Bounty for better Radeon Mediator drivers

[JohnFante]

Compared to the Voodoo drivers the Radeon drivers for OS.39 suck - to put it bluntly. They lack speed and there is no Warp3D support.

On OS4.1 Classic it is the other way around. The Voodoo drivers are slow and Warp3D support is not good (I can for instance not run Quake2 on my Voodoo 5 in OS4.1 Classic).

I am considering setting up a bounty to collect enough money to get Elbox to develop and release better Radeon drivers with Warp3D support. And to get the drivers open sourced :-)

I have not contacted Elbox yet to see if this is a possibility.

Before I do I just wanted to test if anybody here would be interesting in supporting such a bounty. If so it would be great. If not - no problem :-).

I know Elbox should be doing this themselves but sometimes things needs a little lubrication .... ;-)

[nicholas]

You might want to get in touch with Ratte as he was working on a new 68k Radeon driver in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWax2_r0cDg

[Cosmos]

Good idea ! And think about asking a pci.library 68k romable...

[JohnFante]

You might want to get in touch with Ratte as he was working on a new 68k Radeon driver in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWax2_r0cDg

As far as I know Ratte was stopped due to some copyright discussion with Elbox. :-(

Good idea ! And think about asking a pci.library 68k romable...

Great idea. I will put that on the todo-ist!

[wawrzon]

elbox has not developed warp3d drivers neither for radeon nor for voodoo, so they cannot do anything about it, no matter bounty or not. the w3d drivers supplied for mediator  were developed by hyperion, paid and comissioned by elbox as far as ive been told by them. as it has been stated, hyperion has no interest developing anything for amiga (68k) anymore, so i guess the case is lost.

what i imagine could be done about it (given there is someone with enough knowledge and dedication) is:
1. to develop hardware accelerated backend for wazp3d.
2. or to support aros(68k), introduce pci bridges support to it, make gallium work on it, and introduce wazp3d to gallium wrapper. sounds complex and im not sure it would actually work, but thats what i would try. mind you i have pursued this subject few years ago and turned to aros as result anyway.

[nicholas]

As far as I know Ratte was stopped due to some copyright discussion with Elbox. :-(

True but there is nothing legally stopping him for providing a binary diff between his driver and Elbox' and then end users patching their own version with his diff.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

As far as I know Ratte was stopped due to some copyright discussion with Elbox. :-(

Lovely!  Let's see, what would benefit Amiga users and the community more?  A new product, or more backbiting, lawsuits, and in-fighting?  Oh, wait.          /rant

[JohnFante]

elbox has not developed warp3d drivers neither for radeon nor for voodoo, so they cannot do anything about it, no matter bounty or not. the w3d drivers supplied for mediator  were developed by hyperion, paid and comissioned by elbox as far as ive been told by them. as it has been stated, hyperion has no interest developing anything for amiga (68k) anymore, so i guess the case is lost.

Maybe they could be convinced to opensource Warp3D then. That is also the only solution that has any kind of an future.

Just trying to sense the mood - and find a way :-)

[nicholas]

Maybe they could be convinced to opensource Warp3D then. That is also the only solution that has any kind of an future.

Just trying to sense the mood - and find a way :-)

That will never happen. Hyperion (and some of their contractors) has proved by its past actions to be one of the most anti-opensource companies I've ever seen.

HW accelerated back end to Wazp3D is the best bet.

[wawrzon]

Maybe they could be convinced to opensource Warp3D then. That is also the only solution that has any kind of an future.

Just trying to sense the mood - and find a way :-)

no. that apparently doesnt lay within their interest. it has been the subject, while there was some initiative to improve the voodoo drivers. also maybe karlos has something to tell about it, since he has been improving os4 w3d permedia drivers (under nda), i would be surprised if he was allowed to port his work to amiga (68k). and this politics while not exactly community friendly is perfectly within their rights and reason to force os4 upon amiga enthusiasts.

[nicholas]

@John

Have you asked over at EAB or A1K yet? They seem to have most of the 68k coding wizards posting there now.

[wawrzon]

dont fool yourself. you will hardly find anyone that writes a 3d driver on these sites. there are guys who can optimize 68k asm alright, but writing a whole 3d driver in asm from the scratch, i dont see it happen, moreover i see no sense in it. i think the scene is easy to oversee and i could count people who come into question on fingers of one hand. but none of them will actually do it. some sort of wrapper upon existing solution involving wazp3d, aros gallium or something like that is the best bet until some more really talented coders discover amiga, and i guess it will not happen with the current notions and attitudes.

[XDelusion]

Really, they forced Ratte to stop?!?! That is SO FREAKING LAME!!!!!!!

[Cosmos]

Really, they forced Ratte to stop?!?! That is SO FREAKING LAME!!!!!!!

Yes, and it's a shame...

[kickstart]

Sometimes (many times) is like os4 is against the real amiga.