Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!pacbell!att!chinet!mcdchg!clyde!watmath!watdragon!violet!kgschlueter
From: kgschlueter@violet.waterloo.edu (Kevin Schlueter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Next Amiga system
Message-ID: <8938@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 88 17:20:22 GMT
References: <8810030229.AA19219@cory.Berkeley.EDU> <2745@sugar.uu.net> <9776@cup.portal.com>
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: kgschlueter@violet.waterloo.edu (Kevin Schlueter)
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Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
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<Talk about blitter not being useful for 3D>

I don't agree that the blitter isn't all that useful for 3D.  In general, you
take your 3d objects (usually polygons), project them and clip them, after
which you end up with 2d polygons which are then rendered.  The blitter
is quite useful for rendering 2d polygons, although it would be a thousand
times more useful if it could do smooth shading (Phong would be nice, but
it seems that hardware shaders tend to do Gouraud).

Basically, what I'm saying is that the blitter is not useless but rather 
that its functions are a subset of what is needed.  A smooth shading blitter,
along with a larger palette, would greatly enhance the Amiga's graphics
capability (and as I mentioned in a previous posting, a 4x4 matrix multiplier
and a clipper chip would make it a real Mac II beater).