Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!agate!eris!doug
From: doug@eris (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: future frame rate issues
Message-ID: <8861@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 18 Apr 88 02:44:27 GMT
References: <11226@ut-sally.UUCP> <8691@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <8775@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <11277@ut-sally.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: doug@eris.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 23

In article <11277@ut-sally.UUCP> bryan@mothra.cs.utexas.edu writes:
:  Video displays FORCE the implementation
:of frames because they have to be refreshed k times per second. [ ... ]
:	What we want to do then, is to get rid of this fixed frame rate imposed
:by the display device, and let the frame rate instead be determined by the
:application (including zero for static images and/or faster-than-eye updates),

Ah. This in itself clarifies tremendously.

:  For instance:  Make your memory into a spherical shell,
:where each bit is a glowing/non-glowing dot on the inside of the shell.  Put
:several groups of solid-state lenses on the surface of a smaller sphere inside
:the shell, so that a 'bank' of lenses can be focused on a desired section of
:the shell.  Run a bunch of optical fibers from the central sphere out to the
:screen.  The whole thing somewhat resembles a plasma ball  (light sculpture).

Ok, along with your definition of "framelessness" above, this makes perfect
sense. There's quite a few research groups working on optical architectures,
give it a few years and we'll see *something* along these lines. Bell Labs
is one, but last time I asked, they couldn't talk much about their
work. Optical crossbars seemed to be part of it, though.

	Doug Merritt		doug@mica.berkeley.edu (ucbvax!mica!doug)
			or	ucbvax!unisoft!certes!doug