From: graham@venus.iucf.indiana.edu (JIM GRAHAM)
Subject: Re: TECH: Amiga VR?
Originator: hlab@stein.u.washington.edu
Organization: Somewhere in Bloomington, Indiana
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 17:30:53 GMT


In article <1992Dec11.053128.29164@u.washington.edu>, dstampe@psych.toronto.edu 
(Dave Stampe) writes...
> 
>spittman@nyx.cs.du.edu (Steve Pittman) writes:
>>
>> If you're getting a PC for VR applications, my advice is not to do it. 
>>There may be more software, etc. for the PC, but, hardware-wise, from what
>>I've seen, the Amiga is much better equipped for VR.  I was recently
>>looking around in an Amiga store, and they had an A2000 (I think) set up
>>w/a Video Toaster, etc, and the WHOLE setup was like, $5000...the VT is
>>expensive as hell, from what I hear, but the stuff they added was like,
>>the controller equipment for the VT, and a processor upgrade (to
>>68030)....so I'm sure you could get a damn good (graphics-wise) Amiga for
>>about the same price as a PC that couldn't do as much graphics-wise...
>>
>> i.e. if you were to buy a PC fast enough to handle the graphics
>>processing, and then spring for the SVGA monitor, etc, along with a video
>>accelerator (so you don't sit around all day waiting for it), you could
>>get a pretty damn good Amiga that already has that stuff built in.
> 
>Not true.  A 486/50 with ATI VGA Wonder card, 80 meg disk, 2 meg RAM,
>etc., can be got for US$1600 these days.  No video accelerators are needed
>by REND386.  
>Problem with the Amiga is that the segregated chip bus, costom video
>hardware, etc. that made its name 6 years ago (a century in computer years)
>are now crippling it. 

Uh uh.  What's crippling _early_ Amigas is the fact that they run at
approx. 7 mhz.

Try an A3000, A1200, or A4000.  I'm sure your opinion about its
"segregated chip bus" will change.

The A1200 or A4000 will literally run rings around any PC setup available,
and I don't mean this in an arrogant way.  So please, don't get mad
at me :-).

It is the "segregated chip bus" that makes the Amiga so fast and efficient
at what it does.

And the price is still highly competitive.

>It takes too long to access video memory, and too
>long to program the chip registers to do really fast poly drawing (esp.
>for tiny polys).  The CPUs have gotten too fast in comparison to the
>hardware.  The other problem is the flakiness of the Amiga OS-- people
>would rather build their own tools or use those available than have the
>machine crash once an hour.

Once an hour?  I've never seen this.  I came from the PC world, and have
been using an Amiga since 1988.  Once an hour?  Nope.  Maybe in the
early days, but not now.  In fact, I know quite a few Amiga owners, and
they don't have this problem either.  I really believe this myth about the
Amiga's lousy operating system and it's tendancy to crash frequently
should be laid to rest.  It is simply NOT true.

Heck, the IBM model 60 and 80 that I use at work crash more often than
my Amiga does.  Why?  No one knows.  At least when an Amiga crashes,
you get a message telling you what the problem is.

And please, this is not my contribution to any pc vs amiga flame wars.

The issue is really whether or not an Amiga is a good platform for
home VR.

It is, and it's custom chip architecture is exactly the reason that it
is.

I would dare say that there isn't a pc vr program written that won't do
just as well or even excel on the Amiga, if ported, and that includes
REND386.

> 
>> Plus, you can get a card for (I think...dont' quote me on this) $300 or
>>so that makes your Amiga act exactly like an IBM...and it's not software,
>>so as far as I know, it's reasonably fast...
>>
>Again, not really true.  The cards I've seen are about $800, and painfully
>slow in video access.  You're virtually plugging an entire PC (memory and
>all) into the Amiga, and translating video memory and hardware accesses
>into system calls for the Amiga.  You can also put a video card on the 
>private PC bus split side, but it still runs poorly, and you end up 
>spending more than a real PC would have cost.
> 
>Now, I'm not saying the Amiga is out.  But it will need a major hardware 
>advance on the chipset, 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You've got it.  It's called an A1200 or A4000.

The A1200 goes for about 700.00 (suggested retail).  It's a low-end
A4000, but without the "perks" such as hard drive (although the interface
is there).

>a less flakey OS, and some VR-oriented software like
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

OS hasn't been "flakey" since about 1.1 or 1.2.  It's now up to 3.0.

>REND386 designed for speed before it can really compete.  Maybe its
>reason for living has passed-- who knows?  It depends on support from
>writers, developers and users, and it's been losing that steadily.
                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Says who?  Any sources?  I've yet to meet an Amiga user that has taken
a step "backward".

In summary,
Once again, I don't mean this posting as a contribution to a possible 
flame war.

I've been on both sides of the computer-war issue, and I really feel 
that there's a LOT of hearsay and outright untruths about the Amiga.

When I was a PC-user (I had a Compaq portable...still do), I had 
little knowledge of Amiga's, despite what I could see them actually
do.

Even so, I was seriously biased toward my Compaq, not because it was
better, but because in retrospect, I think I was actually a bit
"jealous".

So, rather than do something constructive about that jealousy, I 
continued to perpetuate the same myths about the Amiga as everyone
else in the PC world:

1.) "There's no software".  Baloney!  Anyone who claims this is
    seriously blind or chooses to follow the sheep mentality.

2.) "It's slow".  Well, the early machines, in terms of cpu cycles
    were relatively slow, but as far as graphics and sound ability,
    nothing topped them.

    If the ability to emulate planetary flybys (in accelerated time)
    or the ability to be used as a VCR (in realtime - the A4000),
    then I don't know what "fast-enough" is :-).

3.) "It's a game machine".  Yup, and a damn good one.  But that's not
    a minus.  Anyone care to see what people are doing with games for
    '386 and '486 VGA pc's now?

4.) "There's no market, and little 3rd party support".  Pure CRAP!
    Yeah, if you go to a primarily pc-oriented computer store, you'll
    probably see an Amiga sitting in the corner, TURNED OFF, and 
    collecting dust.  Who's fault is this?  The salespeople.  Instead
    of taking the time to learn about the Amiga (as they have the PC),
    they translate their lack of knowledge about the Amiga into a
    lack of interest on the part of their customers, and boy does it
    show!  Number of sales != quality.

    What's especially telling about their ignorance is the fact that
    if they also carry Nintendo's, the Nintendos are _always_ on and
    someone is playing them.  Again, since they know little or nothing
    about the Amiga, they percieve their own ignorance as lack of
    interest by customers, and therefore, low sales volume.

Read a recent issue of "Amiga World" to get the FACTS about Amigas.

The fact is, modern Amigas would make _excellent_ VR platforms.  All you
have to do is to consider the fact that Amiga's are made _specifically_
to excel in the "multimedia" world.  

They are a natural.

BTW: I keep uploading (via ftp) a file that includes connection instructions
     as well as a program to allow the powerglove to be used as a mouse
     and keyboard emulator on the Amiga, to sunee.uwaterloo.ca, but 
     someone keeps removing it.  Of course, none of the pc files there
     are ever removed.

Jim Graham 

        -> ->Disclaimer: I do not speak for my company. <- <-
                          Neither do they speak for me.
 ______________________________________________________________________
| Internet: graham@venus.iucf.indiana.edu                              |
|           dolmen!jgraham@moose.cs.indiana.edu                        |
| BBS:      The PORTAL DOLMEN BBS/ParaNet ALPHA-GAMMA (sm) (9:1012/13) |
|            (812) 334-0418, 24hrs.                                    |
|           Lots of VR goodies for BOTH msdos and amigados.            |
|______________________________________________________________________|

[Co-mod's note: This has the makings of the beginning of a flame war--
        if discussion on relative machines' merits remains civil, we
        won't have to bring out the fire extinguishers.     ---Mark ]
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds