Is Amiga Emulation better than the real thing?

[stefcep2]

The mouse control under emulation is not the same as the real thing.  This really changes the feel and the speed and comfort with which I can select and execute things on the GUI.

Also the display of a real Amiga especially on a 1084 seems far more vibrant:  I remember 5 years ago when a PC owner friend saw some hand-drawn picture on my 1084(only pal overscan hires laced) being wowed by the colors.

Some functions in some art packages don't function correctly, resulting in screen garbage.

Stuff which does hardware banging eg scala is far smoother on the real thing.
 
I don't understand this fixation with the annoying floppy disk click:  I actually deliberately turned it off with MCP in the day when I only had Amiga: why emulate an annoyance?

But for convenience emulation is unbeatable.

[stefcep2]

bloodline wrote:

arkpandora wrote:

So, as far as 2D animation is concerned, your judgement is not true : the emulated Amiga is not more refined despite its differences, but less refined.  If it was more refined I would agree with you : but animation is essential, and it is the only reason why I still have to use a real Amiga although I would prefer to use emulators.

You speak such rubbish! I promise you that if you ever come to London, I can show you Perfect Amiga emulation on my MacBook Pro using WinUAE on WindowsXP SP2. I will use WinUAE as it's better than E-UAE.

I will gladly meet you and show you.

No he speaks the truth.

I run winua on Athlon X2 4800+ with geforce 8600 graphics card.  I still can't get PAL animations to play as smoothly as on an A1200.

Try running Scala under Winuae and watch the screen tear as it tries to scroll effects on and off.   Trying running SSA animations or anim8 formats and then you'll really see the emulator fall behind.

And I still think a 256-color PAL overscan hand drawn "scene" artwork on a 1084 looks far more vibrant than the same thing viewed on an emulator hires display.

Winuae gives a faster RTG Amiga, but the feel of the mouse pointer movement is miles off the real thing. If you use software that came from the time when the Amiga was trying to be a PC ie the era of 24 bit windowing graphics software like Arteffect, Photogenics, TV Paint, and 3d Doom-alikes  then the  emulator has the horsepower to perform faster, but the feel isn't the same.

[stefcep2]

bloodline wrote:
@stefcep2

Don't blame either your computer or UAE for your inability to configure UAE... Would you like me to send you a config?

Oh I can configure Winuae ok:  I have about a dozen different configs ranging from a 1.3 1 meg ecs A500, through to a 3.1 AGA 1200 with 4 meg, through to a A4000 68040 with P96.  I have also run all of the preconfigured hard files eg AIAB, Amigasys, Amikit, Amiga Classic, even my own A4000 os3.9 install.

Its nothing to do with configuration, its everything to do with the fact the emulator is running on top of the host OS, using the host's hardware and graphics drivers to re-target custom chip calls to equivalent functions on the host hardware.  Sometimes directly equivalent functions exist on the host system or are approximated well enough that you don't notice, sometimes that doesn't work.  Winuae is good but NOT the same as the real thing, yet.

[stefcep2]

@stefcep2

Thanks for your comments.

I would not say that the Amiga once tried to be a PC, as the PC wasn't more suitable than the Amiga for the kind of software you quote (except maybe the "chunky" vs "planar" processing but I suppose that processing power could compensate) : the PC was favoured for marketing reasons rather than technical reasons.

I'd differ on this.  At the time, I used Art effect, TV Paint and Photogenics on a top flight Amiga: A4000 68060, scsi drives, 128 meg ram CV64, 1024 x768 16 bit display.  I also ran Photoshop, Painter, Illustrator on a PC and i can say unequivocally that the PC's processing speed and superior graphics display speed made all the difference in making its software more usable, in terms of speed and the quality of the processing, and features.  Using a few layers in Art Effect on the A4000 use to get painfully slow.
The Amiga hardware was not as well suited to this sort of work as well as the PC was at the same time.

[stefcep2]

arkpandora wrote:
@stefcep2

But I suppose you are comparing the A4000 to a more recent PC with a more recent motherboard.  Even if you don't, I suppose that the difference of processing power may only be explained by Motorola's or the graphic card's slower processor, which too are a consequence of the PC being in favour with the public, as it has been delaying the Amiga's inheritances and slowing down the hardware's improvements since the late 80s.  .

Not really.  The classic Amiga graphics software such as DPaint, Brilliance, functioned differently to the "24 bit in a window" packages such as Photogenics and Art Effect.  Brilliance could work in 24 bit but the way it went about things was very different.  Those 24bit in a window programs were trying to imitate the Photoshop way of working, with the use of layers: this type of graphics software didn't originate on the Amiga.

Similarly the 3D first person shooters such as AB3D and Gloom where attempts to copy what the PC was doing with Doom.

I wonder: was there any plan for Amiga to have a native chunky 24 bit display:  does anyone know how AAA would have worked?

[stefcep2]

But that isn't how it works...

The software, UAE, actually pretends to be the hardware... there is no re-targeting of calls (except in the RTG emulation)... the Amiga display is built entirely in software and then simply displayed via the host OS.

I am not sure I understand the difference:  At the end of the day, the host's hardware has to display the images that are created by the software.  Access to the host hardware has to go through some sort of API on the host OS eg DirectX.  How accurate the end display is will depend on how well and how quickly the emulator can recreate the images and how well and quickly the host OS and hardware can display this recreated image.  The emulator is one bottle neck, and the OS and hardware are another.