rjc@churchy.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) (03/06/91)
In article <11991@hydra.Helsinki.FI> news@cs.Helsinki.FI (news) writes: >>> ** There will be a direct marriage of Video Toaster with TT >>> put out by reputable company THIS YEAR. >> >> [unbelievable message about NewTek overlooking IBM and MAC to port toaster to ST deleted] >From: luoto@cs.Helsinki.FI (Markku Luoto) >Path: kreeta!luoto > >You sound like a amiga user, very much indeed, if you find something hard to bellieve, >is the problem with your/somebody else's imagination or what ?!? > >Fewer st/TT:s in prof use than amigas? > how many european BIG TV companies can you name using amiga solely for their > very professional genlock work ? (like logo's , add's etc.) I can't speak for Europe, but I can find about 20 or 30 channels on my local cable station that use Amigas. (How do I know? I've seen GURU msgs, Amiga Workbench screens, etc when flipping through channels when the cable channel was reseting. Also, I have an eye for Amiga grafix and software.) >Tele-5 in germany (approx. spred 52 milj.people) has used good old st for it, >as well as for other applications (texting etc.) and they're now mowing to TT >and said it's a hole new world !!! >- and ONE OF THE REASONS FOR TT INVESTMENT BEING THE VIDEO-TOASTER >-If you can get a copy of 2/89 of the 68000'er magazine, start reading from >page 42 and find out that many things that A3000 does with Vid.Toast... are, >and have been done with st and specially customised programs for years ! Frankly, what one markettroid/editroid said in a magazine doesn't impress me. I've been reading misinformation in BYTE, Pc magazine, and others for years. The A3000 wasn't out in 2/89, and neither was the Toaster, so I find it even harder to believe. Finally, what can be done in software, cannot match the Toaster fully. The Toaster is a hardware device that comes with great software. The hardware allows you to buffer and switch live video, while performing character generation/titling in real time and digital video effects/chroma fx in real time. What can be done with the st and speciallly customize programs is perhaps generate character titles, perform some effects on still picture frames, but I doubt software alone is going to match the Toaster. The Toaster's price is extraordinary. The software alone that comes with it (LightWave3d and Toasterpaint) would cost atleast $600, combine this with the Hardware you get for only $1500. The big reason the Lexicor article was unbelievable is this: 1) NewTek announced that the Toaster would never be ported to another platform, and they would remain dedicated to the Amiga market. 2) The Toaster software and Hardware relies on the ability of the Amiga's custom chips. 3) Some, if not all of the toaster's software is written in assembly making a port difficult. 4) The Toaster's software is integrated for a multitasking environment with interprocess communication and the Amiga's Arexx IPC language making #3 on this list more difficult. 5) The Lexicor article stated they compared an AMiga 3000 against a TT display, but from the sound of it, they actually used an Amiga 1000. a) The Amiga display no longer 'jaggies' on the edge of it. b) The Amiga display, while having the power of interlace for video work, also includes flicker free modes now. Ranging from 160x480(or 960 interlaced) all the way to 1280x200 noninterlaced(or x400 laced) with every mode inbetween (including 640x480, or 768x512 PAL) c) Saying a TT did a raytrace in 1 hour while an Amiga3000 took 24 hours. I don't care if the TT was running at 90mhz '030 and the Amiga was using a ray-tracer in written in Basic, nothing justisfies such a speed gap unless 1) The TT had some special processor card helping 2) They were actually comparing it against a 7mhz 2000 like I suspect 3) The TT wasn't running a real raytracer, but a customized renderer. 4) for a point of comparision, the Toaster renders the standard Teapot, with a chroma rippled surface and image mapped onto it in 10-15 MINUTES. There are some reasons it can do this. It was written in assembly code(optimized for speed) and it DOESN'T raytrace. Instead, LightWave3d uses the scanline based approach (which normally doesn't do shadows or reflections) and cleverly adds in efficient shadowing and reflections. The differences in output quality from a real ray-tracer and LightWave's render is so small, I can't tell the difference. I may have believed Lexicor's article, but it reaked of half-trues and total misinformation. It wasn't comparing to the AMiga, it was bashing it. If they really were comparing it to the Amiga 3000 this makes it even sadder. Because then it would have to be either BLATANT lies, or the Lexicor guy who did the comparision was SO inept at his job that he didn't even know how to change the screen preferences. Any idiot can click on the Prefs icon and select a non-interlaced screen, or turn on the Display Enhancer. In fact, the default configuration setup of the 3000 is non-interlaced display enhanced. Futhermore, to make an A3000 raytrace that slow, you'd need to have the 16mhz version, with only a 68881, then you'd have to use up all the 32bit Fast ram, so the raytracer would be forced to load into the slow video (chip) memory. So you see, with these mistruths/lies in the Lexicor article, no Amiga user in his right mind would believe the Toaster is being ported by NewTek, or some Atari company is making an interface that doesn;t require the purchase of an Amiga, since they'd have to rewrite all the Toaster software from scratch, or else reverse engineer-pirate it. >But the fact is:"If you can shape it in your mind, you will find it in your TT" "Make up your own mind! AMIGA" "The computer for the creative mind." "Multimedia since 1985." "The coolest device of 1990 was the Video Toaster." Or how about a machine that can transfer over 1.9 megabytes per second from the disk while only using 1% of the CPU. I don't now why the hell this is in comp.graphics, take it to comp.sys.amiga. advocacy. > > > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>> " I'm completely operational & all my cicuits are functioning <<<<<< >>>>>>> correctly...correc...corr...co...-! " : HAl9000 <<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
gl8f@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) (03/06/91)
In article <1991Mar5.181215.26534@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> rjc@churchy.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes: >I don't now why the hell this is in comp.graphics, take it to comp.sys.amiga. >advocacy. No! Please take stupid computer wars to alt.flame or alt.religion.computers. Don't continue to cross-post them to Amiga, ST, and graphics groups. Flame-war prevention starts at home.
buzzard@eng.umd.edu (Sean Barrett) (03/06/91)
So gl8f@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) says: >In article <1991Mar5.181215.26534@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> rjc@churchy.ai.mit.edu >(Ray Cromwell) writes: >>I don't now why the hell this is in comp.graphics, take it to comp.sys.amiga. >>advocacy. >No! Please take stupid computer wars to alt.flame or >alt.religion.computers. I TOLD Kent he should've created comp.sys.amiga.religion, but NO...
lron@uunet.uu.net (Dwight Hubbard) (03/06/91)
In article <1991Mar5.214853.12583@eng.umd.edu>, Sean Barrett writes: > So gl8f@astsun.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) says: > >In article <1991Mar5.181215.26534@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu> rjc@churchy.ai.mit.edu > >(Ray Cromwell) writes: > >>I don't now why the hell this is in comp.graphics, take it to comp.sys.amiga. > >>advocacy. > >No! Please take stupid computer wars to alt.flame or > >alt.religion.computers. > > I TOLD Kent he should've created comp.sys.amiga.religion, but NO... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ More like comp.sys.amiga.holy.wars ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -Dwight Hubbard USENET : easy!lron@uunet.uu.net - -Kaneohe, Hawaii CFR : 31:910/101 (Dwight Hubbard) - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu (Doug Dyer) (03/07/91)
>>But the fact is:"If you can shape it in your mind, you will find it in your TT"
Then you are apparently using the wrong head
--
2B|!(2B) => ? Can a perfect being create an object
ddyer@hubcap.clemson.edu Heavier than it can lift? mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) (03/07/91)
rjc@churchy.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell) writes: >"Make up your own mind! AMIGA" > >Or how about a machine that can transfer over 1.9 megabytes per second from >the disk while only using 1% of the CPU. Perhaps if it used a little more CPU it wouldn't trash disks so often. mathew