Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekig5!waynekn
From: waynekn@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: BlackBelt may not be a great solution. (for animation)
Message-ID: <5347@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM>
Date: 10 Jan 90 16:31:43 GMT
References: <5965@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <5326@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> <4351@scolex.sco.COM> <5998@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 26

In article <5998@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>, ln63wkp@sdcc4.ucsd.edu (RenderMan) writes:
> >"Black Blet Video - not a great solution for high speed animation."
> 
>   It seems that most people who do serious raytracing/animations are
> equiped with 020/030 boards so anim playback is extremely fast.   
> I believe the sluggishness in the new HAM-E modes will be minimal
> on an 030/32bit platform.  
> ...    

It doesn't matter if you have a Cray in your Amiga.  The bottle-neck
Is the CHIP RAM, and you can't go any faster than you can put inforamtion
into the chip RAM.  In the high res. 4 bit-plane mode, most of the time
the CHIP RAM is busy putting out the display and the processor if often 
forced to wait if it needs to update the CHIP RAM.  The screen being looked
at has to reside in the CHIP RAM so there is no way around this problem.

Of coarse you could single-frame the BlackBelt modes, but if you have 
that much equipment anyway why not go with something really good like
a Targa board?

However I did see a lot 32000 color low res. pictures in Japan on the 
FM Towns and they looked great, so I sure a lot of people will really
like the BlackBelt video add on.  It is just I don't think it will be
as great for Ray-Traced animation as some people think.

                                            Wayne Knapp