Amiga Juggler real-time reimplementation?

[Mequa]

Now that modern GPU hardware has reached the point where it can render ray-traced graphics in real-time, as opposed to the hours-per-frame on the old Amiga...

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in converting or recreating the original 3D models used in the original Amiga Juggler demo, and placing them into a real-time raytraced 3D engine. This would give the same raytraced effects as the original Amiga Juggler demo, but would also add the ability to walk around the scene in real time (with a choice of screen resolutions).

I thought this would be a fitting tribute to the Amiga platform, as well as the evolution in technology which the Amiga paved the way for.

Anyone else think this would be a good idea, once the requisite GPU hardware is mainstream?
(It may already be there...)

[Reynolds]

This is what you're thinking of?

http://www.os4depot.net/filedata/sna...562_1_snap.png

[Mequa]

Not bad, but could do with some emulated HAM fringing for that authentic look

And is that only for AmigaOS4? Would be a cool demo to see on as many platforms as possible

[amiman99]

I was always fascinated with Juggler demo and raytracing with Amiga.
I found this article which may be interesting to some (Juggler history). Looks like even Commodore did not believe it was done on Amiga. http://marisonreadings.blogspot.com/...aytracing.html

[hitchhikr]

An extended version made a few years ago for MSDOS: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=1914 (Juggler_Fakemode.com with port 330 work in Windows XP).

Originally Posted by Mequa

Now that modern GPU hardware has reached the point where it can render ray-traced graphics in real-time, as opposed to the hours-per-frame on the old Amiga...

Hi!

I made this
https://www.shadertoy.com/view/llXSWr
everything on GPU, source code included
I had a lot of fun in making it.. Amiga rulez!

[Anakirob]

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62220

[mikeboss]

'Juggler Encore' real-time hologram of a 1986 ray-traced animation

[ Show youtube player ]

[Photon]

All these (including the original animation) would be best measured against a $2000 platform of the year.

Then, a measure of real-time (as opposed to all ray-tracing, which is real-time, just sometimes a lot of real time between frames) is degrees of freedom and reactive framerate.

Games do this and are a good demonstrator, but struggle with this today (to the standards of the platform). With all the faster CPUs, hardware acceleration, and absolutely massive frameworks (not required, but rather imposed by other things than requirements.)

At the same time, it is impressive that the original animation could even be played on a $2000 1985 platform. A PC at no price could play the same animation. A handful of workstation platforms at ~$100000 could edit scenes and render it. Possibly a handful of home computer platforms could render it in a month, if at all. (To file, of course, they couldn't run the animation.)

This to give a ~40 years perspective. These developments are all good, but Amiga could have had that continuance, possibly with less delay if (even some supposedly knowledgeable people in the industry) people had got it. (Yes, the usual reason.)

Also, add illegal monopolies. No force of the people seems able to resist that.

And again the conclusion: "There is only resistance." (c) me.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Photon

At the same time, it is impressive that the original animation could even be played on a $2000 1985 platform. A PC at no price could play the same animation. A handful of workstation platforms at ~$100000 could edit scenes and render it. Possibly a handful of home computer platforms could render it in a month, if at all. (To file, of course, they couldn't run the animation.)

Even more impressive is the source code to the renderer was made public so anyone with an Amiga could reproduce it or make their own ray-traced animations. With an FPU you could render it in a few days. If enough Amiga owners got together they could do it overnight by each one doing one frame!

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Even more impressive is the source code to the renderer was made public so anyone with an Amiga could reproduce it or make their own ray-traced animations.

Even more more impressive seems to be that the renderer would have had to make use of mathffp.library and mathtrans.library, which do not afford as much accuracy as the IEEE double precision library which eventually shipped with Workbench 1.3 in 1988.