Details for the next generation of Flickerfixers from Individual Computers

[1time]

Thanks. Will try it right away!

[Retrofan]

Now I've got a better Pal interlaced 800x600, but not full screen yet.
If any needs an install script tell me.

[d0pefish]

Das ist prima, Jens, danke schon!

Blue edges gone, Test mode now working (was buggy for me and I encountered freezes on Indivision before).

Indivision MkII officially rocks now. Really glad I waited for these updates and and am looking forward to 50Hz Vsynced output (I am lucky enough to own two LCDs which support 50Hz natively even on DVI )

Slightly off topic suggestion:

What I would *love* is if there was some kind of way a piece of software could kill the Indivision output, or turn the sync signal off, or send a DCIM sleep mode signal or, whatever.

So for example if I have a CyberGraphX screen in the foreground, Indivision output could be disabled and my monitor would fall back onto the graphics card's output.

I believe Ratte has done a similar patch already that controls his automatic monitor switch. I don't have one of those, but my monitor lets you set input priority. If that could be adapted to tell Indivision to go to sleep..?

Just a thought anyway.

Keep up the great work, Jens

[Cymru]

Did the 4 of mine work right out of the box because I use N. American monitors? And DVI is shockingly Great.

[keropi]

Just tested it, my 50hz 800x600 and 1280x1024 modes worked perfect too
and the default config also worked super on my 1280x1024 monitor.
Like d0pefish I am eagerly waiting the VSYNC option

[rkupka]

neat ! Thanks Jens.

[NovaCoder]

Cool, thanks Jens X2

[Akiko]

@Jens

Good to see this progressing nicely, thank you.

[BarryB]

I still can't get PAL res working full screen, yet PAL Interlace is fullscreen @ 1280 x 1024 (640 x 512 amiga res)?

It seems the higher I set the res in the Indi for PAL the smaller the screen goes? Even when setting the width/height and using overrides it just won't scale to full screen? Nearest I got was using 640 x 480 fullscreen but the top/bottom was clipped as it was just too big vertically and just could not get the vertical to shrink!!

[johnim]

hi barry im in the same boat

if i use 800,600 i can get it centerd with black bars

if i use 640,480 i get nearly full screen but a bit of the bottom missing

[keropi]

same here, 800x600 centered , doesn't really bother me tbh since it works nice

I found out though that if you mess lots with the config tool it gets "stuck" and no matter how many times you click on an Amiga Mode in the main window it won't move from Euro36.
The only solution then is to quit the program and start it again.

[Retrofan]

Same here 800x600, centered but not full screen (black borders).

[demolition]

Originally Posted by BarryB

I still can't get PAL res working full screen, yet PAL Interlace is fullscreen @ 1280 x 1024 (640 x 512 amiga res)?

Yes, the Indivision doesn't scale the image, it can only double the number of pixels in either x or y. PAL non-interlaced is 256 lines without overscan, so with line doubling on you get 512 lines out. In 640x480 you will lose 32 lines, in 800x600 you will get 88 black lines added.

[NovaCoder]

I think I can live the with black bars.

If you are using a modern monitor you are trying to display a 4:3 native image on a 16:9 or 16:10 display so getting your monitor to stretch the image which not be such a great idea anyway.

The only way you could stretch a 4:3 up to wide-screen without it looking pants is to use one of the fancy MAME/SCUMMVM/DosBox filters but Jens has already stated that is not his objective.

[Retrofan]

I was thinking the same/similar today. I'm trying with 16:9, but in fact I can try with 4:3 on my Led Tv. Perhaps I should try with that.

Edit: No, I don't get nowhere with that.
Edit2: Wasn't there an aplication for black borders?

[NovaCoder]

With a powerful enough FPGA it's theoretically possible to take the Amiga's native low resolution PAL output and scale it up to full HD 1920x1080 without any hit on the CPU or Amiga chipset. I think HD games on an Amiga 1200 would be very cool (obviously you could make the filters configurable).

This will give you some idea of how good it could look if done properly -> [ Show youtube player ]

As I already mentioned though, this is not something the Indivision AGA Mrk2 will do but maybe if Jens ever makes a Mrk3 he will consider it

[Retrofan]

Looks amazing...

I guess some more hundred of buyers would go for it (... and that game is my favourite).

[demolition]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

With a powerful enough FPGA it's theoretically possible to take the Amiga's native low resolution PAL output and scale it up to full HD 1920x1080 without any hit on the CPU or Amiga chipset. I think HD games on an Amiga 1200 would be very cool (obviously you could make the filters configurable).

This will give you some idea of how good it could look if done properly -> [ Show youtube player ]

I don't like the filter used on that - just looks very wrong in my opinion. Reminds me a bit of the 'oil-painting' filters that many TV manufacturers put in their TVs as noise reduction.

[Reido]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Config tool V1.1 and cores V2.6 released:
http://www.icomp.de/products/AGAmk2/MK2_CFG_V11.lha

Post 666, hehehe!

Sorry bad joke, Jens please authorise sales of Indi soon!

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

With a powerful enough FPGA it's theoretically possible to take the Amiga's native low resolution PAL output and scale it up to full HD 1920x1080 without any hit on the CPU or Amiga chipset.

It's not about the FPGA, but about memory bandwidth. if you want to scale, you need to look at multiple pixels at the same time.

Indivision currently transfers about 480 MBytes per second from/to memory, and it still had some headroom (I'm confident I can push it to 570MBytes per second using 5x Amiga-frequency). I can only reach this performance by making use of the "full page burst" mode that the SD-Ram offers. This mode has a serious shortcoming: It will only transfer consecutive pixels at the desired rate. If I want to look at the "pixel above" in order to calculate an in-between pixel, I just don't have the time it would take to close the current row, open the row above and start an access; I'd easily miss 70 pixels.

The Fifo in the FPGA is currently not even one full line, but 682 pixels (plus two colour components of the next pixel). A workaround would be to increase the Fifo size to a full line (requiring up to 5KByte), and then doubling that buffer, so I always have two lines in local memory.

Trouble is that the whole memory concept of the design is that the memory controller "does not know" about lines and pixels. It just takes/delivers a stream of data that the input and output entities handle. The memory controller only makes sure that the input- and output fifos never over/underflow, which is a close call for high output rates combined with S-Hires input. Adding a second output channel that would provide required input data to a filter would almost require double memory performance. That's not an option with this design.

Jens