Hall of Fame: Amiga 500, the computer that showed consoles how it's done

[JimS]

One thing about the A500 that cracked me up was an animation. I saw it in a theater in one of those computer animation festival films popular at the time. Right in between the stuff rendered out on Crays or SGI workstations was this animation made by a guy with an A500 in his bedroom. Very cool.

[JimS]

You can render on anything if you wait long enough, but an A500 isn't going to look as good as something on an SGI because the a500 is likely rendered to 320x240 64/HAM8

The Amiga animation wasn't rendered at all. It was hand drawn in Deluxe Paint. It was just a hoot to see it up on the big screen holding it's own with the "big dogs" in CGI, in terms of audience enjoyment if not ray tracing horsepower.

[JimS]

AFAIK, you can implement ray tracing algorithms in pretty much anything!
Even a MSX could render Toy Story 3 in 4k resolution.
Of course, that might take a BILLION years, but, it should be possible...

But then, if you came back in a Billion years, the screen would just have "42" on it. ;-)