Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A new Amiga from Japan?
Message-ID: <9351@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 15 Jan 90 22:51:52 GMT
References: <1317@corpane.UUCP>
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 49

in article <1317@corpane.UUCP>, sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) says:

> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:

>>All they had to do was port QRT or something to obtain quality. ...
>>The problems ray tracers have to solve are 1) The User Interface Problem 
>>and 2) The Underpowered Computer Problem (eg, even with a 25MHz 68030/68882,
>>you can spend hours processing each frame).

> Really? I ported QRT and DBW render over to my compaq 386/20 here at work
> (running Unix) and I can calculate a frame in about 30 minutes (compared to
> 18 hours on a stock Amiga 1000). 

> I would figure that a 68030/68882 setup would be at least as fast as that.

The 68030/68882 will be faster than your '386/20, which will in turn be faster
than the FM Towns.  The time depends alot on what you're tracing.  Heck, there
are faster ray tracers around than QRT and DBW, I can trace _something_ on my
'030 machine in 10 minutes.  But if you look at the kind of stuff that folks
want to trace for serious, high quality animations, you're back up to a few
hours per frame on a 68030/68882 system.  Take Bill Koester's Star Trek
animations, for example.  Quite some time per frame, and if you don't have
more than 16 megabytes of 32 bit memory in your system, you might as well try
rendering something simpler.  

I think the 3rd generation rendering programs on the Amiga will use faster
rendering techniques for generating these images.  The images will generally
expand to take up all memory, CPU time, etc. as long as the rendering time
isn't outrageous.  If you only have 1 or 2 megs of memory to use, you may
not ever get an image large enough to really bog down a reasonable 020/030/386
machine.  But the kind of things that are being done on Amigas today are
already hitting the same time limits you had on plain old 68000s with no
floating point.

> An Amiga 2500/20 (still the better machine IMHO) will run you around $4000.

I think the list these days is around $3600/$3699.  

> I have yet to see one.

Same here.  It does sound interesting.  The name is silly, though.  I 
mentioned before, FM Towns sounds like some guy who lives next door to MC Boon
and Billy-Bob Thudpucker.

> John Sparks  | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps. Accessable via Starlink (Louisville KY)
-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
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                    Too much of everything is just enough