Hi Robert, Yes, the live bootable CD is a very interesting concept. I made something like that based on Knoppix years ago, that proof of concept used Mesa IIRC. It was like October 2002 and primarily a demo of VTP w/ my Eldorado Springs database. Have to find the .iso, rediscover what I actually did back then.
More recently, a interesting project making progress in exactly this direction is myOS http://www.geocities.com/ze_aks/myos.html It's a bootable GL demo system that can fit on a 180MB miniCD. The versions I find most interesting are v1.1.9 or v1.0.3, which run X-less GL for a super low-overhead environment. Those versions of myOS use the SciTech SNAP/MGL drivers http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/dev/mgl_home.html cheers -- mew On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 2:11 PM, Robert Osfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi All, > > Over the last few years I have seen a few trends in hardware and > software that made me curious about the possibility that soon it might > be quite easily to put together an operating system and our own > applications together as one physical piece of media, and distribute > this as a self contained turn key system. I'm not on my own in > considering this as there are now a few Linux Live CD's that are > dedicated to running just a signal application - Myth TV + Linux > distributions are probably the most obvious one today, but there even > items like CAD apps now being distributed this way. > > What makes this area of particular intererst to me is that some > applications which can be treated as a turn key systems are games and > simulators, these are of course bread and butter apps for scene > graphs. For the turn key application developer I see and advantage > in that you can control the whole software enviornment, taking you a > step closer to the type of fixed system that a Console developer can > work to. Or course PC hardware is far more varied than Console is, > but thankfully OpenGL and a decent OS can hide much of these variants > for causing us too much concern. > > What strikes me as madness right now is that you get games written > with DirectX 9.0 implementation for Windows XP, DirectX 10.0 > implementation for Windows Vistsa, and an OpenGL implementation for > Linux and OSX is such ports are done - the madness is that all these > versions of the software, all these different binary distribution that > have to be created and tested all just target the same PC hardware, > the only thing causing all this extra work is that there are just so > many OS variants around. Alas its so much hardware to maintain all of > these distributions that often games developers just target a single > OS, so all the other OS users that have the same hardware are out of > luck. > > Now if one bundles the OS + application together, placing it on a USB > flash disk and boot from this disk then the actual OS installed on a > PC becomes irrelevant, just take your key with you plugin it, boot the > machine and there you have a PC hardware acting like a Console. With > the cost of USB flash disks coming down it won't be too long before > the cost of it won't be significant chunk of the cost of software. > The same can be done for CD's and DVD's, performance isn't so stellar > of course. If you do have a full blown turn key system then there is > nothing stopping you from installing the Application System directly > on the hard disk. > > There are technical hurdles with going for such approach, and is only > really appropriate for certain classes of apps, but I'd guess that > there are number of OSG users that might just fit this category quite > nicely, or perhaps find it advantageous to have the ability to deliver > their software in this way. Perhaps OSG users are already doing this, > or are considering. > > The purpose of this email is to throw this possibility out there, and > to get feedback from OSG users who might find such an means of > distribution useful. There are members of the community far better > placed to actual go ahead and implement such a system too so I'd be > nice to hear from guys with more knowledge on the OS side. There are > already tools for creating Live CD's, I haven't played with them yet, > but perhaps in a few years I'll have time to... > > Perhaps even one day we'll been able to have a few pages on the OSG > wiki about how to create your own OSG app Live CD/USB distribution ;-) > > Robert. > _______________________________________________ > osg-users mailing list > osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org > http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org > -- Mike Weiblen -- Austin Texas USA -- http://mew.cx/ _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
