GRASS (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:30, 11 February 2017

Revision as of 09:31, 11 February 2017

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DeFanti added the existing GRASS system as the input to the IP, creating the GRASS/Image Processor, which was used throughout the mid-1970s. In order to make the system more useful, DeFanti and Sandin added all sorts of "one-off" commands to the existing GRASS system, but these changes also made the language considerably more idiosyncratic. In 1977 another member of the Habitat, Nola Donato, re-designed many of GRASS's control structures into more general forms, resulting in the considerably cleaner GRASS3.{{sfn|DeFanti|1980}}

[[Larry Cuba]]'s ''[[Star Wars]]'' work is based on a [[rear projection]] filming of a GRASS system running on a vector terminal. As the terminal holds the vectors (and points) in internal memory, the system is able to make basic transformations - scaling, rotation, etc. - in realtime without interacting with the computer or language. It is only during the times when new scenery is being presented that the much slower communications with the GRASS language takes place. This can be seen in the sequence, as the initial sections of the film show the [[Death Star]] being rotated and scaled very rapidly, while the later sections simulating flight down the trench requires new scenery to be paged in from GRASS "trees", which is easily visible.

===ZGrass and UV-1===