From: ersmith@netcom.com (Eric R. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Falcon030, resolutions, TRUE color, and DSP
Date: 18 Dec 92 19:25:11 GMT
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

In article <1grcjlINNn2m@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> aa399@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Len Stys) writes:
>First of all, I'm told that 640x480 TRUE COLOR would require 4 Megs
>of memory for NICE games.  I'm told that 2 Megs would not really be
>enough since there must be room for other stuff like sound.

That's true. I really don't think that 640x480 true color mode would be a
good game resolution (at least, not for action games) since at that
resolution there's a *lot* of data to move to update the screen.
Going to 640x480x256 you have only half as much data, or at
320x240xtrue color only a quarter as much. But, I'm not a game programmer,
so I don't know how much of a win this would be.

>Secondly, no one seems to know if this resolution (interlaced of course)
>could be displayed on TV without flicker.  Does anyone know?

As Howard Chu said, it depends on what you're showing. The desktop
flickers a lot; I find it annoying. But pictures or similar "real world"
data don't flicker much at all; the mode is very usable indeed for
graphics applications.

re: 640x200
>I'm NOT sure if that would flicker or not either.  If someone knows,
>please tell me.

It would not flicker at all, since it is not interlaced.

>I have been also informed that the Blitter REALLY would not be fast
>enough to move graphics around.  And someone suggested that Atari should
>have used the TI30410.

There are a number of real world trade-offs (including, but not limited
to, price) involved in the construction of any machine. One can always
wish for more features. In fact anyone saying that the blitter
"really would not be fast enough to move graphics around" is talking
nonsense (think about it: obviously the blitter can move graphics,
that's what it does). Yes, if one wanted to spend more money one
could get a faster graphics accelerator than the blitter. That would
also remain true if you replaced "blitter" with "TI30410".

>  My question is, would the DSP work just as well?

The DSP can be used in calculations for setting up graphics, but
is not useful for actually drawing graphics.

>Is there any chance that Atari is only including 1 Meg in the Falcon030
>and expecting the 640x480 TRUE color mode to be used as a standard because
>of a video technique which will allow them to do so?

As far as I know we do *not* expect 640x480 true color mode to be used
as a standard. 640x480x256 colors would be a more reasonable standard
for productivity applications.

>How was the Tina Turner video able to run at 4 frames per second
>in TRUE COLOR and what resolution was that?

The Tina Turner video ran at a lot better than 4 frames per second;
maybe 14 frames a second, but probably it was better than that (14
frames would have been more noticeably slow, and the video certainly
wasn't). I don't know the implementation details, but I suspect that
the author took full advantage of the blitter's and sound system's
ability to do DMA. Remember too that there were no real time calculations
to do: the trick was just moving the data from disk/memory to the
screen/sound chip fast enough (which is no mean trick, because
video and sound need a *lot* of data). The falcon's architecture
is well suited to this sort of application.

>Is a Motorola 68030 16 MHz powerful enough to be used as a game system?
>As a game system that can compete with future 32-bit game systems?

Certainly.

Regards,
Eric Smith	ersmith@netcom.com	ersmith@atari.uucp
--
None of the statements I made above are official opinions of Atari Corp.
Nor am I particularly knowledgable about games, graphics, or multimedia;
I'm a systems programmer, not a games programmer.