Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => Amiga OS => Amiga OS -- Development => Topic started by: hnl_dk on February 18, 2003, 09:57:08 PM
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Taken from www.amiga-news.de:
Hyperion Entertainment Pressemitteilung
In der nachfolgenden Pressemitteilung gibt Hyperion Entertainment bekannt, dass sie eine Lizenzvereinbarung mit der Firma SciTech Software Inc. bezüglich deren SNAP(tm)-Technologie getroffen haben. Dabei handelt es sich um ein Grafikkarten-Treibersystem. Das Besondere an diesem System ist, dass es faktisch alle aktuellen Grafikkarten unterstützt. Lesen Sie im Anschluss die komplette englischsprachige Mitteilung.
CHICO, CA, USA - February 11, 2003
SciTech Software Inc. and Hyperion Entertainment VOF are pleased to announce they have enterered into a strategic partnership which will see SciTech's SNAP(tm) technology integrated into AmigaOS 4.x which is currently under development by Hyperion for PPC based systems.
SciTech SNAP, SciTech's leading edge graphics device support, allows for the rapid development and deployment of embedded solutions across multiple platforms and currently already supports well over 170 different graphics chipsets including all the latest offerings from industry leaders ATI, nVidia and Matrox.
A full list of supported chipsets can be found here.
"We are very excited about SNAP as it offers us out of the box support for a huge and ever growing number of graphics cards and effectively allows us to redirect resources away from device driver development and cut down on time to market", said Ben Hermans, managing partner of Hyperion. "We are convinced that prospective customers of AmigaOS 4.x will appreciate the high-performance, low footprint graphics card technology that SciTech has developed over many years."
"SciTech shares in the vision of the Amiga platform and is excited to play a key roll in the further development of the original multi-media OS." said, Andrew Bloo, Director of Marketing, SciTech Software Inc. "By adopting SciTech SNAP Graphics as the core graphics architecture for the Amiga OS, Amiga can now offer a level of performance and compatibility equal to that of any mainstream OS".
SciTech and Hyperion are set to broaden their cooperation to encompass 3D graphics support and support for other PPC based operating systems.
About SciTech Software Inc.
SciTech Software Inc. is a leading developer of next generation multi-OS device driver development tools for embedded, industrial and enterprise systems. SciTech Flagship product, SciTech SNAP Graphics, is a robust display driver solution, with full 2D acceleration on more than 180 graphic chipsets. SciTech SNAP Technology enables hardware manufactures to cut costs, speed time to market and reduce long-term support issues. Additionally SciTech SNAP provides hardware venders with the ability to explore the emerging embedded markets through a powerful, OS agnostic device driver abstraction layer. Enterprise customers benefit from the SciTech SNAP technology through the unified chip drivers, which allow IT managers to roll out a single display driver across an entire enterprise, drastically reducing associated test matrices and long-term support costs. SciTech also provides leading edge development tools for the embedded and industrial markets. These tools allow developers to quickly add support for new and or emerging OS'es and with the SciTech SNAP architecture instantly gain access to more than180 supported graphic chip sets. Founded in 1994, SciTech Software Inc. is a privately held company, backed by the original investment of its founders and the ongoing sales of its leading edge solutions. SciTech Corporate offices are located in Chico, California.
For more information please visit: http://www.scitechsoft.com.
About Hyperion Entertainment VOF
Hyperion Entertainment is a privately held Belgian-German company, founded in March of 1999. The company specialises in 3D graphics and the conversion of top-quality entertainment software from Windows to niche-platforms including Amiga, Linux (x86,PPC) and MacOS (OS 9/X). Hyperion Entertainment has undertaken contract-work in the field of 3D graphics for companies such as Monolith (www.lith.com) and has developed a mature, fast, small foot-print technology to bring 3D graphics to low power digital devices such as PDA's and STB's.
Hyperion is currently working on AmigaOS 4.0, a vastly enhanced PPC native incarnation of the groundbreaking OS introduced by Commodore in 1985. (ps)
http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2003-02-00190-DE.html (http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2003-02-00190-DE.html) :-D :-o :-D
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@hnl_dk
Damned... Just submitted it as news ;-)
[Edit]
Hope they support Matrox Parhelia "soon"..
[/edit]
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This is surprising and very good news.
Keep working Hyperion and OS4 dev team. The harder people say "you will fail', the harder you should think "we will show you"!!!
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@Seer
I also did that ;-) ... but it takes a lifetime for the news to apear ... so I thought it would be for the best to make a quick thread :-D
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Hyperion might well make the finest OS in the world, but if they don't release it soon, no-one will be left to use it.
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Hehe, that's a right kick in the teeth for naysayers. This might not see the light of day 'tomorrow', but it does show that things are still active.
I absolutely love it when stuff like this happens - all the idiots look _really_ stupid and have to scurry off elsewhere, licking their wounds. Trouble is, they come back with some other bulls**t, in a vain attempt to discredit Hyperion/Eyetech.
-john
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oh really
how about this, OS 4 isn't released, this is another announcment.
If the last unfulfilled promise isn't enough, make another promise.
The fact that another announcement was made isn't surprising....there have been announcements from the various owners for going on 10 years now...the fact that yet-another-announcment makes it all better for some people, is simply astonishing.
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Now that is some great news.
Wooottttttt!!!!!
That's what I've been saying all along.
Instead of making partnerships with people to bring new products....
Make partnerships with people to make what's already available to the pc world available to us.
I hope people don't take this news too lightly.
That's freakin' wonderful news.
YESSSSSS!!!!!
Go Hyperion!
You got the goods!
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Who will develop the drivers/port SNAP? Hyperion?
What about the Forefront Radeon drivers? I was
under the impression that they wanted to provide
Radeon drivers and will sell them?
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Hahaha, go KennyR, i neither agree or disagree with you, but your record seems to be scratched???
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Man, somebody slap me.
I must be freakin' dreamin' again.
I think I might hold on to my money for a good while now.
mmmmmmmmm.............
Wow!
The binding tie man...
The binding tie.
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@hnl_dk
Sounds good...
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Hehe, that's a right kick in the teeth for naysayers.
For years and years these magical announcments have turned in to lies and betrayel, so what makes this announcement special?
Next thing you guys will be telling us Amiga inc is a honest respectable company :-).
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Hey...
Head on over to thier site and read up on some of the projects these fellows have.
Might be a little more to this story than meets the eye.
Go Here (http://www.scitechsoft.com/)
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If you want an original answer from me, teotwin, show me an original thread. This is just more pseudo-news to keep us following until they finally do release, and you and I both know it.
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A very good news, great job! :-o
But we need OS4 now :-(
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with full 2D acceleration on more than 180 graphic chipsets.
It's good news, but it's 2D only...
Anyway, we will able to display OS4 and apps without 3D with a *WIDE* range of graphic card now !
:-D :-D :-D
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@KennyR
Man, if this don't get your old Amiga blood pumping, I'm wondering if you're still alive!
Maybe you're a zombie...
Walking through this mangled up world with no hope of ever seeing light.
Wow!!!
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@Hombre
have a look at the News item from Hans-Joerg http://amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=44011 (http://amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=44011)
PS: It's my post you have to look at ... there is a link ... interesting ;-)
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All my enthusiasm for OS4 recently ran out. Maybe it's because MOS and PC solutions are stealing away Amiga users by the day. I want OS4, I always wanted OS4, but forgive me if I'm a little cynical after almost 4 years of useless waiting and staring in the face of another year of waiting.
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Hey...
Check this out dudes.
What is SciTech SNAP Graphics Architecture? This particular specification deals with graphics controllers and is called the SciTech SNAP Graphics Architecture. This document defines a complete Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for modern graphics controllers, including support for features such as 2D and 3D rendering, video acceleration, power management and Plug and Play operation. The following is a brief list of some of the features provided by this specification:
· Standard application interface to graphical user interface accelerator devices.
· Operating system neutral high performance 32-bit loadable device driver.
· Support for Plug and Play and multiple independent controllers in a single system.
· Support for bus mastering (i.e.: PCI and AGP bus interfaces)
· Support for hardware video acceleration.
· Support for 2D hardware acceleration.
· Support for 3D hardware acceleration.
· Support for standard and extended text modes.
· Support for pixel depths from 4 bit to 32-bits per pixel.
· Support for all 16 ROP2 mixes.
· Support for all 256 ROP3 mixes.
· Support for off screen memory management for bitmap storage.
· Support for multi buffering for flicker free animation.
· Support for virtual scrolling for large desktops and arcade style games.
· Support for refresh rate control.
· Support for stereo liquid crystal shutter glasses.
· Support for DPMS Power Management
· Support for I2C Serial Control Interface
It's like that old Barry Manilow song...
Trying to get that feeling back again.
I think I've got it.
:-D
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Great !!!
But i guess we won't see the result within the 10 next monthes (they have so much things to do, like MesaGL...)
May i be wrong, here !
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I don't care when it comes out now.
Some things are worth waiting for, and this is one of them.
Please....
Nothing go wrong from here on out.
Finally ....
Just maybe....
I'm gonna get away from Bill Gates.
Woooooottt!!!
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Great news !!!
I'ts official.... Scitech news (http://www.scitechsoft.com/news/press/amiga_partnership.html) :-o :-D
!8O)
/Spaceman
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@mountain_myst,
maybe next year when you are feeling a little down about OS 4 delays, they can announce that they are planning support for over 360 brands of mice and keyboards, and all those blues can be erased.
its time to stop seeking out new partners, and deliver the product.
hey I've got an idea, why don't they redo the kernel based on QNX...imagine the instant technology partner in qnx....and then they can scrap that and go with the linux kernel, imagine all the drivers of linux running on amiga os....
and so it goes.....another change of direction, another excuse for delays...
same old same old.
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yeah....
Yeah...
ok Marktime....
Go play with your butterfly or something.
Leave me alone when i'm in extasy.
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HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!
What a pathetic statement!
"We just got 100+ video chips supported!"
Take a look at this statement a bit closer:
SciTech Flagship product, SciTech SNAP Graphics, is a robust display driver solution, with full 2D acceleration on more than 180 graphic chipsets.
You read that right, 2D. SNAP's vast majority of support is for 10+ year old VGA, EGA and CGA chip solution! Way to go Hyperion, you just evolved AOS4 to support chipsets that can't even match OCS capabilities!
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Hahahahahha...
yeah, and if you'll go to the top of this page, you'll see it includes 3d along with much more.
Hahaha...
That was pulled straight from SciTech's site.
Hehehahharrrrhohohooo
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no Ben Hermans on ann.lu said it does not involve 3d, but they intend to work with SciTech on 3d on certain chipsets, if they have the documentation and they are modern...
in other words, they haven't even started and the 100+ chipsets has nothing to do with 3d drivers.
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@mountain_myst
Go play with your butterfly or something.
well its good to have a hobby....and when is someone going to ask me about my avatar anyway? sigh...I call it: how to throw a bird into the mouth of a bear.....
no butterfly on it yet, but it would look cool with a butterfly.... :-)
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:-P
expecially a checkered one.
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Please check your facts first there Mountain_Myst. Ben Hermans disagrees with your statement there, in his comments on ann.lu. The drivers being ported are 2D only, with 3D to be added later. This will add years to the design work.
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Well, Golly Downix...
I'm sure glad we have you here to tell us timelines.
Don't know what we'd do without you.
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downix wrote:
This will add years to the design work.
Years? You may be strecthing things here a tad. Yes you are right that the 3d drivers won't be included immediately but to claim it will take years was unfair.
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@ DOWNIX
"Please check your facts first there Mountain_Myst. Ben Hermans disagrees with your statement there, in his comments on ann.lu. The drivers being ported are 2D only, with 3D to be added later. This will add years to the design work."
The mentioned drivers are "only" 2D like you say. Some are even for years old cards just like some morefuss drivers are.
What matters here is the newer ones and the future ones but I guess you never thought of that?
Oh, and 3D drivers will come for the newer ones that has documentation available (nothing new there).
(EDIT)
"This will add years to the design work":
Well some would actually call that FUD or mudslinging from the competition, but I guess you know facts or...?
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@Downix:
Oh, and here's the guy who was complaining about "thread after thread of MOS bashing". Anyway, do some research before slagging off the competition. Here's another list (http://www.scitechsoft.com/chiplist/snap_os2_chiplist.html) of supported chipsets, which seems to be more up to date. You'd have to be either very retarded or very delusional not to find QUITE A FEW chipsets which beats OCS by QUITE A GOOD MARGIN on it.
With this and Warp3D Nova in the works, I think it is fair to say that OS4 is looking to be vastly superior in the graphics department (unless Genesi can come up with something to match it).
Kay
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Holy crap I just popped a woody.
Thanks for the heads up on the supported video cards Kay! You da man!
For all those naysayers, bah! Nothing is good enough for you guys anyway, so why even post anymore. Let us other amigans that have some hope left in this project have our day. This is fantastic news. Having SciTech onboard, is exactly what the doctor ordered, hehe. It will cut out months and months of driver support dev and make gfx integration seemless for the future. Not to mention all the extra legwork that SciTech will be doing on amiga's behalf for support in the next gen cards as they hit the market.
Here's hoping for a brighter Amiga future! Finally my Voodoo 5 5500 may see the light of day again on an A1!!!! yeay!
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HAHAHA!!!! I just looked at the list again....Radeon 9700 Pro! WOOOOOHOOOOO!
I'd say that's a tad better than OCS....
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kinda funny to read this, its good news and its not mos news, but it doesnt really give me many answers.
anyway how many chips do we actually need to have supported to make a viable os? 3? ATI,MATROX and Nvidia? , or do we actually need 180? ... sure its good to have it all in the nova but i think i know what hyperion is doing here and that is saying "in the later updates new added chips will be supported" , ie not all at one go...
maybe i didnt understand it all....
anyway good news and most of all i know they can handle this and eventually i guess we will also (by using the drivers (SNAP) ).
but i am really unsure if i should book a tickect to cebit .....still... , why didnt they share any of that info? ...hmmm i hope they will....if the only thing is to show the hw and module based os up and running.
anyway i am sooooooooooooooooooooo looking forward to OS4 :)
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Well, I think it is key that so many different graphic chips can be used to run the A1 in standard desktop mode. What is not clear is which ones will be supported under Nova, but I'd place my bets on the big 3: ATI, nVidia, and Matrox.
Of course, the older 3D chips that are already supported will remain, but it's doubtful they will concentrate on 3D for most of these old chips, as most wouldn't be worth it. The thing about Nova is it will be more like DX9 in it's support for pixel and vertex shaders and all of those modern functions within the newer chipsets. Those older 3D chips wouldn't be able to use that anyway, although they could still be used in a limited way.
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G4 toasting the P4 :-o ... 180 GFX chip drivers for AOS4 :-o :-o ...
When things sound too good to be true, they usually are. (just to calm things down a little bit) :-|
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>HAHAHA!!!! I just looked at the list again....Radeon
>9700 Pro! WOOOOOHOOOOO!
Well the probably biggest problem however is that
most of the gfx card drivers of SNAP for advanced
cards are probably based on object files
provided by the card manufactures and these are
only available for x86 and not ppc.
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YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
er WOW :-o ........................... :-)
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You read that right, 2D. SNAP's vast majority of support is for 10+ year old VGA, EGA and CGA chip solution! Way to go Hyperion, you just evolved AOS4 to support chipsets that can't even match OCS capabilities!
Have you seen the list of supported chips? Of course there are old chips supported. But is that a bad thing??? And 90% of the old chips supported run rings around OCS, ECS and AGA in 2D mode.
There are support for many modern chips, far more than MorphOS. As for your complaint about 3D support, from what I hear, MorphOS is worse in this regard.
I think people would take you and Phoenix a bit more seriously if you stopped acting like a fanboy all the time...
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Try not to read into everything with such over-riding optimism - just because SciTech have written stuff supporting over 170 graphics cards, it doesn't mean AmigaOS4 will support anywhere near that many.
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Sorry, blame us for the last year, but leave out the rest. We are not responsible for what happened before that.
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@mikeymike
How does SNAP work (by your comment it seems as you're the apropriate source of information on the matter)?
Do you "just" have to port SNAP itselfe and make it work with p96, then you can use all of SNAPs OS agnostic drivers, or are the agnostic drivers not well... agnostic. Meaning that you have to not just make SNAP to be accessable by p96 but allso "fix" all of the separate drivers so they'll work with AmigaOS?
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Yeah, sure. You ought to know, right? We're just a bunch of idiot that have hacked together 3D drivers more or less by accident.
Yes, the drivers are 2D. Yes, some of the supported chipsets are older once, that is because SNAP does support a *wide* range of cards. They go up to the latest offerings from Matrox, ATI and nVidia.
How long the 3D drivers take is something that you cannot judge. I know that absence of knowledge usually doesn't stop people from posting about it. But please don't try to put us up as idiots, and most of all not SciTech, which are a very professional company with lots of experience in this field.
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"blame us for the last year, "
Huh! :-o What next, a public appology? ;-)
I bet it would be too much for the community at one go... :-P :-D :-P ;-)
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@Rouge
Who are you ranting at?
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anyway how many chips do we actually need to have supported to make a viable os? 3? ATI,MATROX and Nvidia?
I bet you wouldn't be asking this question if you had a Voodoo 5 or a Permedia 2...
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Well the probably biggest problem however is that most of the gfx card drivers of SNAP for advanced cards are probably based on object files provided by the card manufactures and these are only available for x86 and not ppc.
Where does it say so?
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I am ranting at whoever wrote he waited four years for OS 4. Like I said, we're on it for a year, not four.
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Would you enlighten us as to why you think that way? Or where you'd get your information from?
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OK, I need to start quoting the stuff I am ranting about...
mikeymike wrote:
Try not to read into everything with such over-riding optimism - just because SciTech have written stuff supporting over 170 graphics cards, it doesn't mean AmigaOS4 will support anywhere near that many.
Perhaps you can enlighten me as to where you get your inside information from?
I am really a bit confused now. You say, "no they won't support that many", others say "you don't need that many"... What now?
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Rogue wrote:
OK, I need to start quoting the stuff I am ranting about...
mikeymike wrote:
Try not to read into everything with such over-riding optimism - just because SciTech have written stuff supporting over 170 graphics cards, it doesn't mean AmigaOS4 will support anywhere near that many.
Perhaps you can enlighten me as to where you get your inside information from?
I am really a bit confused now. You say, "no they won't support that many", others say "you don't need that many"... What now?
We them all... ALLLLLLL ;-) .
Now have a few :pint: :pint: on me.
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rogue@: i know what you mean , this is a normal day on forums , people saying the oposite to what is said , flamebait.
i am still happy about the good news and i guess that this thread will become abit longer and more interesting within the next 10 hours...as now everyone is sleeping .P or at work...
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Hyperion...
I really don't think there's any need for you to defend your position.
What you have done here is nothing short of awesome.
For those who don't understand the possibilities here....
It's not really worth trying to explain to them.
I think that most of us know exactly what this means.
Hyperion Rule!!!
Keep on truckin' and don't listen to people who have no idea what they are talking about.
Great Job Hyperion!
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Oh, and here's the guy who was complaining about "thread after thread of MOS bashing".
Exactly right, Kay!
It's always the same. You see a positive statement on OS4, and its a certainty someone high up in Genesi or MOS development will come forward and say "Hey, that's a load of crap, you guys know nothing, here's the real deal from us real coders..." Most of the time it's just an exercise in nitpicking, as in this case.
And as we say earlier, while the MOS core tend to like spreading FUD about every single little announcement about A1/OS4, they just don't seem to like their own medicine. Strange that.
And I'm not switching sides, by the way - I'm still pessimistic about OS4 - but unlike some, I'd actually still love it if I could get it soon. I'm just unimpressed by the culture of claim and counter-claim that's been wearying my eyes for the past years...
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This is great news Hyperion you rule the Amiga scene this is truly utter greatness this means my radeon 9000 will work
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Typical, just after I ordered a Radeon 9100.
:-)
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Tafka wrote:
Typical, just after I ordered a Radeon 9100.
:-)
You know that a Radeon 9100 is actually a relabelled 8500?
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Hmm ... looking at this SNAP SDK it seems they did not think about ~"non-native-endianess 15/16 bit
pixel formats".
For example little endian 15/16 bit modes (PC gfx
card) on big endian machine (Mac/A1).
One cannot describe such pixel formats with
red/green/blue shifts/masks alone. As RECTFMT_RGB15PC for example looks like this
in memory:
GGGBBBBB 0RRRRRGG
No problem to describe as mask/shift operations
on little endian machines, but on big endian machines you have to additionally swap bytes before
the WORD (pixel) write.
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This IMHO is very good news, it covers most chipsets in 2D from the off with ongoing support (if i'm not mistaken) for new cards....
I wouldn't expect many 3d drivers to ship with OS4, I imagine they will be provided after release, as and when they become available.
Regards
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People keep asking me "where I get my information from" - when two companies partner, it doesn't just become an "all your information are belong to us" situation - plus, whatever work these SciTech guys have done so far will have to be adapted to A1/AOS4 as drivers have to have a lot of per-system optimisations. Reading into the press release (and that's the only info I have), it will speed up driver support for AmigaOS4, but it doesn't mean that AmigaOS4 instantly has driver support for all the cards that SciTech have done work for.
To add to that, what if their work on some of the graphics chipsets out of this "170" quoted number were guarded with confidentiality agreements of sorts, that they weren't allowed to use the work for other projects/companies... all I was saying was, don't assume that AOS4 will have support for that many cards!
Look how long it has taken Windows to get the amount of default install driver support it has now with Win2k/XP - and that's a company that has it all.
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Reading into the press release (and that's the only info I have), it will speed up driver support for AmigaOS4, but it doesn't mean that AmigaOS4 instantly has driver support for all the cards that SciTech have done work for.
Nonetheless, it will be a LOT better than the VGA/VESA mode that Windows is using. :)
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so their licenseing scitech snap? so what?>.. they will have 2D on some cards...big deal... as far as this bieng a 'kick in teeth to naysayers' its just more 'talk' and we've seen 'talk' for years now... if all the 'talk' was right.. OS4 would be done and OS5 would be out by now...
I believe it 'when I see it'....
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>What about the Forefront Radeon drivers? I was
under the impression that they wanted to provide
>Radeon drivers and will sell them?
Well, we still have the OS3.x folks to sell to that might not be able to afford an AmigaOne or have access to a PowerUP card. We currently have Workbench working on the Radeon cards we have in-house, so our driver may still be of use while this SNAP thing is in development for OS4. Plus, there are other related opportunities lurking in the shadows. Hyperion's decision to add support for more hardware to the OS is an important one for the users, and I think SNAP sounds pretty cool myself, speaking as a user. Don't worry about us. :) Just be happy that some very cool things are going to come from Hyperion's annoucnement here.
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You know that a Radeon 9100 is actually a relabelled 8500?
Yes, see my radeon8500/9100 post. I've ordered a 9100 anyway.
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@downix:
"You read that right, 2D. SNAP's vast majority of support is for 10+ year old VGA, EGA and CGA chip solution! Way to go Hyperion, you just evolved AOS4 to support chipsets that can't even match OCS capabilities! "
so a geforce is beaten by OCS? oh yeah! A500 rules! :P
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@downix:
The drivers being ported are 2D only, with 3D to be added later.
mmm like MorphOS and the Radeons? :-P
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Crumb wrote:
@downix:
The drivers being ported are 2D only, with 3D to be added later.
mmm like MorphOS and the Radeons? :-P
Which would get done sooner, 3D support for 4 variations on a chip design, or 3D support for 60+ variations on 20+ chip designs?
My money is on MorphOS having complete 3D support for their 2D-only-for-now 3D cards than AOS4.
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This is extremely good news.
Another advantage to choose AmigaOne over a Peg. :-D
I stand firmly by my decision.
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Thanks for calling us liars
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I think this is good.
If I'm going to buy an AmigaOne, I will not buy one of those
very expensive graphic cards. If it is possible for me to run OS4 with any of the old cards I got at home, thats even better.
(But then I save money for the 21th World Scout Moot in Taiwan 2004, so I doubt I will spend _any_ money on anything amiga related during the next 12 months),
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Well the probably biggest problem however is that
most of the gfx card drivers of SNAP for advanced
cards are probably based on object files
provided by the card manufactures and these are
only available for x86 and not ppc.
Refer to http://www.scitechsoft.com/docs/snap_ga/notoc/index.html
"SciTech SNAP drivers are source code portable between different microprocessor platforms, and the binary drivers are operating system portable within a particular microprocessor family. Hence the Intel x86 drivers can work on any 386+ CPU with any 32-bit operating system or environment supported on that CPU."
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ksk wrote:
G4 toasting the P4 :-o ... 180 GFX chip drivers for AOS4 :-o :-o ...
That’s a bit of a generalization.
http://www.barefeats.com/p4game.html
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html
(Just for reference between Pentium 4 3Ghz HT vs Athlon XP 2700+/nForce2)http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20021218/vgacharts-05.html
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You read that right, 2D. SNAP's vast majority of support is for 10+ year old VGA, EGA and CGA chip solution!
There's nothing wrong with investment protection regime.
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@downix:
"Which would get done sooner, 3D support for 4 variations on a chip design, or 3D support for 60+ variations on 20+ chip designs?"
The point is that OS4 will have 3D support for Voodoo3, Permedia2 and later Radeon and Permedia 3 AND lots of 2D drivers for people not interested in 3D.
"My money is on MorphOS having complete 3D support for their 2D-only-for-now 3D cards than AOS4. "
You seem to forget that all Amiga games that use 3D acceleration use 3D drivers written by the Hyperion crew. They already have the drivers for permedia2 and voodoo3, they will have 3D support for Radeon and Permedia3 (and maybe Matrox, who knows...). But they also will have an excelent 2D support for lots of cards (and it's not like if they had to do these drivers from scratch, these drivers are well tested and optimized for 2D).
You can invest your money where you want, but it's obvious that having full 2D support for lots of cards it's better than not having support at all.
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@Crumb
Not saying that having support is bad, but that I am sick of people going "oooooo, 180+ chips, must be great." It's not great, as AOS4 will never see a good portion of them. Also, too many people don't read the fine lines, nor do their research into the supported chipsets. My negativity is more a response to them than a FUD against SNAP. I happen to use SNAP in my OS/2 partition and find it very nice (better than the 16-bit OS/2 drivers for my Voodoo). But I also know the kind of support issues that it can and will bring to AOS4 and I do not envy Hyperion's position.
But this also brings up the second issue of AOS4 I don't like, inconsistancy. Which API will coders have to use, P96 or SNAP?
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I don't think that the feeling is wowww!! , we will have support for 180 video cards.
The feeling is wow!! , we have support for some of the best cards.
Which is more than some folks will probably have.
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@downix
Ok, some of the younger crowd on here might sound like theyre at a fireworks display (ooh aaah wow etc), nevertheless this is a very useful development....
... but only you could take a positive piece of news and sodomize it.
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@downix:
Seing how hard you are trying to make this sound like bad news, I can only assume that OS4 just gained a massive advantage over MorphOS. Why else would Thendic be working so hard at FUDing it down? Anyway, your desperate straw-grasping is getting rather tiresome, and I'd appreciate if you'd just knock it off.
Kay
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Yes, sorry to say it Downix. Even if you were eventually
to be right in all you doom mongering comments, you are
currently coming across as more and more desperate.
...Which I suppose was not your intention. Might I suggest a
change of tactics?
...Oh, and as for the API:s, there will only be one, the
Picasso96, in which SNAP will just appear as yet another
driver (as I understood it). Read the interview with Ben Hermans on amiga.de.
.
SlimJim
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Not saying that having support is bad, but that I am sick of people going "oooooo, 180+ chips, must be great."
What’s the other alternative?
It's not great, as AOS4 will never see a good portion of them. Also, too many people don't read the fine lines, nor do their research into the supported chipsets.
What kind of research are you referring to?
I happen to use SNAP in my OS/2 partition and find it very nice (better than the 16-bit OS/2 drivers for my Voodoo).
Good for you...
But this also brings up the second issue of AOS4 I don't like, inconsistancy. Which API will coders have to use, P96 or SNAP?
Asserting "inconsistency" would be subjective since you haven't seen the whole picture.
Refer to http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2003-02-00202-EN.html
Also refer to http://www.scitechsoft.com/docs/snap_ga/notoc/index.html
"SciTech SNAP drivers are source code portable between different microprocessor platforms, and the binary drivers are operating system portable within a particular microprocessor family. Hence the Intel x86 drivers can work on any 386+ CPU with any 32-bit operating system or environment supported on that CPU."
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Kay wrote:
Seing how hard you are trying to make this sound like bad news, I can only assume that OS4 just gained a massive advantage over MorphOS.
Only implemented feature counts. OS4 can support more than 1.000.000 gfx chipsets but now OS4 supports only one or two. This deal looks good but the job must be done first.
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Man, I can't believe some of you people! What the hell is wrong with you? Hyperion strikes up a partnership with a graphics card driver designer and you've gotta bitch. I think some of you owe the people of Hyperion an apology.
First off, SciTech supports 180 graphics cards. Then you start bitching, 'but it only supports 2D'. Big deal! Most of the old Amiga games ARE 2D, along with MOST of it's software. We don't need hardcore 3D drivers right now, 'cos we don't have ANYTHING that an USE them! Hyperion isn't going to use all 180, but at least they know they can PICK from that the best, say 20 or 30 gfx cards and have those ported for use with the Amiga OS. Then, there are others that whine, 'But I bet there's no 3D drivers on release.' Blah blah. Well, now Rogue and the rest of the other coders have hardware DOCUMENTS on chipsets that were once unavailable, ie NVIDIA! It's quite simple, SciTech ports their drivers, handpicked by Hyperion I'm sure and Hyperion does what it does best, codes for Amiga. Besides, of the current 3D drivers or GAMES, for that matter, for Amiga out, which ones WEREN'T written by Hyperion? Very few.
I think it's a good move. They're the LAST chance you have at an 'official' AmigaOS upgrade since Commodore, yet you all have to find SOMETHING wrong with it. Sure, they've picked up extra work, but look at it. They've just helped make you a BETTER product *AND* picked up however many coders there are at SciTech assigned to the porting of their drivers to help do their job.
Believe me, you will bitch if you find something wrong with OS4. Hyperion knows it. If they say anything, it's taken out of context or picked apart, like vultures on carrion. Yet, they throw out this bit of information and the first thing you do is complain.
'It's gonna take YEARS to develop..'
'Some of these chipsets are 10+ years old...'
'We don't need this many....'
'It's not as good as ECS, OCS, or AGA....'
What the hell is wrong with you???!? Don't you realize that Hyperion actually CARES about you as a community, 'cos they are a part of it and want nothing more than to see Amiga continue and thrive?? They're prepared to pull every ounce of power they can find in the AmigaOS and give it to you in a finished and *FINAL* product. I am a perfectionist when it comes to drawing. I understand them completely. If they 'let you down', you will destroy them.
:-(
I am totally pissed about the coupon thing. I didn't buy one, but it's sh!tty the way you people have been done. Hyperion didn't do that to you. That was Amiga Inc. Let them dabble with their PDA projects. Hyperion is following their original promise. To have a fully cross platformable OS. Sure, right now it's only PPC, but it's coded for two of them and I'm sure it wouldn't take much to have that ported, other than time, coders and resources. Have faith in these people. The people at Hyperion and Eyetch, they WANTED a PPC AmigaOS, so they WORKED for it. They spent time, designing it, implementing it, not to mention their own resources to bring products like the AmigaOne to you. Sure, it's not using up to date hardware, but aren't most of you using 10+ year old amigas anways? I think running most of the stuff I do on an A3000, but on a NEW mobo that's behind the times by, say a couple of years, is alot better.
I guess none of you noticed Hans-Jorg and Thomas take offence to your bitching about how....'ignorant' seems to be the only word I can think of right now.....they and the rest of Hyperion were for trying to build you a better Amiga. I'm suprised they even bother to tell us anything anymore. :-?
I, for one, am sorry on how the community has acted. Rogue, you and the rest of Hyperion have my most humble apology. Good work. If it's been delayed, I'm not suprised. I have always intended to wait until it was in beta release before looking into buying it, but I never questioned the integrity or the lack of commitment you had to this project. Maybe someday soon I'll FINALLY have an Amiga that will be able to run your games. :-D Here's to hoping.
M
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whatever work these SciTech guys have done so far will have to be adapted to A1/AOS4 as drivers have to have a lot of per-system optimisations
Didn't it occur to you that the system-adaption part is very easy? That this might be one of the actual selling points for SNAP. Again, what part of "OS-agnostic" is so hard to comprehend?
it doesn't mean that AmigaOS4 instantly has driver support for all the cards that SciTech have done work for.
Any sort of reasoning to back this up, or do you admit at making a wild guess? You don't know very much about SNAP, or do you?
what if their work on some of the graphics chipsets out of this "170" quoted number were guarded with confidentiality agreements of sorts, that they weren't allowed to use the work for other projects/companies
What if their work doesn't, and is completely their own? What if I never need to actually see the driver source code?
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its just more 'talk' and we've seen 'talk' for years now.
Sorry, mips_proc, as I said before blame whoever you want for "years". Blame us for one "year". Talking isn't a bad thing at all if work is being done in parallel, and there *is* work being done, much more than ever before.
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But this also brings up the second issue of AOS4 I don't like, inconsistancy. Which API will coders have to use, P96 or SNAP?
If you have a look at the SNAP sdk, you will find out that this is no API for high-level graphics. As its name implies, it is a driver system, and as such it is not intended to be used directly, in the same sense as SCSI device is not used to read files from disk.
SNAP will be integrated as a monitor driver under Picasso96. The original graphics library and the Picasso96 API will be used, like before. Plans are to extend the graphics system starting at 4.1, and eventually replace it and provide an interface for backwards compatibility.
There is nothing inconsistant about this. You where just jumping to conclusions.
I agree that many of the 180 graphics chips supported will probably never be used in an AmigaOne (TSENG ET4000 anyone), but that is actually not the point. The point is, *if* you want to buy a graphics card, or happen to have one in your hand, chances are that you will find it mentioned on a 180 entry list, as opposed to a list of only 5 or so cards.
Also, no one ever claimed that these will be supported with 3D drivers (again the ET 4000 doesn't even have a 3D core). However, the same problem would arise if we or Alexander and Tobias would need to write the 2D drivers, only that we would also be burdened with that one. And, as the press release also states, we are cooperating with SciTech on this, so anything done on their part also benefits OS 4 customers.
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One thing that always bothers me is that people complain about the 3D drivers taking soo much longer ("years of planning" etc ad nauseam). I would like to ask, though, what is the difference between now and before? If SciTech SNAP wouldn't have been chosen, we would have to do both the 2D and 3D drivers. How come that some people take 180 graphics drivers for 2D as a sign that 3D will be massively delayed? That is one thing that I can't get into my head. Perhaps someone can enlighten me... :-)
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Rogue my point is I'll believe everything when I see it...AOS4 was supposed to be done by how many due dates so far?... I'll believe it when I see it... I think its great to 'hear' that 180 graphics chips will have 2D... but I'd rather 'see' it :P.
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>Not saying that having support is bad, but that I am sick of people going "oooooo, 180+ chips, must be great." It's
>not great, as AOS4 will never see a good portion of them.
How many caards are already supported is not what is important here. What is important here is the target market size of SNAP compared to the target Amiga-only market. Is SNAP's potential userbase particularly huge? Maybe not. But compare that potential market size to the Amiga-only market, who is huge in comparison?
This is going to be important when talking to chip or card makers about docs required to make drivers. When we asked Nvidia about getting an NDA for the stuff needed to write GeForce drivers, they are so not interested in AmigaOS they never even bothered to say no, they just completely ignored us. ATI's first reaction was of the "Why the hell would we want to invest our effort in AmigaOS??!!" type, but they agreed when we worked to convince them we'd do ALL the work, we'd take ALL the responsibility and risk, and they wouldn't have a single penny going into AmigaOS Radeon drivers. They are so not intrested in AmigaOS that they really don't like answering questions when we find issues in their docs such as conflicting info on different pages and such, they won't correct their docs just for us.
With SNAP, you're now talking AmigaOS 4 users, but you're also talking about Linux and LinuxPPC users now, which may be more interesting to the hardware manufacturers to offer a bit more support, at least to the extent of allowing SciTech and Hyperion access to more docs that Hyperion or Forefront alone are too small for, and hopefuly the hardware vendors will also be more willing to spend time supporting their documentation as well.
Please understand, this isn't about the nearly 180 cards on the list already. It's about having better vendor support regarding the newest ones on that list, and getting future hardware on that list easier than without the SNAP stuff, because the larger target market will be more interesting to the vendors this way. This one point is, in my opinion, the biggest one to consider regarding this announcement. And it's good news IMHO.
And for the other question about P96 native or SNAP API usage, that would presumably be up to the developer to decide. If you want your driver Amiga-only, use P96, like Elbox does to make sure no one else can take advantage of their work. The more free-minded folks may choose to support SNAP, to give both AmigaOS and Linux types something to use, though I see this more often bringing existing Linux SNAP drivers to us, not the other way around. It may also affect OS3.x users not moving to AmigaOnes or PowerUP cards, as for the moment SNAP sounds like OS4 feature, so P96 drivers would be at least source compatible between 3.x and 4.x OS versions. Mostly depends on what the driver developer wants to do though.
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mips_proc wrote:
Rogue my point is I'll believe everything when I see it...AOS4 was supposed to be done by how many due dates so far?... I'll believe it when I see it... I think its great to 'hear' that 180 graphics chips will have 2D... but I'd rather 'see' it :P.
And my point was that if you want to blame us, blame us for those release dates that we actually missed. We are working on this for slightly above a year now, and in that year, more has been done on OS 4 than ever before. That is what counts, and that is why it will be available at one day.
Anyway, you will see that I never mention a release date anymore. But now I will announce it. Yes, I will tell you when AmigaOS 4 will be ready:
[color=FF0000]:flame: WHEN IT'S DONE! :destroy:[/color][/b]
There you have it. Can't I be more precise? :-D
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Methuselas mentioned:
Man, I can't believe some of you people! What the hell is wrong with you? Hyperion strikes up a partnership with a graphics card driver designer and you've gotta bitch. I think some of you owe the people of Hyperion an apology.
:lol: Thank you, Methuselas!
That was pretty much my reaction when I noticed this thread a few minutes ago. Thanks for adding a voice of reason. I was of a mind to write something similar, but you beat me to it.
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@Rogue, HyperionMP
I wouldn't bother correcting those that are trying
to pour cold water on this. They are all *bar none*
Amiga.org users that are well known for their methods and motives anyway without your intervention. As Ive said before with every Troll/mudsling/FUD post on one "side" you can hear the cash register going for the other "side" with the "what a bunch of tossers" factor.
Id like to say I think this is outstanding news, the ability to re-use old GFX cards will be a boon for upgraders and it corrects one of my annoyances with the current status of MorphOS and what was the claimed support of AmigaOS4 for only a few graphics card chips which is why I opted for the top of the range Power system ( because I can't be arsed to work out a box from the support list! ) from Eyetech.
Now others will feel more freedom to pick and choose their cards for A1* boxes.
Well done!
Oh and the frank and honest interview from Ben was quite excellent too, so Ill shut up about March being critical aswell ;-)
@Downix
Hey, so its not 3D, who gives a sh*t? What do I have open on my desktop most throughout the day? Well on monitor 1 I have email, news tickers and a browser. On monitor 2 I have my code editor ( Visual Slick Edit ) and on monitor 3 I have my "test screen" which mostly shows the 2D side of the product I am enhancing but say one in a hundred times shows a 3D display without hardware acceleration.
Every once in a while I run a 3D game that benefits from hardware acceleration.
This is why when you and others pointed out that hardware accelerated drivers for MorphOS were not so vital because with 600Mhz you can do a reasonably complex >25fps 3d environment with software rendering I agreed totally.
Now somehow you are trying to claim that it is a big problem that these drivers are 2D only?
The broader the driver support on a platform the more credible that platform becomes - irrespective of driver completeness. Example: My Intel Anypoint wireless 2 USB kit only had drivers for Win* until recently. The new Linux based drivers mean that I can finally use it with Linux making me a very happy man.
Such small victories mean a lot to end users.
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But this also brings up the second issue of AOS4 I don't like, inconsistancy. Which API will coders have to use, P96 or SNAP?
Picasso96. There's no need to make the things more complex.
BTW you have a similar inconsistency in MorphOS with the 3D APIs. No game coder has used Rave ever, they've always used Warp3D. Will they use Warp3D to make it compatible with every AmigaOS or will they use Rave to make it MorphOS-only?