The first thing I noticed when seeing the SGI demos for the first time is that the menu UI is strikingly similar to the file select screen in Super Mario 64.
Of course, Nintendo 64 was developed in partnership with Silicon Graphics, so there's a clear connection, and I'm far from the first to make this observation. Still, I feel as though there must be some untold history where perhaps it was used as a placeholder menu early in development, but the team grew fond of it and eventually used the same effect for the final release.
Mario 64 had undercurrents of a dreamy, abstract, dare-I-say vaporwave-y quality that I attribute to the undersung influence of SGI specifically and early American 3D animation in general on its development that I think is a big part of its enduring appeal; the Galaxies and Odyssey are technically superior and more polished and certainly classics in their own right, but even among younger generations it seems like Mario 64 remains the definitive 3D Mario.
My favourite demonstration of this is a comparison between The Secret Aquarium bonus stage [0] with one of the animations in The Mind's Eye [1] (technically this is from Symbolics rather than SGI, but 3D animators of the time were in metaphorical conversation with each other), but this is maybe the most explicit example of just how direct that connection was.
Spent many (un)happy hours in front of both SGI Indy and SGI O2 during my PhD...
High point was definitely when we found out that if you telnetted to another box you could remotely play audio clips and the operator typically had no idea what was going on. Every single device ended up with a collection of Star Wars audio clips ... :)
Ahh... the required "guest" account with no password on it.
In SGI tech support (East team '96, Unix team '97 - my Indigo was dewi.csd.sgi.com), it was the way we copied files around (the Troops had just come out) and also had a internal tool that would pop up a window on someone else's machine to get their attention (if they weren't directly paying attention to the multicast chat program...)
I remember SGIs having incredibly poor security, at least with IRIX 5.x. Authentication for X11 was totally non-existent in the default configuration. If someone was logged in from the console, you could pop windows up on their screen (and sniff the keyboard) from remote.
Something similar was possible with a PDP and teletypes at undergrad in the 70s. We had great fun sending (what looked like) operator messages to users telling them to log off or their teletype would BLOW UP.
And if you were teenage college students way more risque clips than Star Wars :-) One of my fondest memory is when a sophomore buddy of mine does a telnet and sets the display to local ip and starts clicking on random audio files. The operator on the other side is a freshman. Comes running to the other room sees my bud and being one year senior asks - dude that SGI is making weird noises. Realizing what has happened my buddy quips - ah it makes those noises when it is heavily loaded :-D
Another issue some SGI (O2) had: they didn't clear the entire video/memory buffer between logins. So, occasionally, when you logged in on the console, you'd see random images from the previous user on the screen. Apparently the user before me was frequently surfing porn :(. After that the group lead updated the MOTD to explicitly say that was not allowed.
you could do this on macs too with the "say" command. Back in late 2000s we were utilizing the xcode method of pooling developer workstations together to increase build speed. This meant most of us just shared creds and allowed colleagues to shell-in or remote-in to change settings etc. I am sometimes guilty of shelling in and running say "i can't do that dave" or something to random unsuspecting colleages.
Like raising dinosaurs from their blood found in amber-encapsulated mosquitoes dug up in mines deep underground, archaic software has been resurrected with modern technology because computer scientists were so excited they could, they didn't stop to ask if they should!
That 3d file manager was called 'fsn'. Then there is a gtk/Linux port called 'fsv'. I maintain a version updated to gtk+3 at https://github.com/jabl/fsv . Unfortunately life has gotten in the way and I haven't had the time to port to gtk4 nor add some missing features.
When that movie came out, I was in school and living in special interest housing for computer science students. A bunch of us went to see the movie together, and when she said that line we all erupted in laughter, much to the confusion of the rest of the theater.
I started my career at Oracle in 1994, and I still remember what a big deal it was when the Silicon Graphics (wasn’t officially SGI yet) “Magic Bus” would come and park in the Redwood Shores parking lot and we would all line up to go inside and see some of these demos. I felt at the time like I was really in the future.
Similar timing, I had a high school internship at the National Cancer Institute at Ft. Detrick, MD in 1994-95, and the lab down the hall had some SGI iron and a glove (I don't remember what the glove hardware was, if it was SGI or 3rd-party or custom) for manipulating 3D renders of folded proteins. Incredible stuff, same "in the future" feeling.
Around 1995 or 1996, a friend said he'd played a speederbike graphics/game demo running on an SGI system at some kind of touring SGI promotional event.
I've never been able to find screenshots or video of it, and was hoping it might be included here. No such luck. I don't suppose anyone remembers it?
I don't think so. His description was that it was speeder bikes in a forest, like Return of the Jedi, but it was mostly a demo of the graphics capabilities, not a complete game.
e.g. I remember he specifically said you could fly in any direction you wanted, but there was a wall at the edge of the forest, as opposed to it wrapping around or having a non-inmersion-breaking reason for being constrained to the one area.
Did you actually provide a shorts link? What's the world coming to? At first, I thought maybe it makes sense since it could be updated for mobile. Nope. It immediately changed aspect ratio so it is portrait oriented piece with letter boxing. :face-palm: yet another square peg/round hole example
otherwise, looks like it might be fun to play for a few minutes
The bounce demos all show the x29.. I wanted to see the Martini and the WV in particular, I remember those as very impressive at the time (shadowing etc).
Maybe I have to fire up my old SGI Octane..
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Of course, Nintendo 64 was developed in partnership with Silicon Graphics, so there's a clear connection, and I'm far from the first to make this observation. Still, I feel as though there must be some untold history where perhaps it was used as a placeholder menu early in development, but the team grew fond of it and eventually used the same effect for the final release.
Here's a decent comparison: https://www.resetera.com/threads/super-mario-64-took-its-3d-...
My favourite demonstration of this is a comparison between The Secret Aquarium bonus stage [0] with one of the animations in The Mind's Eye [1] (technically this is from Symbolics rather than SGI, but 3D animators of the time were in metaphorical conversation with each other), but this is maybe the most explicit example of just how direct that connection was.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARbWJX-P1oM
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYBes8ki3lo
High point was definitely when we found out that if you telnetted to another box you could remotely play audio clips and the operator typically had no idea what was going on. Every single device ended up with a collection of Star Wars audio clips ... :)
In SGI tech support (East team '96, Unix team '97 - my Indigo was dewi.csd.sgi.com), it was the way we copied files around (the Troops had just come out) and also had a internal tool that would pop up a window on someone else's machine to get their attention (if they weren't directly paying attention to the multicast chat program...)
That plus the lack of a default /etc/shadow, because reasons, made for fun times. ;-)
1/10 for usefulness but 10/10 for cool
I will not spoil it but for those not in the know: https://imdb.com/title/tt0107290/
Deleted Comment
I've never been able to find screenshots or video of it, and was hoping it might be included here. No such luck. I don't suppose anyone remembers it?
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/imguo4oUd-c?app=desktop
e.g. I remember he specifically said you could fly in any direction you wanted, but there was a wall at the edge of the forest, as opposed to it wrapping around or having a non-inmersion-breaking reason for being constrained to the one area.
otherwise, looks like it might be fun to play for a few minutes