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Author Topic: How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?  (Read 13831 times)

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Offline sharpieTopic starter

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How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?
« on: December 03, 2003, 08:27:21 PM »
I am really having a hard time understanding where the Amiga stands today in terms of a platform.

Is it possible to do real-time 3D graphics for games, via something like OpenGL? Are there drivers for the new Radeon cards? I would like to port a real-time 3D shader engine to the Amiga but it uses OpenGL.

Is this possible, and if so what do I need to be able to start?
 

Offline sharpieTopic starter

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Re: How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?
« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2003, 08:50:56 PM »
Ok, thanks for the info. None of those options are acceptable.

What is the ETA for modern/advanced 3D hardware support? Is there one?

I can't help thinking Amiga won't stand a chance of a revival if this is not on their top 5 list of things.. But then again I haven't followed Amiga since my A500 days as a kid. It seems I wisely avoided a lot of self inflicted pain.
 

Offline sharpieTopic starter

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Re: How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2003, 09:12:51 PM »
Well like I said in my original post I am hoping to port a 3D engine that is advanced and built solely on shaders.

I know that the classic 3D support is useable, but again, its hard to imagine Amiga having a comeback (at least in the area of 3d,animation and games) if shader centric code is impossible.

This technology is pretty much here for a long while.

I guess I'm just wondering if this issue is even on the radar for the new Amiga platform?
 

Offline sharpieTopic starter

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Re: How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2003, 09:50:26 PM »
^^^ What Shades said.

That is what I'm talking about. If Amiga wants to live in the past, by all means ignore advanced 3d hardware.

I would love an Amiga comeback, but for the general market, it will never happen without full, unapolagetic support for 3d.
 

Offline sharpieTopic starter

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Re: How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2003, 10:58:36 PM »
Quote
imagine this... DEVELOP FOR AMIGA!! we have a super puper 3dapi but we have no os....


My brain hurts here. We're talking about a modern system that is supposed to be built upon exactly this kind of feature set. It should be *part* of the OS.

Now if you're saying it will be soon, fine, that's all I was asking. I do appreciate the heads up, because as I said I do not follow this stuff (until now).

As for big commercial games coming to Amiga, nobody is even going to consider it until there is somekind of public and official pledge or plan for that kind of OS level support. So I disagree and think you have it backwards. First they need to anounce the "story" for 3D on Amiga, and then court developers (publishers actually).

Also, a lot of games today run off of middlewhare that could easily be ported to Amiga presuming it had the 3D support.

Anyway thanks for the info from all of you. Its clear that 3D is not something the Amiga can handle at the moment, but it may in the future. But then again, where have I heard that before when it comes to Amiga?
 

Offline sharpieTopic starter

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Re: How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?
« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2003, 06:45:08 PM »
DirectX is a standard, despite the cries on this thread otherwise. It's a de facto standard, not an open one, the majority of games use DirectX as the renderer, or at least include a DX renderer in their engine.

Considering how much input Microsoft takes from game developers and IHVs on the future of DirectX (I know because I worked at MS for 5 years), its very representative of the positive sides of an open standard body like OpenGL, but without the incredibly tiresome waiting and waffling.

True that it benefits from a smaller niche, games only, where as OpenGL has a whole variety of industries to please, so it can be forgiven.

In any case, I could care less if Amiga had a DirectX or an OpenGL, or something new. What I care about is that there is some equivelent that lets me write shaders, preferably in a HLSL/Cg/Slang-eque language, which can compile down to the actual Vertex and Fragment program specs, and which otherwise take advantage of all the hardware features found in today's cards.

I understand the delay, and the need to complete the OS, but I don't understand the lack of a concrete vision and story for 3D on the Amiga. Saying that such and such API is possibly coming out, and not knowing what it actually is capable of and how it works, is not what I'm talking about.

At this point I would be happy with a gaurantee that such a featured API is coming out, from which point I could write an abstracted rendering interface in my game knowing that it could be easily ported/implemented later once more detail is available.
 

Offline sharpieTopic starter

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Re: How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?
« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2003, 06:46:34 PM »
By the way, I didn't even imagine this thread would get this big. Obviously there are a lot of varying opinions and unknown details about this issue.

It will be interesting to see where this leads.