amichel@neabbs.UUCP (MICHEL LANGEREIS) (08/18/89)
I sincerely hope the flame wars are over now, lets bring in a topic
I haven't seen discussed past two years.
Did anyone do some research in the inter-active market ?
By inter-active I think information posts with touch screens alike.
With products like UltraCard and CanDo hitting the market (or RSN ;)
it becomes very easy to create the software with a minimum of time
involved. For example, you can create lots of standard interface
modules who will fit in almost every project you get assigned to.
You'll only have to put the 'information' the customer wants in it and
built some custom made things around it.
Thats a lot cheaper as programming every project you get assigned to
over and over again, so thats one point why it can be interesting.
Some other things I thought about, when you come in a shop to buy
lets say a waterbed.. most customers get an overload of info over
them with the result they leave, think at home to look at all the
documentation they got and MAYBE come back. A better way of doing it
is to provide the customer a small portion of info, just what he/she/they
is/are interested in and in such a case whats better to put them to a
screen to let them make their choice by theirselfs ? Via a touch-screen
Amiga combo ofcourse.. pictures from people on waterbeds floating all
over the screen, animated ofcourse ;-)
Now what about touch-screens and laser disks for the Amiga, are they
availble ? I know there was some sort of inter-active Amiga system
developed once and it was called The Mandala system but never ever
heard a tinny little bit about it.
Why laserdisks, sure you could probaly take a BIG harddrive but the
system must be a 120 percent relaible and since many people will be
pointing at anything they see and maybe hit a few times to the side if
things aren't going fast enough its not a good idea to put a HD in it.
And don't forget the educational market, all those kids in front of
Amiga's (sold by former Apple and now C-A employees :-) pointing away
through their things.
My personal view is this market is going to explode in a year or two,
Apple and IBM already marked this blank spot on the map so what
about us ?
-* Michel
hp4nl!neabbs!amichel@uunet.uu.net | Just speaking for myself.
consider your brains like a computer... ...and BOOT IT!martin@iros52.iro.umontreal.ca (Daniel Martin) (09/01/89)
Disclaimer: The project is described only to show actual Multimedia application
on the amiga. No publicity intended.
I've no connection with companies mentionned in the article.
In article <195156@neabbs.UUCP> amichel@neabbs.UUCP (MICHEL LANGEREIS) writes:
>
> ...
>
> Now what about touch-screens and laser disks for the Amiga, are they
> availble ? I know there was some sort of inter-active Amiga system
> developed once and it was called The Mandala system but never ever
> heard a tinny little bit about it.
>
> ...
> And don't forget the educational market, all those kids in front of
> Amiga's (sold by former Apple and now C-A employees :-) pointing away
> through their things.
>
> -* Michel
>
> hp4nl!neabbs!amichel@uunet.uu.net | Just speaking for myself.
> consider your brains like a computer... ...and BOOT IT!
For over 3 years now, I've worked on my master degree project called
FishEye browser, that uses among other things a Pionner LaserDisc LV6000A,
a Panasonic WORM (Write once Read Many), a CD-ROM player connected thru a
bridgeboard, a genlock (old CBM model) and a touchscreen (from MicroTouch).
We use two A2000, equipped with 40megs HD, bridgeboard and ethernet boards,
and one old A1000. All three have 3 Megs Ram.
It is simply (!) a browser in multimedia documents, composed mainly of
still video painting from the Nationnal Gallery of art videodisc. You
touch at miniatures of the painting (digitized in ham) and the full video
picture is displayed on screen (genlock). Current database is composed
of over 800 documents, described with over 1000 keywords (for direct access).
The system use "context editors" that is editor specialized on a certain
medium. For example, we have a video editor, (WORM, LaserDisc, VHS) that
can combine any video segment (in any order, speed, etc.) from any sources
and save it in a video document. This can then be combined with documents
created with other context editors, to form a true multimedia document. We
use a multimedia player to present, synchronize and interact with the
document. The multimedia document use IFF, augmented of certain specialized
chunk.
Interactive video, or VDI is available to any computer on the market
equipped of serial ports. Now that multi-port cards are available (NES has one
with 8 ports) you have all peripheral available at once (we used a custom made
serial port multiplexer).
The amiga is the machine of choice for this kind of applications. Desirable
features are multi-tasking, genlocking, good graphics capability, low cost of
the Amiga computers, and an IFF standard.
This project is used as a stepstone towards true intelligent tutoring,
using the amiga as the presentation-interface machine. As a stand alone
system, the Amiga based FishEye browser performed quite well compared to
IBM infowindow system, Sony's View and Mac Hypercards based LaserGuide.
I should point out that MacIntosh is devoting A LOT of money to develop
interesting new multimedia applications. They produced recently a LaserDisc
with over 30 disk of Hypercard applications comming with it. To see how
apple is devoted to Interactive applications, just look at CD-ROM3 book of
MicroSoft Press "Interactive MultiMedia", edited by Sueann Ambron and
Kristina Hooper. Very Impressing, and no Amigas in sight. I may say that
it won't take long to recover the video market hold by the amiga, if
bold steps are not take.
// Daniel Martin, Universite de Montreal, C.P 6128, Succursale A \\
\\// Montreal (Quebec), CANADA, H3C 3J7 \\//
\/ UUCP: uunet!utai!musocs!iros1!martin INTERNET: martin@iro.umontreal.ca \/
--
// Daniel Martin, Universite de Montreal, C.P 6128, Succursale A \\
\\// Montreal (Quebec), CANADA, H3C 3J7 \\//
\/ UUCP: uunet!utai!musocs!iros1!martin INTERNET: martin@iro.umontreal.ca \/