Was anyone else disappointed with the A1200?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by oscar_ates

however I read from internet that the planar graphics system creates a ghost effect when you scroll the pages.

Lol - what a nonsense!
Amazing what BS people were coming up with …

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Lol - what a nonsense!
Amazing what BS people were coming up with …

Not exactly. When there's a sufficient delay between scrolling each bit plane then you can definitely get some undesirable effects.

[vulture]

Yes, that's what I recall as well from the readme. But, if true, how?

Originally Posted by sandruzzo

based upon its creator VirtualGp didn't use any chunky screen at all!

[ Show youtube player ]

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Not exactly. When there's a sufficient delay between scrolling each bit plane then you can definitely get some undesirable effects.

How many bitplanes do you need for a 80's word processor?
More than one would be more colors a PC used!
(and even if you use more colours, most of the text will still be just one colour = one bitplane to change)

And that is all ignoring the fact, that the Amiga can scroll all planes at once in hardware ...

No: scrolling definitiv was not the problem, but flickering was
(or to be more precise the lack of flicker free higher resolutions)

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by vulture

Yes, that's what I recall as well from the readme. But, if true, how?

I ask myself the same question ... in an interview Paolo said:

The VGP 3d engine has no such a thing as a chunky2planar routine for the simple fact that the algorithm is not a “chunky pixel” one. The 3d engine of VGP works natively in the “planar space” (if I can use this metaphor) and uses directly the planar architecture of the Amiga, so no “conversion” is required.
The very fact that a chunky2planar routine is required in an engine is a demonstration of what I’ve said above – someone is “recycling” a wrong algorithm, an algorithm developed for an “alien” hardware, so it won’t, ever, achieve a very good performance (unless you have a lot of CPU power)!
...
the real problem is that the 020 (compared to the 030) lacks the data cache, and the texture mapping algorithm of VGP is heavily based on the bit-field instructions of the 020/030 along with in-cache operations, otherwise the algorithm becomes quite slow; yes, it MAY still be somewhat playable, but not very good, indeed ??

Maybe something similar to the dread engine? Some kind of "implicit" c2p?
I have no clue ...

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by Gorf

How many bitplanes do you need for a 80's word processor?
More than one would be more colors a PC used!
(and even if you use more colours, most of the text will still be just one colour = one bitplane to change)

And that is all ignoring the fact, that the Amiga can scroll all planes at once in hardware ...

No: scrolling definitiv was not the problem, but flickering was
(or to be more precise the lack of flicker free higher resolutions)

Flicker free higher resolutions was probably the biggest problem for the productivity software. They introduce flicker fixer with A3000, then A4000 came without it weirdly. So they were going forth and back kind of.

[grond]

Yep, total nonsense. In fact, I used to be annoyed by how slowly Word and the like scroll through text on Mac and Windows. On the Amiga you could simply have a two colour screen segment for the text and scroll that as fast as you could see.

What wasn't easy on the eyes was the 50 Hz screen modes most people in PAL land had to endure due to the 15kHz monitors they were using. But that didn't have anything to do with chunky vs. planar.

[Gorf]

Actually:
you would see far more ghosting on an early PC, because these green or amber monochrome monitors used ultra long persistent phosphors to give you the impression of a very stable picture ...

But even on the earliest PCs IBM got the resolution right:
720×350 pixels on MDA in 1981
(yes - it is a pure character mode, but still...)

[Cyprian]

Originally Posted by Gorf

I ask myself the same question ... in an interview Paolo said:



Maybe something similar to the dread engine? Some kind of "implicit" c2p?
I have no clue ...

video from a real 020 with 8MB Fast:
[ Show youtube player ]


not so fast but still playable

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Gorf

How many bitplanes do you need for a 80's word processor?
More than one would be more colors a PC used!
(and even if you use more colours, most of the text will still be just one colour = one bitplane to change)

And that is all ignoring the fact, that the Amiga can scroll all planes at once in hardware ...

No: scrolling definitiv was not the problem, but flickering was
(or to be more precise the lack of flicker free higher resolutions)

Plus EGA was also planar mode. Again, someone thinks that the only computer with planar mode was the Amiga.
Of course he's misconfusing with the flickering HiRes mode of the Amiga.

[oscar_ates]

Originally Posted by Cyprian

video from a real 020 with 8MB Fast:
[ Show youtube player ]


not so fast but still playable

Kind of ppt slide show, engine would fit better to adventure games on A1200+8MB

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Cyprian

video from a real 020 with 8MB Fast:
[ Show youtube player ]

What's with the horrible fake flicker effect? Do people really think we experienced computers like that back in the day? LOL

[grond]

That's just the beat frequency caused by the difference between the camera's fps and the monitor's VHz.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by grond

That's just the beat frequency caused by the difference between the camera's fps and the monitor's VHz.

You're probably right. I skipped to the game footage, so I thought it was some kind of emulation with ridiculous settings. Now I feel stupid

[Karlos]

I'm pretty sure the recommended spec for that game was 030/50 or better, so it's not terrible in context.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I'm pretty sure the recommended spec for that game was 030/50 or better, so it's not terrible in context.

Not bad at all! Very impressive 3D engine within this limitations.
And a very good game also - and almost all done by a singe person!

But here in this context:
far too late and and if it would been ready, when the A1200 was released ... it would have been too slow.

This again shows the dilemma:
if the A1200 would have come with a 030 and FastRAM and if Commodore would have cared about software development, this would have been a game-changer.

Imagine this combination: a fast enough A1200 and VirtualGP as bundle in 1992 - this would have made same waves ...

[Promilus]

Well it would obviously cost a lot more in that configuration but perhaps that's the only one which was worth a try. Graphic-wise ... well, should Jaguar had no GPU flaws forcing software to be run inside 4K cache instead of dedicated memory and with proper SDK ... sorry, technically AGA stood no chance either way (that one was regarding CD32). But with decent CPU A1200 might have found more uses than - what most sellers and computer users believed - toy computer for gaming. And obviously gaming would've been improved as well. That's the biggest problem - even if you got yourself decent user base you can't expect them to have "expanded configuration". Most users didn't expand their Amiga much. So for many years soft was created to stock models or barely enhanced. If A1200 was way more powerful at stock configuration it's pretty obvious more impressive games would appear early on.

[Cyprian]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Graphic-wise ... well, should Jaguar had no GPU flaws forcing software to be run inside 4K cache instead of dedicated memory and with proper SDK

Jaguar's GPU has an access to the whole 24bit address range also to the main ram (and can run a code from it), but its own 4KB ram is just 0-waitstate.

Originally Posted by Promilus

with proper SDK

yep, that was one of the shortcomings

[Promilus]

@Cyprian - as far as I remember there was a bug inside mem controller or RISC on TOM which caused some jump instructions to malfunction with main ram and forcing code to fit inside TOM's local cache instead. That's obviously sub optimal. Sure there were ways to actually run code from main memory but it was damn tricky and wasting cycles. Probably as tricky as 3D in planar

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Promilus

Well it would obviously cost a lot more in that configuration

Certainly not "a lot"
compare it to the Falcon - the 030 wasn't really expensive anymore in 92

Commodore management was still caught in some 70's business thinking, that would break everything down to percentages:

If you sell you product with 200% margin over actual manufacturing and BOM, than you have to also add 200% margin to something that is 30$ more on your BOM making the product 90$ more expensive.

That is of course BS and computers and electronics showed how it really works:
If the parts are x$ more, then you can sell your product for original price +x$ and not single cent more.