sgi-demos

SGI demos from long ago, running in your browser today.

Old problems require modern solutions.

This is the original SGI demo source code, compiled for the web using Emscripten and SDL2. Rendering is done using an IRIS GL software rasterizer from the Alice 4 project. Event handling is done by SDL2, with events translated into GL’s event system. Each demo is a separate web page, with its own Javascript + WASM compiled by Emscripten from the original C/C++ source. Minimal modifications have been made to the original source, in order to run in the browser and to work with compilers 35 years newer.

Working demos

• Buttonfly
• Bounce
• Ideas
• Insect
• Jello
• Logo
• Twilight

Somewhat working demos

• Flight (cockpit glitches, planes too slow in web version, night mode ‘shimmers’, no network play)
• Newave (no mesh editing, no popup menus, only wireframe)
• Arena (no network play)

To do

• Rendering via OpenGLES/WebGL (WIP)
• Arbitrary window size
• Run GL demo in its own WASM worker/thread, to avoid slicing up the code for SDL’s event loop
• Popup menus, including the classic SGI menu font
• More demos, all the demos.
  • Electropaint, Cedit, any other IRIS GL demos I can find
  • Then OpenGL, GLUT, Inventor, Performer demos in no particular order
• Rudimentary context for each demo: name, author, year (as text in lower corner), code link
• Virtual mouse and keyboard:
  • Only display virtual keys and mouse functions used by the demo; use demo’s qdevice() calls to determine this
  • Displayed as transparent virtual mouse and key pictures overlaid on demo
  • On always for touch devices
  • On/off for mouse/keyboard devices, as hints
• Description/history/context for each demo - can obtain some descriptions from .Info slide files
• Man page live links

Build instructions

Mac

1. Install Homebrew if you don’t have it, then get SDL2 and Emscripten:

   brew install SDL2
   brew install emscripten
   

2. Build:

   git clone https://github.com/sgi-demos/sgi-demos.git
   cd sgi-demos
   make
   

Windows

1. Install Winget if you don’t have it.

2. Install MSYS2 from cmd.exe, in order to get the clang compiler:

   winget install MSYS2.MSYS2
   setx PATH "%PATH%C:\msys64\clang64\bin"
   

3. Install clang toolchain and SDL2 in MSYS2 CLANG64 shell:

   pacman -Syu
   pacman -S base-devel mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-toolchain
   pacman -S mingw-w64-clang-x86_64-SDL2
   

4. Clone emscripten from Github. Cloning seems to work best with MSYS2 rather than using pacman. Follow the default install directions, not the Windows directions!

5. Add this line to the ~/.bashrc file in MSYS2 CLANG64 shell:

   source /path/to/emsdk/emsdk_env.sh
   

6. Build:

   git clone https://github.com/sgi-demos/sgi-demos.git
   cd sgi-demos
   make
   

Credits

• Everyone who worked at SGI, for the eye candy and the baller computers.
• The Alice 4 folks, for the inspiration and the GL implementation.
• Emscripten and SDL teams, for making a web port possible.
• Internet Archive, Bitsavers, WinWorld, IRIXNet, and others, for saving the history.

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