Why I want an A-Eon X5000

[ferrellsl]

@psxphill

It maybe fair comment that software technologies have not progressed as fast for a few years on OS4 and therefore emulation has closed the gap.  However, this is now changing with Warp3D Nova and OpenGLES 2.0 being available on OS4.  The power of the X5000, X1000 and a RadeonHD R7 or R9 card will really be put to good use with the advent of modern Shader 3D technology on AmigaOS.   It will be a long time before WinUAE gets near that level, if it ever will.

Since when has OpenGLES 2.0 been released/available for OS4?  Oh, that's right.....it hasn't been made available.  I understand that AmigaKit is in the business of making money from Amiga users, but for those who have been away from the Amiga scene for a while who are maybe looking to get back into Amiga ownership, AmigaKit's statement is misleading at best.  It's all smoke, mirrors, and cheap talk until something is really released, if it's released.

[ferrellsl]

@ferrellsl

I am not sure if you have been following the recent developments.

I am pleased to confirm that the OpenGL ES 2.0 library is in my Libs drawer right now, latest update with Stencil buffering added this week.  A collection of prominent 3D Amiga developers have been using the library for the last few months with Daniel Muessener producing three releases during the last 6 weeks (latest v1.2).




Quake is a fixed-pipeline old game from the OpenGL 1 era.  The new Warp3D Nova adds Shader support to AmigaOS for the very first time so is aimed at far more recent ports.

My apologies.  I stand corrected.  But I do have a question or two.  Is OpenGLES 2.0 for OS4 a "FULL" implementation of OpenGLES 2.0 or just a subset?  If it's a subset of OpenGLES 2.0, then it's still a bit misleading to say that OS4 now has OpenGLES 2.0 support.  And if it's a subset, where can I find a list of what is currently implemented and what is still a work in progress?

I'm sorry if my comments might sound a bit critical but I've been burned more than once over the years when it comes to OS4 and OS4 hardware support.

[ferrellsl]

Yes, the new ogles2.library is intended as Warp3D Nova wrapper for all the OpenGL ES 2.0 commands so OpenGL ES 2.0 ports can be more easily ported across.

As you can imagine the Warp3D Nova project is mammoth undertaking, and it has been a year so far in the making.  The pre-release version (1.15) was made available to the public/developers back in May to start the ball rolling with third-party developments.  The idea was to incremently add more advanced features through free updates such as Stencil buffering and Mip Mapping.  Stencil buffering has now been recently added and Mip mapping is almost there (a week or less) so the bulk of the work is now done.

Going forward over the next few months, there are a few last things to do such as enhancing the Shader compiler and refine it further, render-to-texture/bitmap as texture and finally smart register allocation.  The ongoing development process will not prevent third party developers use it for their projects, in fact there are some in process now (I will not steal their thunder by pre-announcing them).  



I can understand the scepticism, but that is one reason we wanted to get the pre-release out there and build upon that foundation with regular free updates rather than hide it away for months (years) without being practically used by developers and users. We wanted to show that Shaders on AmigaOS are real and can be used now.

Thank you very much for the thorough response.  I look forward to seeing some of the upcoming "surprises" tied to Warp3D Nova and OpenGLES 2.0.  It will be nice to see graphics on OS4 that aren't stuck in the 1990's.