Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!fatcat!acadch!impch!sosaria!wizard
From: wizard@sosaria.UUCP (Chris Brand)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Amiga - only a home computer?
Message-ID: <02206.AA02206@sosaria>
Date: 5 Feb 90 01:51:01 GMT
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga
Lines: 57


In message <90012722030848@masnet.uucp> john.russell@canremote.uucp
writes:

> Let me just cast a vote AGAINST all this clamour for more graphics
> power.  I certainly have more graphics power in a home computer than I
> will ever be able to fully exploit (the chip ram limit probably the only 
> exception).  The current paint programs all offer more features than I
> can make use of.  The ray tracers that take days to run offer little to
> me.  I have seen enough impressive pictures to last me until my dying
> day. 

Well - for you the Amiga may only be a home computer, but for me and
several others it's a living. We NEED more graphics power. What the Amiga
has is simply not enough (anymore). Go have a look at the Autodesk
Renderman on a 386 and you won't be impressed but depressed by the Amiga
graphics.
The ray tracers may offer little to you, but to people who seriously work
with the Amiga (and have serious equipment like Turboboards) they surely
don't.
 
> The best example of over-concern with graphics is the SHAM picture of an 
> astronaut I've seen... incredible 4096 colour super-complicated palette
> switching... to show me a picture that has only 16 grey shades!
> I vote that all new graphics modes be PROHIBITED until we start seeing
> some user-interface stuff that impresses me as much as those first
> DigiView HAM pictures did.  Or until my printer starts printing
> dot-matrix fonts reasonably well.  Or until the animation and
> ray-tracing programs become easy enough for me to create some WildCopper 
> demos using only point-and-click.
 
I agree, the astronaut is a good picture. It's also one of the very few
HAM pics that have (quite) no ham-distortion problems. But I could show
you hundreds of pictures I've digitized, with not so simple motives
(including strong color contrasts for example), that simply look horrible.
And believe me - I've got what it takes to digitize good pictures, and I'm
doing it since the early days of the first release of DigiView.

If you forbid all new graphics modes you forbid development and thus you
forbid any chance of survival the Amiga may have.

Hmmm...do you mean bitmap fonts? Well, it's not possible to print bitmap
fonts without jaggies. They either have to be converted to a vector format
(be it Postscript or anything else) or be vector fonts all from the
beginning. I've just bought Professional Page 1.3, and the output screams.
A friend (who doesn't understand much of computers :-) said when I showed
him a example print on my Star LC24-10: "Well all right, but this is done
by a laser printer." Sums it up.



--
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Chris Brand - wizard@sosaria.imp.com
"Justice is the possession and doing 
of what one is entitled to" - Platon
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