Introducing Warp3D Nova for AmigaOS 4.1

[Aegis]

Not sure what to think about this announcement really - nice for x1000 and x5000 users I guess (assuming that software is developed that takes advantage of it) but along with the Enhancer package, this feels like A-Eon trying to take the future direction of AmigaOS 4.x into its own hands.

Which is understandable I guess since they're heavily invested in PPC hardware but A-Eon's boards aren't the only game in town - there's Classic, Pegasos, Sam and of course UAE and others - and developments like this are just further fragmenting the user base. There's already a handful of applications and games that won't run on some of these platforms due to them requiring hardware 3D and/or compositing - bringing Nova to the mix just means a smaller audience for software reliant on it.

Until there's PPC hardware that offers a sane price/performance ratio (and Tabor isn't it) there's never going to be a 'standard' AmigaOS platform. I love the drive to do *something* to move AmigaOS forward but the money and effort being expended on stuff like this is of benefit to a tiny fraction of the Amiga community. Such a shame.

[Aegis]

I guess the main reason I'm underwhelmed here is that AmigaOS 4.x finally has an opportunity to mature into a standard open-source platform and it's not Nemo, Cyrus or Tabor - it's UAE.

Now I get that users heavily invested in PPC hardware probably don't want to hear/consider that but WinUAE's running AmigaOS really well in the latest betas (it was already usable and it's just had a 30% speedup).

UAE's endlessly extensible if the will is there to work with Toni and the rest of the UAE devs - there's already support for 512MB of video RAM via uaegfx and there's potential to add gigs of RAM if Hyperion could be persuaded to release a kernal that supports Zorro III RAM (they've already written one).

There's also no reason that something like Wazp3D couldn't be implemented for hardware 3D support on AmigaOS too. Work is needed on speeding up Q-Emu (particularly the soft-float stuff) that Toni's unable to do - but the Amiga community could be doing it - either directly or sponsoring it but whilst Toni and Frode and all the others are quietly working away performing minor miracles, money and time is being poured into porting AmigaOS to yet more one-off platforms and yet-more software targetted at a small subset of a small user-base.

Post-Commodore the community's always been running off in different directions pursuing similar but not shared goals - Nova to me is just another example of that.

[Aegis]

im sorry you have invested your bets with something that was obviously not going along your expectations. os4 is neither going to be open source nor it is going to support uae. it has been told over and over. im not sure how have you managed to skip past these clear statements till today, to grow upset just now.

UAE is open-source - I wasn't talking about AmigaOS - if you want to extend the underlying hardware capabilities you can - anyone can.

And regarding my expectations, barring an unlikely shift to ARM/x86 eventually the only way to run AmigaOS will be via emulation - surely you understand that?

Hyperion will support whatever makes them money - if they sell more copies of OS4.1 Classic then they'll support Classic - they'd be suicidal not to.

[Aegis]

the question is what one needs os4 for, especially under uae, except as a gimmick. afair there is no native software for it worth mention, that wouldnt be a port from the host or comparable platform.

Well, none of us 'need' OS4 - there's better supported alternatives out there for those that need to run modern applications (I make my living using modo, LightWave, DaVinci Resolve etc.)

But OS4 fills a nice, nostalgic niche for those of us the love the Amiga and out of all the NG platforms, OS4 feels the most like 'home' to me. I'm running it under emulation on my i7 PC purely for the fun of it and would seriously consider using it on a laptop dedicated to email/browsing/games (using in under Linux Mint on my i3 laptop atm).

There's such a huge schism between the platforms AOS is available for now though that how do you develop for that? Many applications/games will run great in 128MB of RAM - I know, I've tried tons of them - but there's also a number that won't.

I'd like to see a middle-ground that's ubiquitous enough that it can be used as a modern baseline and the A-Eon products aren't that - Tabor has (had?) the potential to be but until AmigaOS debuts on it (and we see what the final cost is) we just won't know (my opinion is that developing PPC hardware that offers a comparable price/performance ratio to commodity PCs running WinUAE is and will always be unachievable).

UAE on the other hand would make an excellent baseline if it was better supported by Hyperion and the Amiga community in bringing it up to spec (RAM, faster FPU, hardware 2D/3D) - and the cost of entry is peanuts for an OS 4.1 license if you've already got a reasonably-specced PC. It could be the perfect development platform and entry point for those interested in AmigaOS (really, it already is).

and beyond that we already know that so called os4.1fe "classic" sales (mostly for uae, since working ppc accels are rather few out there) already exceeded the sales for real os4 hardware, probably by magnitudes. and what are the notable results? besides, we also know, that when approached by vampire/apollo team for licenses hyperion demanded rather unrealistic conditions, and refused any development support. so if it doesnt indicate anything, i dont know what does, however you are free to draw your own conclusions, of course.

The real litmus test will be what happens after the Cyrus and Tabor ports are done - even if Hyperion wanted to support emulation (and I see their distribution of the Classic ISO via Cloanto to be a sign of interest) they're too busy with that right now. Perhaps you're right - we'll see.

Anyway - I said my bit - I don't want to derail this thread any more than I already have.