From: peteru@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU ()
Subject: Re: TECH: "Virtuality" --- Amiga 3000... Some observations and Questions.
Keywords: amiga virtuatlity game observations questions
Organization: school of Mathematics UNSW
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 10:37:57 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.221712.23062@Veritas.COM> geac@uunet.UU.NET writes:
>
>	You step into a circular inclosure that appears to have a joypad
>on the bottom for you to stand on.  You then don a backpack that is
>attached to a "visor" and a trigger.  You hold the trigger in your
>hand.  The visor probably a somewhat standard (among the virtual
>reality crowd) sterio colour monitor deal.
>
>	At first, I thought this might be SGI showing off.  Not that I
>don't like SGI, I just don't have any hope of affording one. Then I
>noticed the keyboard on top of the box was a standard Amiga keyboard.
>I was very intregued.  Apparently, then whole thing is run on an Amiga
>3000.  In fact, since you are fighting against one other player, there
>are two Amiga 3000's to each setup --- connected together in some
>way... but I could not tell how as the cabling was obscured.  My
>interest was definately piqued here, though, as I can definately
>afford a 3000.

Yes, the SGI's are much more expensive, but they do MUCH better at things
like this. If you ever had a chance to play around with Arena or Flight
on a Silly box you'd know what I mean.

>	In terms of the simulation, it's what you'd expect.  Polygon-style
>graphics updated fairly frequently.  The game is a "war" game... you
>try to blast away the other opponent, without getting blasted.  There
>are computer generated things too... including teridactyl-like birds
>that carry you off.  It seems to use most of the bandwidth and power
>of the 3000, though.

I was very disapointed with the quality of the software on this system.
The Amiga can do much better than what they were showing. The universe was
tiny, collision detection only implemented for the projectiles and the
frame update rate was probably comparable to trying to animate an object
on A2024. I am quite surprised that the company doesn't get some demo
coders to write the software for them. I am sure they can all write stuff
that runs on A3000's IF they have access to them.

>	How many of these have been seen?  This can't be local to
>Toronto...

No, it's not. There was a system here at the PowerHouse Museum here in
Sydney. They were showing it in the week following the World of Commodore
at Darling Harbour. It was a shame that they didn't bring the system down
to the show, after all the museum is only a couple of hundred meters from
the exhibition halls.

From what I hear you can have more than 2 players interacting. I think
the maximum number of players was 16, but I could be wrong. Also, another
interesting specullation I have heard was that there were accelerators in
these systems. I don't know if they are 040's or just faster 030's, but it
was not very evident from the speed at which the game was updating. The
interconnection, I haven't seen either. But I would suspect either custom
parallel connections with a router box (too expensive) or something like
ARCNet or Ethernet boards talking to each other on a piece of wire :-)

>	I see there is a delay between head movement and computer
>response.  It's not too bad, but it would break the spell for me.  Is
>there a way to (possibly) avoid some of this?  How much is normal for
>more sky-high priced systems?

As I said, the hardware that is in these boxes can do much better than
what you have seen. Stuff like this would run at the full video rate on
an IRIS, but at around $250,000 for an IRIS you wont see it as often as
this system.

>	I was told that the system was about $80,000.  Now the 3000 is
>about $5000-$10,000 depending on what's required.  Is this type of
>hardware normally that expensive (visor, joypad, etc...) ?

You are not only buying the hardware. Think of the rest of the effort that
had to go into developing a system like this. BTW: all the gadgets are custom
made.

Overall, a very nice system, but the software let's it down.

		Just my opinion.

Peter Urbanec				  peteru@hydra.maths.unsw.oz.au
University of New South Wales		s1013734@cs.unsw.oz.au
Sydney, Australia
		The only sin is stupidity  - Machiavelli