jmg@dolphy.UUCP (Intergalactic Psychic Police Of Uranus) (09/07/86)
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I have been using the targa 16, 24 & 32 bit boards as a systems
consultant to a project for *interactive television* outside
of nyc. We're looking at all sorts of hard & soft ware related
to this. My assessment:
The boards are good...there use is limited. They provide
the ability to a single image with an immense range of
colors. Particularly the 24 and 32 bit boards. The smaller
boards resort to a color map so that the full range of colors
isn't possible on a single image (and you need it if your idea
of reality is a photgraph). (PS: mine isn't.)
The Truevision artist package is adequate for producing an
image... nothing that great... as an artist I prefer
traditional artist tools because they are far-far
superior to the xerox star/sun/macintosh interface, which
the truevision emulates; mouse, et. al. But if you must have
straight lines on video, this will work. The color range is
excellent, but still video. (0-255 rgb intensities).
The software is also "adequate". It provides a limited set of 'c'
routines that draw boxes; fills them; gets and puts a picture
from disk. But beware, the images are massive as you get to
the larger boards, so that disk io becomes a serious limiting
factor... (i'm speaking of 600 to nearly 1000k) so,
if you have any interest in animated images, its ugly stuff.
Also, the routines are not identical from board to board requiring
different numbers and sizes of data objects as arguments (very, very poor
software/hardware design!!!), so making portable code is more
complex than it already is. Also,
along the lines of speed, you must be prepared to rewrite
most of the source in assembly if your gonna get it.
For slow slide shows of professional tv quality images, it'll work
easily. Past that, hack and hack again.
Finally, we use it on IBM AT and Compaq 286. NOTE: they don't
work on anything more than 6mhz buses, so the new faster 8mh IBM AT,
forget it! And on the compaq, you can run it in default mode (which
is 8mh cpu & 6mhz bus) and it'll work.
Conclusion: go outside and smell the air, forget merging art with
science - it'll only make things worse.
--
Jeffrey Greenberg - {cmcl2,allegra}!phri!dolphy!jmgchapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman) (09/12/86)
> > The boards are good...there use is limited. They provide > the ability to a single image with an immense range of > colors. Particularly the 24 and 32 bit boards. The smaller > boards resort to a color map so that the full range of colors > isn't possible on a single image (and you need it if your idea > of reality is a photgraph). (PS: mine isn't.) > You mean the Targa-16 uses colour lookup tables? (or are you referring to the m8 and ICB boards?)