3D in demos - F030 vs Amiga 1200

[Flash951]

I'm not discussing at the Atari ST forum any more, even I got an Atari ST myself. I disagree, the Juggler is a demo, but not the typical "scene" demo, but still a demo. It's a program you start, it's not an animation you can load into another program. Eric Graham wrote everything, the later iff anim format didn't exist at that time. It's common to refer to the original Amiga Juggler as a demo.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Photon

The Juggler is not a demo, but an animation. And you don't know it runs 30 fps.

Just calm down and say that Amiga is better than Atari ST. It's perfectly true, so let *them* make fools of themselves trying to prove whose computer is best, instead of trying to convince ST-lovers. They'll just drag you down to their hardware level and beat you with their MIDI interface.

But it is slower by 906210Hz i.e. it will perform 226552.5 less instructions per second.

Originally Posted by Flash951

I disagree, the Juggler is a demo, but not the typical "scene" demo, but still a demo. It's a program you start, it's not an animation you can load into another program. Eric Graham wrote everything, the later iff anim format didn't exist at that time. It's common to refer to the original Amiga Juggler as a demo.

But it is still a animation i.e. sequence of prerendered frames. Code exist to extract those data so even if they are executable it doesn't mean that this is demo as we understand demo description nowadays.
https://home.comcast.net/~erniew/juggler.html
Even ST can "play" Juggler (but reduced to 4 bit per pixel and maybe with use dynamic color changes).

[Flash951]

The Amiga is powerful because it's much more than the CPU, architecture, co-processors, and OS. Even if the Atari 520 ST was 28 MHz and the Amiga 5 MHz, the Amiga would be the more powerful machine.

If the CPU frequency is everything for you, why didn't you bought a PC clone? If you don't understand the meaning of the word "demo" when it's used about something that is not a "scene" demo, please take a look in a dictionary.

I didn't knew that all computer talk has to be about what's the better machine for you. For me using an Atari ST is like using a C128 with GEOS, 1571 floppy and ram expansion, both has about 360 Kb on the floppy. Just that GEOS looks better than the greenish GEM, CPM DOS clone stuff.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Flash951

No, the C64 MCI/FLI uses two different colors on the same pixel in interlaced screenmode to make a new "third" color.

FLI has nothing to do with interlace though.

In practice this will give maybe 30 more colors in addition to the sixteen built in, because you have to use low contrast once to not have flickering. In theory, maybe 128 colors.

You get exactly 136 different color combinations, how many of them are useful is a different matter.

Originally Posted by Flash951

Even if the Atari 520 ST was 28 MHz and the Amiga 5 MHz, the Amiga would be the more powerful machine.

Depends on what you do with them, the ST is better suited for certain tasks while the Amiga is better at others.

[AnimaInCorpore]

Originally Posted by Flash951

The Amiga is powerful because it's much more than the CPU, architecture, co-processors, and OS. Even if the Atari 520 ST was 28 MHz and the Amiga 5 MHz, the Amiga would be the more powerful machine.

The Amiga is powerful because it's much more than the CPU, architecture, co-processors, and OS. Even if the Atari 520 ST was 28 MHz and the Amiga 5 MHz, the Amiga would be the more powerful machine TV Test Signal Generator.

[Decker]

Disregarding the adorable 90's fanboy undertones and noise: I love this thread.

The linked Falcon demos are awesome. To me Falcon was always this obscure, powerful Atari machine that never caught wind. I didn't quite grasp how fast it actually was.

I'm also aching for good AGA 020/030 demos. So far I just have a random bunch as WHD slaves, a lot of which are forgettable and unimaginative. Some very good ones here.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Flash951

The Amiga is powerful because it's much more than the CPU, architecture, co-processors, and OS. Even if the Atari 520 ST was 28 MHz and the Amiga 5 MHz, the Amiga would be the more powerful machine.

Yes and no - we must remember that ST was designed in rush to not loose market when Atari lost Amiga technology.
Simplifying - Atari ST was like IBM PC clone but with MC68000 instead 8086.

Originally Posted by Flash951

If the CPU frequency is everything for you, why didn't you bought a PC clone? If you don't understand the meaning of the word "demo" when it's used about something that is not a "scene" demo, please take a look in a dictionary.

Well - CPU frequency:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm#Understanding
particularly:

This sophisticated understanding can be lacking in some people with certain forms of brain damage, dementia and autism (although not always), and this perception has been located by MRI in the right parahippocampal gyrus.

Demo can be considered as general demonstration then anything can be a DEMOnstration but DEMO is DEMO and as such meaning is quite precise.

Originally Posted by Flash951

I didn't knew that all computer talk has to be about what's the better machine for you. For me using an Atari ST is like using a C128 with GEOS, 1571 floppy and ram expansion, both has about 360 Kb on the floppy. Just that GEOS looks better than the greenish GEM, CPM DOS clone stuff.

Well - luckily to me i have no problems with fact that Amiga is better than Atari ST (and that's why i have so many different Amiga's and no Atari ST).

[Flash951]

Well said, very true. I've learned this the hard way now.

Originally Posted by Photon

Just calm down and say that Amiga is better than Atari ST. It's perfectly true, so let *them* make fools of themselves trying to prove whose computer is best, instead of trying to convince ST-lovers. They'll just drag you down to their hardware level and beat you with their MIDI interface.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Yes and no - we must remember that ST was designed in rush to not loose market when Atari lost Amiga technology.

please stop repeating this nonsense.
Jack Tramiel (Atari Corp.) never had plans to built computer around Amiga technology.
He would built RBP (rock bottom price) in Commodore if he did not get in collision with Irvin Gould.
But Atari Corp. were certainly in hurry since they only lose money, they did not have any product to sell! ST was "do or die" for Jack Tramiel and his Atari Corp.



btw it is nice to see that you now have to deal with Flash951

[Photon]

kovacm, I think it's positive that you ask about what makes certain effect possible/fast/slow on A1200/Falcon. When it comes to demos, this is what most coders care about - regardless of platform they put their reputation on the line with each release - is the quality high enough? 3 months old code? baaah, I can make it faster now! etc

So for the optimizations, we're talking hard and intelligent software work and time put in by coders focused on a single task - to impress other coders. At least in the early 90s which is the era for the vanilla machines, but it's still partially true today, even if many just appreciate "a good show".

Just make sure you only post videos (or better, binaries for real vanilla Falcon030 or any cycle-exact emulator) if you intend to make comparisons - just so that others can validate any claims about how fast it runs. You absolutely have to know that it runs at this speed on real hardware. Any extra memory also gives an advantage, so you would have to know that.

That said, the A1200 was a 32-bit computer hampered by bitplane graphics, and the Falcon was still on 16/32-bit but with 16-bit chunky mode which lends itself to exactly the effects that were popular then, and it had a DSP. I don't think many would think it strange that this hardware advantage resulted in better demos, if that's the case. It has certainly been the story both before and since.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by Photon

Just make sure you only post videos (or better, binaries for real vanilla Falcon030 or any cycle-exact emulator) if you intend to make comparisons - just so that others can validate any claims about how fast it runs. You absolutely have to know that it runs at this speed on real hardware.

yes, I already make mistake claiming that one of DHS demos is recorded on ST but in fact, it was recorded on 16MHz Falcon. You are absolutely right.

and I ask what are 3D demos for A1200+FastRAM because many videos lack of this information and I do not have A1200 (have no space to set it up) to try it by my self. e.g. looking at video of Nexus 7 at youtube, to me and to some Atari coders, it looks like it runs on 50MHz 030 (I know it is 14MHz 020 with FastRAM)!

Many people here help me to track A1200+FastRAM demos and I am very grateful for that.

Originally Posted by Photon

That said, the A1200 was a 32-bit computer hampered by bitplane graphics, and the Falcon was still on 16/32-bit but with 16-bit chunky mode which lends itself to exactly the effects that were popular then, and it had a DSP. I don't think many would think it strange that this hardware advantage resulted in better demos, if that's the case. It has certainly been the story both before and since.

and because of this Falcon advantages (chunky mod) and DSP I did not expect that A1200 with FastRAM would be so close to what Falcon can do.

I am trying to understand how things work.
DSP at Falcon can be used at many different ways when come to 3D: Escape made entire 3D engine, including video frame buffer, on DSP: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3192
(ST conversion of same scene by DHS: [ Show youtube player ])
but DSP, in DMA mode can transfer around 800KB/s to main memory. If you employ CPU than you can get around 3,5MB/s so there are many, many different ways to use it since limitation are numerous! Plus DSP is quite bad in logic operation and branching.
...on atari-forum, in same thread, are technical details - I came here to also learn technical details how Amiga coders achieve such impressive 3D stuff on 14MHz 020.

I did not know that A1200 chip bus is clocked only on 7,xxMHz and I still do not know what is speed of A1200 FastRAM.
Is chunk mode necessary if you dealing with 3D and textures or they are some clever ways to use Amiga custom chips to make it faster (like not so clever but obvious, movep on ST for moving pixels from chunk buffer to bitplanes)?
How much time A1200 spent on C2P?
How Amiga coders move pixel data from chunk memory to bitplanes? Is there any tricks to speed this up?

btw I also would like to know how Checkpoint made Thunderdome 3D [ Show youtube player ] || http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64503
that are quite few polygons on models: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showp...ostcount=12731 - 92-130 triangles.

[vulture]

I just wanted to say that Nexus 7 runs pretty much the same on an A1200 without fast RAM, so, in that demo's case, I'm not sure the extra speed makes much difference.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Photon

Just make sure you only post videos (or better, binaries for real vanilla Falcon030 or any cycle-exact emulator) if you intend to make comparisons - just so that others can validate any claims about how fast it runs

Well, same should be said about posting videos of Amiga demos.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by kovacm

please stop repeating this nonsense.
Jack Tramiel (Atari Corp.) never had plans to built computer around Amiga technology.
He would built RBP (rock bottom price) in Commodore if he did not get in collision with Irvin Gould.
But Atari Corp. were certainly in hurry since they only lose money, they did not have any product to sell! ST was "do or die" for Jack Tramiel and his Atari Corp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#Amiga_contract
http://www.atarimuseum.com/articles/mickey.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/21/bu...-to-rival.html

Please ask if you are not sure - making such untrue statement is not wise.

Originally Posted by kovacm

btw it is nice to see that you now have to deal with Flash951

Well, He obviously is overreacted trying to kick ST where i trying to be objective and even if i like Amiga i can also appreciate ST beacouse it is a decent machine (ST is better than Macintosh and worse than Amiga).

[kovacm]

^
yes, we read same texts but I would never say: "we must remember that ST was designed in rush to not loose market when Atari lost Amiga technology."

1) Jack Tramiel never "lost Amiga technology"
2) how to lost market to Amiga, when Amiga was different league with almost double price

on other hand, Mac was already out and press compare Atari ST to Mac, not to Amiga: famous "Jackintosh".

beside, Amiga Inc. show prototype of future Amiga to Jack earlier, but he dismiss it in the same way as Steve Jobs dismiss it - to much chips, to complicated. It passed 3 years until Commodore manage to cut down cost of Amiga 1000 with Amiga 500 model. As I said: Amiga would not fit in Jacks "Rock Bottom Price" plans of new computer.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by britelite

Well, same should be said about posting videos of Amiga demos.

Agree, and that's why I provide machine specs for demos I record for Youtube Well, it applies to any platform, and all software that you're demonstrating. It's only important for those interested in performance or programming achievements, probably.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by kovacm

^
yes, we read same texts but I would never say: "we must remember that ST was designed in rush to not loose market when Atari lost Amiga technology."

1) Jack Tramiel never "lost Amiga technology"
2) how to lost market to Amiga, when Amiga was different league with almost double price

Atari and Jack Tramiel lost his Lorraine contract and as such lost Amiga in moment when Commodore return 500k$ to Atari.
At this moment Atari was forced to work on different solution than Lorraine and to gain time Tramiel filled lawsuit against Amiga/Commodore - this lawsuit give Atari 1 year advantage and this is story behind ST.

Price is completely different topic - both machines was comparable in terms of parts prices but Commodore consider Amiga technology so revolutionary that they raised prices to insane level.

Originally Posted by kovacm

beside, Amiga Inc. show prototype of future Amiga to Jack earlier, but he dismiss it in the same way as Steve Jobs dismiss it - to much chips, to complicated. It passed 3 years until Commodore manage to cut down cost of Amiga 1000 with Amiga 500 model. As I said: Amiga would not fit in Jacks "Rock Bottom Price" plans of new computer.

And that's why Atari ST have no blitter but STe have more chips...

Please provide trustful source that Tramiel rejected Loraine as to many chips design.
Cost of computers was related mostly to RAM price.

[kovacm]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Atari and Jack Tramiel lost his Lorraine contract and as such lost Amiga in moment when Commodore return 500k$ to Atari.
At this moment Atari was forced to work on different solution than Lorraine...

Jack (TTL, later Atari Corp.) never had any plans to base computer on Lorraine!

Originally Posted by pandy71

and to gain time Tramiel filled lawsuit against Amiga/Commodore - this lawsuit give Atari 1 year advantage and this is story behind ST.

Commodore first sue Jack because lot of employees left Commodore to follow Jack in new TTL, later Atari Corp with goal to produce RBT computer.
When Jack son, Leonard, first find check on 500K$ only then they discovered contract regarding ex-Atari owners and Amiga team. They use it to contra-sue Commodore and to freez further Amiga development in same way as Commodore prevent Shiraz Shivji and other to work on ST for few months.

entire story can be read in: Atari Inc. Business Is Fun http://books.google.rs/books?id=3FwG...0atari&f=false

I provide source that claims what I wrote that Jack had no plan to make computer based on Lorraine; now could you tell us who is source of story that Jack had plans to use Lorraine?

[amilo3438]

Originally Posted by Flash951

The Amiga is powerful because it's much more than the CPU, architecture, co-processors, and OS. Even if the Atari 520 ST was 28 MHz and the Amiga 5 MHz, the Amiga would be the more powerful machine.

Here is a video of a game running on stock machines...
http://www.google.hr/url?url=http://...qr2wRS2wUUpspw

and here it says that is originally programmed for the Amiga in 68000 assembly language, so it is not a port:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontie...nt_and_release

Does it seem to be running faster on the Amiga?

What difference would it make if it worked on the Amiga @5Mhz and ST @28MHz?

Edita:
Od course, there are examples where Amiga obviously wins:
[ Show youtube player ]

[Photon]

You can get a feeling for where the performance level is if you compare many games that are written to run fast by using the respective hardware, typically action games where framerate matters. For others, you can't tell the difference between 5 fps and 6 fps, even though more than double the performance of chips is required to cut the time down from 1/5 to 1/6 second.

Using video as here also makes viewers unable to tell between 50, 25, and 16 fps even for these action games that run more directly off the hardware.

Frontier dips to 1 FPS and beyond, and it wasn't designed to run fast on stock machines, either. It was written for accelerated machines, and doesn't use the Blitter. It has 16 colors and just replaced sound and a few lines fo code changed to patch it up. It's another ST port.

The term "port" used in a negative way is actually pretty dumb, because it's a fuzzy definition: of course games become better if you write them for the target machine from the start, but a very skillful port is almost as good at using the hardware. Ports are what we want if the game is good - in either direction

The usual direction was one-way tho :S and to design it from the start to never use the Amiga hardware, so you could just replace the sound/music and release it, so you'd have to change as few lines of code as possible. It's this "design the game for the worse computer, release a quickie Amiga version with no improvements" that let us Amiga users down. And cherish the games that were Amigatastic.

It would be fun to see ST fans try to show off ST games that would impress Amiga fans, but all they do is try to get equal to Amiga. That's an important point. If they really were equal, there would be a bunch of games that had the upper hand in performance. If they can't find some, maybe it's time to stop insisting?

Not that I know why we're going back to 500 vs ST, isn't that off topic? Maybe compare Frontier on A1200 and Falcon030?

And wasn't the A1200 cheaper than the Falcon?