English Amiga Board - View Single Post - 256 Colours, Chunky Vs Planar, what was better?

Dunny · 20 November 2017, 17:20

Of course, 16 colour (4 bitplane) hires laced (640x512) is precisely double the requirements of a 320x256 8bpp screen - so the requirements there would be the same. However, I'll pass that back to you and ask how quickly we could shift that amount of data around? Are the hires laced screens particularly fast?

And then there's the memory requirements for day to day usage - don't forget that the Amiga was initially released with just 256Kb of RAM - a 640x512x16 screen would mean that space would be very tight - it would take up more than half available RAM. You'd need an upgraded Amiga to do that. Hell, even with the A500 512Kb, you can't have very many hires screens open at once unless you drop to 4 colours or less.

Miggy4Eva:

Hell, if we're shooting for things the Amiga never had (which is a pointless exercise) then how about a 1-pixel resolution copper? Might as well if we're using things that never were in order to prove some sort of superiority contest

The initial post (and thus the point of this thread was to ask what advantages planar modes had over chunky. The reduction in graphics memory needed was basically the entire reason for planar - and lest we forget, using chunky graphics modes for 3D games was so far in the future at the Amiga's release date that it didn't figure in their design.

20 November 2017, 17:20	#22
Dunny Registered User Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Scunthorpe/United Kingdom Posts: 2,041	Of course, 16 colour (4 bitplane) hires laced (640x512) is precisely double the requirements of a 320x256 8bpp screen - so the requirements there would be the same. However, I'll pass that back to you and ask how quickly we could shift that amount of data around? Are the hires laced screens particularly fast? And then there's the memory requirements for day to day usage - don't forget that the Amiga was initially released with just 256Kb of RAM - a 640x512x16 screen would mean that space would be very tight - it would take up more than half available RAM. You'd need an upgraded Amiga to do that. Hell, even with the A500 512Kb, you can't have very many hires screens open at once unless you drop to 4 colours or less. Miggy4Eva: Hell, if we're shooting for things the Amiga never had (which is a pointless exercise) then how about a 1-pixel resolution copper? Might as well if we're using things that never were in order to prove some sort of superiority contest The initial post (and thus the point of this thread was to ask what advantages planar modes had over chunky. The reduction in graphics memory needed was basically the entire reason for planar - and lest we forget, using chunky graphics modes for 3D games was so far in the future at the Amiga's release date that it didn't figure in their design.