Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!mephisto!udel!rochester!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!ee.rochester.edu!seah
From: seah@ee.rochester.edu (David Seah)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Build in the VOC
Message-ID: <1990Sep25.185012.1742@ee.rochester.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 90 18:50:12 GMT
References: <139800027@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: seah@ee.rochester.edu (David Seah)
Organization: University of Rochester Department of Electrical Engineering
Lines: 70

In article <139800027@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> rjv21207@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>shrinkit@pro-novapple.cts.com writes...
>>[Would built-in VOC be a cool idea?]
>
>Cost...always the bottom line. It IS a pretty interesting idea though.  If the
>ewnough people use a GS for mutli-media then I could see it going over very
>well. It's not that people don't use them for that purpose, but it seems to
>me that most people out there use an Amiga for that sort of thing.  I know a 
>few people who work with a local cable group (they do local sports, etc.) and 
>they wanted to do subtitles and credits on their work, so they wen tout and
>LOOKED at Apple equipment, but ultimately bought an Amiga set-up because of
>the programs it had already geared for video editing. 

I visited a public-access cable station (cool places!) and they used Amigas
for all their titling and Video bulletin board stuff.  It was interesting
to compare the quality of their video bulletin board to the Cable Company
BBoard.  The cable folks used some kind of high-end graphics board (either
VGA or MacII) that just couldn't scroll WELL.  Looked nice when the pictures
weren't moving, but when they moved it was really painful.  The public-access
cable company's Amigas had less colorful graphics (can't compare with
24-bit color), but scrolled nice.

I guess this wouldn't bother people who weren't interested in animation.

>(Personally, I'd have
>loved to see Baudville develop Take-1 GS... Take-1 for the //e is an 
>absolutely awesome program...anyone remember that?

Take-1 was my number one program!  The drawing module wasn't fancy, but
it worked the best of any paint program of the time.  It had a rock-solid
pixel editor, and the Actor capability could be used much in the same
was that Brushes are used in DeluxePaint.  Most other paint programs of
that era used the Joystick in an "absolute positioning" mode...the
8-bit range of the axis were mapped directly onto the screen.  This
kind of thing really bites if you have a dying joystick that can't hold
a value or your joystick uses nonlinear potentiometers (ie: cheap joysticks).

>>Part of the rationale behind this is that if apple can't give us the 100 Mhz
>>GS the next time around, maybe they could make up for parts of its
>>shortcomings by building in the VOC.
>
>I'm with the rest of the group... the GS IS a good machine... it's potential
>just hasn't been tapped by the masses yet.

I think that the GS has enormous potential as THE General Purpose personal
computer, but its hardware could use some polishing-up.  By that I really
mean Faster, Smoother, and more Colorful, and maybe Less Noisy.  Right now,
if I were to make a perhaps unqualified analogy, the GS is like a pre-Star
Wars space-blastem movie.  You get a lot of guys in aluminum-foil suits
waking around with shaving-cream blasters.  There's a lot of static scenes
and the action can be peculiarly "linear".  The camera shakes around when it
moves...you don't notice it really, but it does have an effect on the, er,
"etherality" or suspense-building aspects of a shot (I believe).  There are
many fine movies with good special effects (2001: A Space Odyssey comes to
mind),  but from a sheer "action-oriented programming" point of view,  they
aren't comparable.

I think you could do a "Space Odyssey" type of animation on the GS....slow,
majestic, and monochromatic.  But could you do the Battle of Endor from
"Return of the Jedi" (without that 160Meg HD and DMA-SCSI card :)?  The
screen-write speed limitations of the GS restrict the effective amount
of fast 'n smooth animation you can do before getting motion aliasing
effects.  But I begin to repeat all that we've been crying out for all
over again...

Oh yes...built in VOC *is* a good idea :)
-- 
Dave Seah |       Omnidyne Systems-M         | INET: seah@ee.rochester.edu  |
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