Details for the next generation of Flickerfixers from Individual Computers

[Turran]

v1.1 made vast improvments on my stubborn Samsung Syncmaster 245B.

PAL = Very nice. Black borders but expected.
PAL-Interlace = Perfect
HighGFX 1024x768 = Almost perfect. Screen goes half height for a millisecond when clicking some icons on the desktop which is kind of irritating, and I have not yet found a way to solve that.

I'd much rather use PAL-Interlace in workbench though. If I click TEST in the preferences, the "Default area" lines are 100% perfect on the edges. If I apply that and switch to PAL-Interlace in workbench, the screen is much to big. No problem, only start the overscan and drag it in you say? Yes, but I can only see HighGFX, NTSC, PAL and Xtreme in the "monitor types" list in Overscan. If I select PAL, I can see the non interlace resolutions to the right. If I click on the Edit buttons now, the screen does indeed switch to PAL (as indicated by the indivision on screen picture).

Why cant I use Overscan for the interlace resolutions? I do not remember having this problem ever before? I guess its not even an Indivision problem but something with the OS?

Appreciate any help or ideas on that, as well as if anyone have the "half-screen blinking" using HighGFX when clicking stuff on the workbench.

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Turran

Why cant I use Overscan for the interlace resolutions? I do not remember having this problem ever before? I guess its not even an Indivision problem but something with the OS?

It's just the example config that I have created: I have set PAL non-lace to non-overscan but S-Hires in order to have exact 1280 pixels on the X-axis. Remember that Indivision does not do any scaling, and the amount of pixels taken in from the Amiga side will be exactly what appears on the output side. As someone pointed out yesterday: The higher resolution you choose for the output display, the smaller the resulting picture.

As you have noticed here, this also works the other way round: If you choose a too-small output resolution, the picture will appear zoomed (i.e. too big). There's two ways to solve this: Either choose a smaller input resolution, or choose a higher output resolution.

Originally Posted by Turran

Appreciate any help or ideas on that, as well as if anyone have the "half-screen blinking" using HighGFX when clicking stuff on the workbench.

That is most likely a software problem on your Amiga:

- eliminate the tool VGAonly from your installation - this will only cause trouble. Sometimes it's in the startup-sequence, sometimes it slipped in the devs:monitors/ directory

- check for any remainders of CGX or Picasso, they might cause trouble

- only use Kick/OS3.1 or higher monitor drivers. Kick/WB3.0 monitor drivers are buggy.

If you don't see all the monitor types in your screenmode and overscan prefs, make sure that the drivers are located in DEVS:monitors/ directory. On standard installations, some of the more exotic monitor drivers are located in sys:storage/monitors, where the system does not see them. Move them over to devs/monitors and restart your machine, then you will see the screenmodes. I'm not saying that all those monitor drivers are a good idea to use - in fact, many of them produce so funny resolutions that none of today's screens aspect ratio is approached.

Note that the overscan prefs program does not make a difference between interlace and non-interlace like Indivision does. I have introduced this difference in order to have different screenmodes for "games vs. workbench": While most (not all) games use Hires non-interlace but overscan, you might want to set your WB to interlace, S-Hires and non-overscan in order to closely approach a standard monitor's resolution. That's the whole idea behind my example config that I included in the archive.

Jens

[johnim]

hi jens

any chance of adding a button for adding new screenmodes In the config tool instead of copying one's already created and altering them.


how do you make 50hz modes?

how can you remove monitor drivers from the config tool eg just to leave a few there instead of all?

also will you be adding movement control in the screen test similar to p96?

nice work so far but the above options would be nice

thanks john

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by johnim

any chance of adding a button for adding new screenmodes In the config tool instead of copying one's already created and altering them.

No - I specifically skipped on that, because pretty much nobody will be able to create an output mode "from scratch". Copying a known-good mode and using it as a starting point to go to a new output mode will keep you from making errors: Any sane person will only alter one parameter at a time.

Originally Posted by johnim

how do you make 50hz modes?

Choose the right pixel clock for the size of screen you've created. Make sure that H and V frequencies stay within the limits of your monitor, otherwise you'll just get "out of range" (or similar).

Originally Posted by johnim

how can you remove monitor drivers from the config tool eg just to leave a few there instead of all?

The Amiga OS is considered static - there will be no more classic OS versions, and so Indivision AGA MK2 deals with the screenmodes that are there. This is hard-coded in the FPGA cores and the development target of Indivision AGA has always been "display the Amiga picture no matter what" - that's why the config tool lets you configure all screenmodes. Implementing a way of hiding screenmodes would only add complexity to the tool. Adding complexity would mean more testing (=more expensive) and more room for errors. Not a good idea. Instead, I suggest to just ignore the modes that you don't use.

Originally Posted by johnim

also will you be adding movement control in the screen test similar to p96?

No need to add what's already there: Try the "offset" values.

Jens

[johnim]

ok thankyou for your answers jens

will play more

john

[NovaCoder]

With the new core my colors are fixed and now Quake 2 looks awesome again, thanks Jens

[BarryB]

Thing is, if I drag my Interlaced WB screen down the PAL screen is promoted to a perfectly full screen image, it looks great until you put focus on the PAL screen then it looks like crap

Is it possible to get 640 x 480 fullscreen on the vertical?

Also, has any documentation been written yet to explain how to use the Indi correctly? I'm lost when it comes to pixel clocks

One other thing, in the config tool Pixles is spelled wrong, it should be Pixels

DBLPAL: How the heck do you get this displaying too? I can use 1280 x 1024 and get the vertical fine but the horizontal just fills the left half of the screen Tried other common VGA res but the vertical is borked, only shows top half of the image as its stretched to double the screen?

[Turran]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

That is most likely a software problem on your Amiga:

- eliminate the tool VGAonly from your installation - this will only cause trouble. Sometimes it's in the startup-sequence, sometimes it slipped in the devs:monitors/ directory

- check for any remainders of CGX or Picasso, they might cause trouble

- only use Kick/OS3.1 or higher monitor drivers. Kick/WB3.0 monitor drivers are buggy.

Thank you. I'm using ClassicWB 3.9 and your answer made me disable one thing at a time until I found it. It was the "FBlit FText" component. No more screen blinking when clicking icons =)

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

Note that the overscan prefs program does not make a difference between interlace and non-interlace like Indivision does. I have introduced this difference in order to have different screenmodes for "games vs. workbench": While most (not all) games use Hires non-interlace but overscan, you might want to set your WB to interlace, S-Hires and non-overscan in order to closely approach a standard monitor's resolution. That's the whole idea behind my example config that I included in the archive.

Gotcha. Its a bit weird. My workbench is in PAL Interlace. I start overscan and edit. Screen jumps to PAL mode and looks great. At this stage I have to drag the borders and guess where they are going to end up because when I hit Apply it jumps back to PAL Interlace with the borders I've selected. "Nope, two more pixels to the right" - "One more" - "One more" etc. Strange.

[NovaCoder]

Hiya,

Fblit is fine to use, just don't try and store your icons in FASTRAM at the same time (workbench prefs)

[bbond007]

The latest core/tool work great for me, Was able to define a 724x450 and 724x550 modes for NTSC and PAL. Was not able to get that working before....

Maybe its a sequence of events or something I don't understand, but I seem to be getting the tool in an unresponsive state sometimes where the UI seems like its stoned and nothing works, yet the program will exit cleanly.

Anyway, its really looking good... I was playing with old Digipaint3 which looked fantastic and runs quit fast on an 060

[bbond007]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Hiya,

Fblit is fine to use, just don't try and store your icons in FASTRAM at the same time (workbench prefs)

not to worry, most of my icons are stored in a drawer....

[Cymru]

Are any more of the Indivision AGA MKII's going to be released for sale?

[CFou!]

i'm jut testing last config tool and core with a CRT monitor no problem here (VGA).

I will test in dVI with both LCD modern monitor and report if some problems appear.

Just a little question:
Why 'vertical sync' option can 't be actually supported?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Cymru

Are any more of the Indivision AGA MKII's going to be released for sale?

I will continue selling them when all support tickets are closed. It is looking really good right now: I have closed one long-term ticket this morning - thanks once again to a very patient user from Sweden.

This leaves one open ticket that I hope to be able to close in the next few days - currently waiting for mail to arrive with this customer.

Originally Posted by CFOU!

Just a little question:
Why 'vertical sync' option can 't be actually supported?

It's just not high on the priority list at this point. Vertical sync will break compatibility with *many* monitors and requires lots of explanation - and before I can explain how things work, I need to implement them. V-Sync is even lower on my priority list than Graffiti support (and even that is not very high).

My highest priority is to solve all problems that have been reported with Indivision AGA MK2. I won't open new construction sites (read: no new features) until all users have at least basic functionality from Indivision AGA MK2.

Jens

[NovaCoder]

Is vsync the same as a 50khz mode (needed for smooth scrolling) or are they unrelated as far as the config tool is concerned?

[Turran]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Hiya,

Fblit is fine to use, just don't try and store your icons in FASTRAM at the same time (workbench prefs)

Hm, which setting is that? OS 3.9. Can not find any option in Prefs/Workbench for that. only "images in: Other memory / graphics memory".

Thanks!

Edit: Seems it was the "Images in: Other memory.". Changed it to "Graphics memory" and the blinking stopped with FBLIT enabled =)

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

Is vsync the same as a 50khz mode (needed for smooth scrolling) or are they unrelated as far as the config tool is concerned?

Make th at "50Hz" ;-)

They're "almost related" - you can do VSync in different ways. The simple method is to run completely syncronous like the old-fashioned 20-year old flickerfixers did, because they had to save memory size and bandwidth.

However, this requires a 50Hz-compatible monitor, which is so hard for most people to find that they chose to buy Indivision AGA MK2. If I'd add a V-Sync mode now that sets you back to requiring a 50Hz monitor, you would not get what you expected.

You can also achieve V-Sync with other input<->output relations. The picture doesn't even tear too badly if you use 62.5Hz like the previous version did. However, just setting the frequency right doesn't cut it; you still need to make sure that input and output is truly happening "in sync", which requires the output stage to wait for the input stage, and that is the part where compatibility with many monitors will break: The last line before the vertical blank will either be extended or truncated, or the number of lines may even change from frame to frame. Many monitors don't like that. We have the feature working in Chameleon, and it's just great on those monitors that accept it (mostly CRTs). The feeling is like "yeah, that's the way C64 games are supposed to look - dump the emulator!".

Indivision AGA MK2 is slightly different in it's approach: There is no crystal, but only PLLs, so I can fully syncronize the output stage. Maybe a 75Hz PAL-V-Synced mode is possible without breaking monitor compatibility: I could V-Sync on every other frame and then phase-shift the output stage from the input stage, so the tearing is outside the center of the screen - and if I continue writing here, I may collect even more ideas that I don't have time for at the moment ;-)

Jens

[keropi]

Great info on the "FBlit FText" with CWB3.9 , had the blinking problem too , will test later, thanks!

About vsync, by pure luck my monitor supports 50hz (actually gets 49 from indivision since it's what the available clocks allow) and I do see some tearing now and then... same with 75hz modes.... I kinda wait the vsync option more than the graffiti one

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Turran

Hm, which setting is that? OS 3.9. Can not find any option in Prefs/Workbench for that. only "images in: Other memory / graphics memory".

Thanks!

Edit: Seems it was the "Images in: Other memory.". Changed it to "Graphics memory" and the blinking stopped with FBLIT enabled =)

Yes that's what I said

[keropi]

isn't there any other way to have HighGFX working without resorting to "Images in: Graphics memory" ? can't remember this "problem" with the MK1 ?