph.org website was born, with Robert taking over as project lead and Don remaining focused on the hang @@ -67,6 +67,10 @@ the rapid, yet seamless adoption of latest graphics technologies.

+

Don has since formed his own company +Andes Computer Engineering and participates in the development and support of OpenSceneGraph as well as +complimentary projects like +OpenProducer and BlueMarbleViewer.

What is a Scene Graph?

@@ -94,7 +98,7 @@ scientific and commercial visualization, training through to modeling programs.

-Advantages that Scene Graphs provide

+Advantages that Scene Graphs Provide The key reasons that many graphics developers uses scene graphs are Performance, Productivity, Portability and Scalability: @@ -113,6 +117,7 @@ will thrash between states, stalling the graphics pipeline and destroying graphi througput. As GPU's get faster and faster, the cost of stalling the graphics is also going up, so scene graphs are becoming ever more important. +

  • Productivity
  • Scene graphs take away much of the hard work required to develop high performance graphics applications. The scene graph manages @@ -128,6 +133,7 @@ and images. All this together allows the user to achieve a great deal with very little coding. A dozen lines of code can be enough to load your data and create an interactive viewer! +

  • Portability
  • Scene graphs encapsulate much of the lower level tasks of rendering graphics and reading and writing data, reducing or even @@ -135,6 +141,7 @@ eradicating the platform specific coding that you require in your own applicatio If the underlying scene graph is portable then moving from platform to platform can be as simple as recompiling your source code. +

  • Scalability
  • Along with being able to dynamic manage the complexity of scenes automatically to account for differences in graphics performance @@ -174,6 +181,7 @@ of massive terrain databases interactively, examples of this approach can be found at Vterrain.org and TerrainEngine.com, both of which integrate with the OpenSceneGraph. +

  • Productivity
  • Combining lessons learned from established scene graphs like Performer and Open Inventor, with modern software engineering @@ -214,6 +222,7 @@ found at openscenegrph.org/download/ one can find examples of applications written on top of GLUT, Qt, MFC, WxWindows and SDL. Users have also integrated it with Motif, and X. +

  • Scalability
  • The scene graph will not only run on portables all the way up to Onyx Infinite Reality Monsters, but also supports the multiple