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Originally Posted by eXeler0
Well I Think we've already agreed that Quake III is beyond the capabilities of Apollo, however Quake 2 is already sort of playable on overclocked 060 and AGA so it's a good and realistic target to make *really* playable on the Vampire. Probably lots of mods that can be run on it too...
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Quake III would likely be playable if single precision floating point was added to the SIMD. This should be possible in an FPGA but would require a larger more expensive FPGA.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eXeler0
So the question is; is there anything in Silver core 8 can be of use when trying to improve the Q2 experience. (Granted, we need to wait for the FPU to be enabled. And hopefully the FPU will be faster than the one in 060.)
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If the FPU was as fast as the 68060 FPU, I would expect Quake 1/2 to do 20-30FPS without any SIMD. It is possible to improve the performance of the FPU substantially although an FPGA doesn't like wide operations and more pipelining is expensive. Memory bandwidth in the FPGA helps the FPU performance though. I don't know what has been done to enhance the FPU or what is missing so I can't comment further.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eXeler0
@matthey I know you don't agree with everything the Apollo team does, in your opinion, what would be the most useful feature to implement within the current level of ambition and a reasonable timeframe (and FPGA "real estate") with respect to having a useful platform for solid 3d gaming (quake 2 generation).
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The easiest ways to enhance 3D on the Amiga are improving the integer and FPU performance and improving compilers to take advantage of enhancements. An SIMD with floating point is too expensive in an FPGA and compiler support is too complex for short term goals.