Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!amdcad!sun!decwrl!labrea!rocky!ali
From: ali@rocky.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Commodore starts advertising again
Message-ID: <345@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Wed, 3-Jun-87 13:55:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky.345
Posted: Wed Jun  3 13:55:21 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jun-87 04:06:02 EDT
References: <216@uscacsc.UUCP> <8706021923.AA25302@cogsci.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: ali@rocky.UUCP (Ali Ozer)
Distribution: world
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 34

In article bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) writes:
>> Today I was surprised to see two Commodore ads in the last (June 2)
>> issue of PC Week.
>Glad to see adds, directed a dealers no less.  Good job.  If adds can be as
>effective as Atari's AND be selling the far superior Amiga...

Last night at FAUG,  I got to see some of Allen Hastings' (I hope I got the
name spelled right) VideoScape 3d video demos, for the first time. He showed
us a one minute movie, recorded on VCR, and it blew everyone away. It
was *wonderful*. Creating the files on disk apparently took him about a week 
and a half, and putting them on VCR another 2 hours. And, what's better,
the images were generated in real time on the Amiga, so you don't need a
single-frame VCR.

My point isn't about VideoScape 3d, though. Also at FAUG we got to see some
computer generated commercials and cuts done by some companies... They
were very impressive, true, and we could see ray-tracing happen in a 
matter of seconds instead of minutes or hours... BUT, we also heard how
much these commercials and stuff cost --- $5000 - $10000 a second. Of
course they'll cost that much --- It takes thousands of man and probably
hundreds of computer hours (on a Cray, even) to generate those things.

Allen Hastings' video ended with a screen that said "These images were
recorded from a one megabyte Amiga in real time" (not exact quote, but
close enough). Now, the video we saw last night make such a perfect
one minute TV ad for the Amiga! For one minute, you see these computer
generated planes and spaceships flying around, and it looks very much
like it could've been done on a Cray. People will watch that --- with
curiosity. Then you have the last screenful --- Yes, this was generated on
a machine YOU CAN AFFORD. Wouldn't that make an effective TV ad?
And Commodore would not have to go and pay $600,000 to get the videos
prepared on some Cray. 

Ali Ozer, ali@rocky.stanford.edu