From: amuser@cs.curtin.edu.au (Bill Sharp-Smith AUG)
Subject: OPALVISION is Awesome !
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 08:09:16 GMT

Our user group had a demo the other night of OpalVision, the new 24 bit
graphics card (see review in c.s.a.reviews group).

Well, it really is impressive. It was running on a '2000 with a 25MHz
GVP '030 card, 1Mb Chip RAM, 9Mb Fast RAM. On this setup, it really was
fast. Most things were as fast as DPaint in hires, 4 bit. Brush stamps
were instantaneous, but painting freehand with a decent size brush left
gaps between stamps (ie. it couldn't keep up with the mouse). This is
really a minor thing, but gives you an idea of the speed.

The screen used was a massive Sony monitor/TV with RGB input, and the
display was incredibly sharp. Colours were extremely vibrant, with no
visible bleeding at all. One of our members remarked "Does real life
look that good ?" ! It looked way better than any TV, an because it is
in 24bit, there is very little flicker.

The interface would have to be the slickest I've seen on any paint
program on any platform. eg. in the artist tools requester is a list of
available tools, each with an associated "icon". These icons were in 24
bit, and a work of art in themselves. For the pencil tool, there was a
picture of some colour pencils, for the airbrush a very arty looking
spray can. The file requester has miniature versions of the pictures in
each directory !

I really liked the rub-through function. You have two pages, and where
you draw, the back page shows through. However, you can set an 'origin'
on the back page so that no matter where 
you paint on the front page,
that part of the back page will show through. The guy giving the demo
(David Jacobs) set an origin on a girl's face on the back page. When he
painted on the front screen with the airbrush, the face gradually showed
throw the more he painted, and the edges were fuzzy. No matter where he
painted, the same face would show through.

For most of the demo we were really impressed by the picture quality,
then he said he was in LORES ! (1Mb chip RAM is a bit limiting).

The paint program is based very much on DPaint, so you already know how
to use it. Even the key equivalents are identical where possible. Most
of DPaint's functions are included except perspective, brush fills
(though shapes filled by the brush are supported), morphing and
animation. Filling and stencils are controlled by a tolerance on hue,
saturation, value or all three. There are dozens of image processing
functions available eg. emboss, solarize, noise and others I can't
remember.

One really nice thing is that tools (pencil, chalk, water colour etc),
image processing functions, textures etc are open ended so that more can
be developed and added in by the user.

Oh yeah, the textures. Textures are defined in some kind of fashion
combining bitmaps and algorithms. I guess this means we'll see all kinds
of fractal simulations of marble, wood, rock, cloth etc.

I have only seen DCTV and ToasterPaint in the 24 bit arena for the
Amiga, and OpalPaint wipes the floor with both of them. It is the first
serious competitor to Adobe Photoshop on the Mac that I have seen on the
Amiga.

One drawback though (well, not necessarilly). It outputs RGB only, so
you need some kind of converter to go to video. Also, the ouput is
interlaced which aint too bad, but still not as good as a 'real' monitor
display if your going to use it all day. Opal do have a de-interlacer in
the works though.

Other things mentioned on the night :

* the Scala guys gleefully took one home when they were here for the
Sydney WOC Expo. Scala would be mind blowing on this thing !

* an external version will be released, and a display only version for
low end systems. These may be one and the same product.

* in the future, full screen, full rate 24 bit animation.

* a 'Pro' version of OpalPaint available later at extra cost.

I hope this becomes the defacto 'standard' Amiga video device,
especially in PAL countries where the Toaster is not yet available. In
some ways it is better than the Toaster and is modular.

 
-- 
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