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From: am66@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Alexander Maldutis)
Subject: Re: Amiga Custom Chips - why hasn't C= made them faster?
Message-ID: <1991Apr4.211339.30360@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
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Reply-To: am66@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Alexander Maldutis)
Organization: Columbia University
References: <1991Apr3.130218.25163@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> <6456@amiga.UUCP> <1991Apr4.200011.23370@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1991 21:13:39 GMT

In article <1991Apr4.200011.23370@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> sl242003@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Jon Paul Baker) writes:
>
>I agree with the need for more high-resolution colors, but there is a
>point where this becomes ludicrous.
>
>So an IBM with Super-VGA (a non-standard, by the way), can do
>640x480x256 (or 1024x768x256 if he has 1meg of video ram).  What good
>does this do?  It makes for pretty fractals, and nice GIF's and
>suchlike, but for animation...  The best animations I have seen (done
>with hand-coded, hand optimized assembly code) just cannot animate
>like an Amiga.  You get weird flicker, and parts of things dissapear
>in rotation (as in its not smooth and things flicker in and out) and
>the rotation is SLOW.  And this was on a 33mhz '386.
>
>If you are trying to do real-time games, or real-time modeling, you
>still need an Amiga or a high-end workstation.  If you are not doing
>these, than what need is there for the resolution?  Some particular
>things need it (surface mapping, etc), but how many people would
>really NEED it?
>
>I can wait for now.  When you pull out an animation like Spigot (old,
>I know) and IBM programmers just look and sigh, because to do that
>they need hardware that costs as much as a hard-drive Amiga system.
>
>Jon

I agree totally.  As someone who invested money in an S-VGA (you can guess
what the S stands for), I find that I have maybe two pictures which use 
anything above 640x480.  Even in low-res on my 386-20, animation is 
jerky - ever see Wing Commander animate? - Puhlease!  It looks like 5 or
six independent strips of graphics being dragged across the screen at 
different speeds.  While I would like the Amiga to have more colors, I don't
think that that would make games really better.  IBMs are good for maybe 
flight sims and Sierra animated adventures, but Amigas are much better for
action, high-speed animations, graphics and games, hands down.  

Commodore should release the ULowell board soon, simply as a standard for
24bit graphics.  Nobody wrote game software to take advantage of higher 
speed Amigas 'till the A3000 came out, and then presto, many games have
selectors for detail, etc.  If C= were to do this for graphics, much of the
debate would disappear.

My $0.02


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