[vonpedal]

Hi everyone! First post!

I'm really interested in testing out vintage 3D applications on SGI hardware, with the first release of Alias especially peaking my interest. Anyone know how to get hold of a copy, and if it's possible to get it to run on say an O2?

Cheers

[jan-jaap]

[...], and if it's possible to get it to run on say an O2?

Hi, welcome!

Oldest I've seen is Alias/3 and that's a COFF binary. Meant to run on IRIX 4.x, though it will run on IRIX 5.x apparently. But the O2 runs IRIX 6.3 and newer and those cannot execute COFF binaries, only ELF.

So the answer is going to be 'no'. In fact, Wikipedia says Alias/1 was unveiled in 1985 at SIGGRAPH '85 in San Francisco. That predates the MIPS workstations; if it ran on SGI hardware at all it must have been the 68K IRIS series. This page has some more Alias history. It also says

Steve Williams (ex-Alias) went to ILM to help create the pseudopod creature in the 1989 movie The Abyss. Alias 2.4.2 was chosen by Williams for modeling because it was patch-based (B-splines) instead of polygons. The software ran on SGI 4D/70G and 4D/80GT workstations.

The 4D Professional Series were the very first MIPS/IRIX series. NB: I'd love a copy of that software, I have a 4D/70GT and would like to run some contemporary software on it.

Alias merged into Alias|Wavefront in '95, the O2 was introduced in '96. Your best bet is to look for something from the A|W era.

[Intuition]

Yeah, I've always wondered what Alias 1 looked like. I have seen the screens in the making of for The Abyss which I assumed were Alias 2 or 3.

This is a similar case to Houdini where the first version wasn't called Houdini, it was called Prisms, even though I do believe there is a Houdini 1.0 after Prisms.

Too bad we don't have those software threads from Nekochan. Those writeups were so detailed and contained likely the best history lessons on each one.

[rootsquasher]

the first release of Alias especially peaking my interest. Anyone know how to get hold of a copy, and if it's possible to get it to run on say an O2?

As Jan-Jaap said, ALIAS/1 was released in 1985. In my personal research I have it documented that in that same year ('85) Alias Research ported ALIAS/1 to the IRIS workstation. This would have made ALIAS/1 available on the following systems:

• IRIS 2300 Series workstation
  

• IRIS 2400 Series workstation
  

• IRIS 2500 Series workstation
  

It's not possible to run ALIAS/1 on an O2. The O2 has a MIPS CPU and runs IRIX, while the IRIS 2x00 Series workstations have a Motorola 68010 CPU and run IRIS Workstation Software Distribution GL2-W2.x; where '.x' is Silicon Graphics' update to their port of AT&T UNIX System V Release 0. With the '.4' version, IRIS Workstation Software Distribution GL2-W2.x would be truncated to just GL2-W2.x.

IRIS 2x00 Series workstation (will run ALIAS/1)

• IP2 (or PM2) board
  

• Motorola 68010 CPU
  

• GL2-W2.x
  

• Bell file system or EFS (Extent File System)
  

Vs.

O2 (will not run ALIAS/1)

• IP32 board
  

• MIPS Rx CPU
  

• IRIX 6.3 or later
  

• XFS (eXtents File System)
  

[rootsquasher]

I have seen the screens in the making of for The Abyss which I assumed were Alias 2 or 3.

There was an ALIAS/2. I have it documented that ALIAS/2 was released for IRIS workstations in 1986. This would have made ALIAS/2 available on the following:

IRIS 2x00T Series (running GL2-W2.x):

• IRIS 2300T Series workstation
  

• IRIS 2400T Series workstation
  

• IRIS 2500T Series workstation
  

IRIS 3xxx Series (running GL2-W3.x):

• IRIS 3020 Series workstation
  

• IRIS 3030 Series workstation
  

• IRIS 3110 Series workstation
  

• IRIS 3115 Series workstation
  

• IRIS 3120 Series workstation
  

• IRIS 3130 Series workstation
  

As mentioned by Jan-Jaap and seen in The Making of 'The Abyss', by ALIAS/2.4.2 Alias Research had ported ALIAS to the IRIS-4D Series (MIPS R2000 CPU). Depending on how diligent ILM was about updating the OS and if the CGI was done in 1988 or first half of 1989, the Professional Iris 4D/70G and Professional Iris 4D/80GT systems with ALIAS/2.4.2 would have been running either 4D1-2.x (would be IRIX 2.x) or 4D1-3.x (IRIX System V Release 4D1-3.x).