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From: chucks@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Erik Funkenbusch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: AMIGA
Message-ID: <4851@orbit.cts.com>
Date: 8 May 91 07:01:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: orbit.4851
Sender: news@orbit.cts.com
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
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kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) writes:
>ddev@wam.umd.edu (Don DeVoe) asks:
>> I'm curious...what is the maximum frame rate that can be acheived on the
>> Amiga, and how does this speed compare to other platforms,
>
>Playback from memory?  Since personals (including the Amiga) ordinarily
>only use the cpu for this, the playback rates are a function of cpu speed,

Huh?  where do you get this?  Animation on the amiga is 99% blitter.  the
blitter is a fast BLock Image Transfer chip.  BLITter.  it can achieve MUCH
higher rates of animation than the stock cpu as well as having a dedicated
memory space (well, i should say the CPU has a dedicated memory space, so it
need not interfere with the video bus) meaning the processor and blitter can
both be working at the same time.  this comes in quite handy for allowing
muti-tasking to go on unimpeded by the video bus.  the cpu speed has nothing
to do with it.

>video ram access, resolution, delta encoding method and the amount of data
>actually changing between frames.  That's a lot of variables ;-).
>
>Even if the latter two are comparable, you may not be able to find the
>exact same resolution (read: total number of changed bytes) between machines.
>And the the cpu/videoram speed can vary a lot too, of course.
>
>Hmm.  As a general statement, I'd say that the Amiga was no better/worse
>than most other platforms.  I've seen Amiga animations played back on good
>VGA cards; and have done so myself on non-Amiga 68K machines.  No big deal.
>The _factual_ reasons why the Amiga has a great animation reputation are:
>
> 1. Programmers have been supporting it for a much longer time on the Amiga.
> 2. It could do double-buffering, which some others didn't have at first.

don't forget #3, graphics co-processing, and #4 cheap video interfaces.

>
>That's it.  But now that PC programmers have recently "discovered" that VGA
>cards have double-buffering after all (as detailed in my article in the
>alt.pixutils group a coupla weeks ago -- I'm not a PC user, but do try
>to watch for new developments), there'll soon be better PC animations
>and tools available, for example.  The same will also happen eventually
>for most other machines.   best - kevin <kdarling@catt.ncsu.edu>

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