How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?

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@Karlos:

Irrespective of the choice between Nova or OpenGL2, what does seem likely is that before that choice is made, interim versions of Warp3D 4 will be released that better suit the new OS4 Interface concept and add support for things like geometry acceleration (T&L) etc.

If I remember correctly they may also add Antialias
to this Warp3D pre-NOVA version :-)

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@hairy:
First of all, I don't care if it's closed because it's updated and bug-fixed faster than the other open source options. There are no Amiga programmers that can waste their time porting slow unix sources to Amiga. I prefer native implementations even if they are incompatible. The GTK Windows implementation is damn slow for example (just check a simple program like xchat... the version that doesn't use gtk is quite faster) even on a 600Mhz machine. It's so easy to complain about other people work... if you think that opensource is the best option do the ports yourself, don't force people to do what you want instead of doing something useful and doing it yourself. If Hyperion decides to make something they are free to do that because it's their product and they are the company with more experience in 3D APIs on Amiga (And they know most of APIs because they work porting programs and games).

nVidia and ATI have propietary GL extensions, go to attack them.

Unix != AmigaOS
ports end up being slooow unless you optimize them heavily and make a fork from the main source tree.

If you want something standard you can use MESA. If you don't like it you are free to make your own implementation.

MESA isn't dead on Amiga, it's AmigaOS 3.x what is dead. MESA for OS4.0 will appear with NOVA. Even if it's slower than Warp3D it may be useful to port apps/games.

Many PC games use OpenGL subsets to give faster speeds, for example Quake3 or Half-Life (I don't care if they are old, modern games use their engines)

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@Downix:
I tried to compile some TinyGL examples with StormC but it wasn't compatible :-/

I thought it may be more interesting than MESA for 68k Amigas without 3D hardware...

Although my Voodoo3500 works quite well I'd like to see Radeon support in MOS soon

BTW "GOA", the W3D wrapper of MOS works quite well. :-)

@Downix:
have you tried to make StormMESA work? A friend of mine has some stuff written for basic OpenGL in windows and he would like to try it on his peggy with 3D acceleration.

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It's here: http://www.haage-partner.net/download/Amiga/3DWorld/StormMesa/
As it uses Warp3D as renderer it should work with GOA :-)
In case you wonder why I don't test it myself it's because I won't be able to touch my peggy until December the 12nd :_(

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BTW have you seen the funky names the MOS team uses? "Trance" for the 68k JIT emu, "GOA" for the Warp3D wrapper, "JunGL" (jungle) for the OpenGL library... it seems they like techno... what's next... "Darkwave" or "electro"? :-D

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The Amiga community needs to understand that graphic cards today not only include all the blitter and imaging technology but they also contain vector processors which are special processors onto themselves.

Problem nº1: we couldn't use modern cards because we don't have hardware--->Fixed with PCIs and AGPs...

Problem nº2: We don't have an OS ---> Fixed in MOS almost fixed in OS4

Problem nº3: We still don't have 3D API ---> Wait a little until the OS is more or less complete.


Come on, AmigaOne Lite uses a 7000 or 7500 on board because it has to be sold to the industrial market and in that market they don't care much about vertex shaders etc...

I would prefer that the lite used a radeon mobile 9x00 chip and as it is pin compatible Eyetech may produce 2 models, one with a sligthly updated gfx core with vertex shaders etc and other more basic for the industry. But what's the problem, even if they didn't do that you can plug a new gfx card in the pci slot...

I know Radeon 7500 sucks compared to a 9600 for example, but on Amiga you still don't have software so advanced so people is going to buy cheap cards to use the OS. And when NOVA is released they may update or not. Those who not update because they don't have money for a new gfx card won't be potential users. What I try to say is that even if that person who suggested coders that a 7500 on amiga can be compared to a 9800 on windows (which clearly is a lie, isn't serious and shows little knowledge) was wrong, the harm he caused may be smaller, because the standard gfx card on amiga will be for at least 2 years a Radeon7000/7500/9200 (these cards aren't true DX 9 cards) and developers will have to keep in mind that a 7500 IS the standard and will have to optimize their programs for that... If they don't do that they won't have any sales. And even with NOVA released it will take some time until people start to see any advantage about upgrading...

AFAIK ATI still don't give much information about the latest Radeon 3D cores (9600/9800 etc) so having an API that emulates things via software may be interesting (you probably will get NOVA when ati releases the information about their cards) for future programs.

I understand that these future programs could be started to be developed NOW if the specifications were available but realistically, you can't do a project of 2 years exclusively for Amiga and still expect to pay the costs... If you are designing a program that requires 3D try to use an abstraction layer defined by you or use OpenGL at least (it should be easier to port even if not every extension is available)

"They need to do for 3d processors what cybergraphx did for vga cards. "
Well Warp3D/Rave3D do that. I've used that. NOVA (Warp3D 5) will add even more features (and will take advantage of the latest GPU tecfhnologies). A year ago we didn't have Radeons on Amigas, you can't expect to get support so fast.

And yes, pure DX9 type cards will make everything fly with NOVA, but first of all we need an OS. Later we need to be able to use latest radeons and documentation so Hyperion/Genesi can make drivers.

For serious apps things like virtual memory and other services are required... and these must be finished before the gfx 3D API
Microsoft didn't make DirectX before Windows95, you know...?

Radeons 7500 are enough for the software we have and even with a finished API we won't be able to use the 3D part of Radeon 9800 etc for some time because ATI won't give us the docs.

In addition to that I'll say that I still don't know anyone with a pure DX9 card (like 9600/9800 etc).

If you were going to sell a program you should keep in mind that the user base is important and that not everyone is going to update their 7500 for a 9800 to make your software run.