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SYMBOLICS S-PACKAGES 3D GRAPHICS AND ANIMATION DEMO

Red Martian

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14K views13 years ago4 recommendations

Graphics and audioHistory and cultureRenderingRetro computingHistory of computing

A 1980s demonstration of the Symbolics Graphics Division's Lisp-based S-Packages 3D color graphics and animation system.

Symbolics Graphics Division demonstration of the S-PACKAGE 3D color graphics system. This software was later used to develop the Nintendo 64.

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Engineers recommend it as a fascinating historical look at advanced Lisp-based 3D modeling and animation capabilities from the 1980s.

loosetypeson Hacker News • Recommends

On “How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language”

For whatever reason I really enjoyed the Symbolics graphics and animations demo0 linked in the article. I was born in the 90s and have constantly heard the narrative that technological progress is getting faster and faster, and that we're currently at the forefront. And then I see something like this. They had basically photoshop before I was even alive!? 0 link to this video
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pjmlpon Hacker News • Recommends

On “On Repl-Driven Programming”

…o be amazed with what Xerox PARC and others were doing, while Bell Labs was busy pushing for UNIX. "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" link "Emulating a Xerox Star (8010) Information System Running the Xerox Development Environment (XDE) 5.0" link "Documents as User Interfaces Video Demo" link "SYMBOLICS S-PACKAGES 3D GRAPHICS AND ANIMATION DEMO" link to this video "Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk" link "Action!, the worlds first dynamic interface builder - 1988" (Interface Builder percursor, written in Lisp) link "The Interlisp programming environment" link And the cherry, how Lucid used Lisp ideas for their Energize C++ IDE, including an image based format for AST stora…
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mepianon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The computers used to do 3D animation for Final Fantasy VII in 1996”

I'm glad the middle screen is explained, Symbolics always gets overshadowed by SGI. If you want to see it in action, watch this: link to this video
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hcarvalhoalveson Hacker News • Recommends

On “The Rise of Worse Is Better (1991)”

See these demos for the kinds of interactive systems LISP enabled back in the day: link link to this video It makes working on VSCode today look like banging rocks together, let alone 30 years ago.
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mjnon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why Did Symbolics Fail? (2009)”

…rest of their business, despite not being AI and there being no "graphics winter". Perhaps steamrollered by Silicon Graphics, and the same trends towards Unix and commodity CPUs? Or not marketed well enough, by a company whose public materials focused too exclusively on Lisp+AI? Some bits from that era: the S-Package 3d modeling/animation system ( link to this video ), the PaintAmation package ( link ), and the first HDTV processing on a workstation ( link ).…
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lispmon Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]”

There was never a really cheap Lispm. The 'cheap' ones were a Mac II + TI microexplorer or the Mac II + MacIvory. But developer workstations were always expensive - Lispm or not - or underpowered. What was also expensive was the software. I got a KEE license on a used machine I was given. I think it cost $50k. Similar Symbolics extensions for their OS could be extremely expensive. The graphics suite did cost several 10k per module (paint, model, render, tools, ...). > a system that was so much designed for programmers was probably never going to command a very big market Well, they could not live from developers alone. They were also looking for end users. Some of the machines were thought a…
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lispmon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Show HN: Bel”

> i use word count as the benchmark value Words are called 'symbols' in Lisp. Making extremely expressive domain level constructs is reducing the code size a lot in larger Lisp programs. > Lisp is not a particularly declarative type of language Just the opposite. Lisp is one of the major tools to write declarative code. The declarations are a part of the running system and can be queried&changed while the program is running. > Lisp ... all win contests for fewest characters, Most Lisp since the end 70s don't care about character count. Lisp usually uses very descriptive symbols as operator names. Lisp users invented machines with larger memory sizes in the late 70s, to get rid of limitations…
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hhdaveon Hacker News • Mentions

On “CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line”

…nk to the domain object is maintained. That way you can invoke a command on that object in various ways, for example you can type a command name and then click a presented object which is acceptable as a parameter. The Symbolics S-packages used these concepts to make (I presume) powerful 3d modelling programs back in the day (I haven't used them): link to this video - sorry for the poor video quality. link (lispm on here) sometimes posts interesting things about Genera…
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pavlovon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ronin – A Lisp-based image processing tool”

Lisp has a long history in computer graphics. It was particularly popular in the 1980s. There was Symbolics, a manufacturer of Lisp workstations (sometimes also remembered as the first company to register a .com domain). Symbolics had a Lisp-programmable 3D graphics suite that seems to have been fairly successful at the end of the decade. Here’s a video from 1989: link to this video The video doesn’t seem to show any Lisp though. On the 2D side, the immensely popular AutoCAD adopted Lisp as its expansion language in 1985. Autodesk founder John Walker explains the decision in this contemporary memo “Why Lisp”: link
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dmixon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ronin – A Lisp-based image processing tool”

Reminds me of Symbolics S-PACKAGES from the 1980s... (also LISP) link to this video Edit: looks like someone beat me to it below
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pjmlpon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Emacs is the 2D Command-line Interface”

On Oberon, Mesa/Cedar and Lisp Machines, the experience extends to the whole OS and any application, or REPL, not just a plain text editor. Althought I haven't mentioned, Smalltalk also provides a similar experience. Here are some videos that try to convey it, from my playlists, "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" link "Emulating a Xerox Star (8010) Information System Running the Xerox Development Environment (XDE) 5.0" link "SymbolicsTalk28June2012" "SYMBOLICS S-PACKAGES 3D GRAPHICS AND ANIMATION DEMO" link to this video "Symbolics Lisp Machine demo Jan 2013" link The Native Oberon demos available at link
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ur-whaleon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Gloss3D – an open source 3D Modeler for Linux and Windows”

Wings3D's UI workflow is really nice for 3D mesh modeling (it was actually inspired by the Symbolics 3D animation system 1). Blender feels very cumbersome when you learned 3D modeling with Wings. It's really unfortunate that they chose to implement it in a language (ERLANG) that severely limits the number of people that can contribute to the software, and as a result, the development of Wings sort of stagnates. 1 link to this video
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33985868on Hacker News • Mentions

On “A trip through the Graphics Pipeline”

You're very welcome. Computer graphics has a very interesting history, and like many things, there's a lot to learn from studying it. Surprisingly, many techniques and principles are still relevant to this day. Thankfully, the Internet is full of documentation, post-mortem accounts and reference implementations to learn more about all this. Here's a bunch of random noteworthy things and references I forgot to link (sorry for potentially digging rabbit holes): The best information tends to come from official documentation detailing almost everything you want to know about the inner workings of systems. Additionally, unofficial community documentation can also be of great quality and complemen…
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pjmlpon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ratty – A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics”

The example on the linked video it isn't, correct. Here is another video, this time with S-PACKAGE used to develop Nintendo 64. link to this video Which given the REPL capabilities, you can easily embedd them on it, just like the other video.
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pjmlpon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why Ctrl+V won't paste images in Claude Code on WSL, with a fix”

SBCL REPL cannot do this on xterm, it needs a proper hosting REPL environment like SLIME, which is no wonder, given how Emacs came to be and the interaction with genera. Inline graphics from 1981, link Or using S-PACKAGE used to develop Nintendo 64. link to this video You are missing integration with live debugging, calling anything on the OS during a REPL session, e.g. OS APIs, calling into automation points of the OS, Can try out directly on the browser, courtesy of WebAssembly and recovery of Xerox PARC software, link . Or get either Squeak or Pharo, and see how using the Transcript integrates with the whole platform Windows, with either PowerShell ISE, or its new VSCode integration, are the clo…
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