Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!sdcc6!sdcc4!ln63wkp
From: ln63wkp@sdcc4.ucsd.edu (Manuel Noriega)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: BlackBelt may not be a great solution. (for animation)
Message-ID: <6059@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 12 Jan 90 23:45:58 GMT
References: <5965@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <5326@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> <4351@scolex.sco.COM> <5998@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <5347@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> <2173@xyzzy.UUCP>
Sender: news@sdcc6.ucsd.edu
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 47

In article <2173@xyzzy.UUCP> poirier@dg-rtp.dg.com (  Poirier local) writes:
>In article <5347@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> waynekn@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) writes:
><
><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
Yes I am aware of that, but I *HAVE* done some animation comparison between
a stock Amiga and a 68030 GVP (& Hurricane 68030) machines.  The animation
runs significantly faster.  Now these aren't your dinky 320X400 32 color 
with little frame changes, but a hires OVERSCAN 4 bitplanes helicopter moving
through the city types (with large frame changes).  

><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.
 Yes, I don't expect to see animations using copper intensive operations like
displaying dynamic-HAM/Hires or SlicedHAM, but regular HAM animations (which
the blackbox uses) do perform in or near realtime on accelerated machines.  
  
><as great for Ray-Traced animation as some people think.
  Well the thing that makes the BlackBox look good (on paper) is that it 
supports animation, portable, and is CHEAP!   If you look at the other
frame boards out there, they don't offer RGB output and do not really
have 24bits but actually 21 bits.   And, you can't do realtime animations.
You'd have to get a special display driver which uploads the 24 bit to
the buffer.   So the only way to do animation is to fork out $$$ for
a frame VCR/controller.   A friend of a friend of mine does this 
for professional work in Arizona.  The HAM-E box seems to answer
all of the framebuffer problems.  The external KLUDGE may be it's good
point since, we can just take the box to our client's machine instead
of lugging ours to the studio.    Nifty I must say!
 
 
>pardon my ignorance, as I'm not sufficiently into the animation scene,
>but this implies that the Amiga, whether stock or accelerated, can't do
>a good job of regular 16-color high-res four-plane animation?  This surprises
>me a little, as I can't remember hearing anybody complaining about it
>before now.  Anyone have some sample data on high-res frame rates?
Well, if you want, I can upload the 3 Meg animation..     

>	Cheers,
>	Charles Poirier
 
                                                 -Viet Ho
                                                 vho@ucsd.edu
========================================================================
"No I'm not a programmer, but I play one on TV!"