Famous Amiga uses

[Raffaele]

Amiga World magazine in 1994 or 1996 realized a whole two issues long article research about Amiga famous uses.

Two issues of the magazine. Very very big...

Sometimes I will realize a PDF of it...

mikrucio wrote:
the only thing i know is that NASA used A4000's for aaahhhhh. errrrr space stuff..

Unfortunately NASA dismissed last Amigas in 2005 and starting from november/december 2006 they were sold on E-Bay.

[Raffaele]

Other famous Amiga Uses:

NASA; Uused Amigas for tracking launches of suborbital flights and for keeping traces of secondary satellites.

They used Amigas because it is the system more rsponsive on the market. I has high reliability, keeps multiple tracks as separate windows as amigas multitasking very well, and finally it reboot in a few seconds if crashes occurred or power went off...

US NAVY they used Amigas to pilote undersea rovs, and keep data of oceanic buoys in a 3 or 5 years survey.

USGS Geographical Survey used Amigas to made first 3d Rrendered maps of USA with programs World Construction Set and Vista Pro.

NASA did the same with 3D rendered images of Mars.

US Academy of West Point used Amigas equpped with games Universal Military Simulator I and II to train the cadets.

And for example just rent these movies and tv serial and you can spot Amiga graphics:

- Max Headroom

- Star Trek IV Voyage Home.

See the beginning of the movie and look careful at the monitors of Spock Supercomputer of future. Yes. It is an Amiga Garnet font.
Then laugh at superstar Macintosh Plus which is a quaint computer!
Remember how pitiful was Mac+ and be proud that that Amigas will be used by Volcanians 400 years starting from now!

Unfortunately Mac Plus was a superstar because you all could spot it and remember it.
Trivia rumors said that the Star Trek Paramount production wanted an Amiga to perform as superstar, but Commodore wanted to be payed for it.
Apple gave their Mac + as free gift.

This was truly a bad gossip by people envy of Amiga, because the use of Amigas as SpecialFx in that movie proofs that Paramount already owe at least 3 Amigas platforms.
-----

Check also:

- Indiana Jones Chronicles

- Babylon five (obviously)

- Seaquest

- Star Trek Deep Space Nine (early modeling made by Lightwave Amiga)

- Tommyknockers TV Serial

- "Betrayed" movie by director Costa Gavras

- Jurassic Park

(Amigas were used to made 3D daily preview movies made by filled polygons right-on-the-set.

So the production could check that all movie was OK before sending the film to chemical development and to special effects made with silicon Graphics.

Amiga was the only equipment capable to made 3D filled objects (dinosaurs) at that time.

There is a little funny trivia about Amiga and Jurassic park.

Rumors said that there was a tropical storm on the place of the set of Jurassic Park.
After that storm, the only equipment found still running and alive was one Amiga which was left by a techinican performing pre-rendered genlocked 3D polygons images combined with live actors.). COOL!

[Raffaele]

Thanks to programs like these Amigas were used in TVs all around the world:


The beautiful X-DVE

http://www.haage-partner.de/com/news/news_981025_d.htm


The Magnificent Amiga Scala Multimedia MM400





http://www.hobby.nl/~commodore-gg/amiga_historie.htm


The good MoreFX

http://www.haage-partner.de/com/news/news_991103_e.htm


The big boss: Amiga Video Toaster with VT effects:







http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/amiga2500/index.html

The magnificent Amiga Video Toaster Flyer (Non Linear Editing)

http://www.rabayjr.com/video_toaster.htm

The SUPREME product for Amiga: VLAB MOTION



http://amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=303

It was capable to store a full motion movie 720x576 2 hours in less than 400 Megabyte of Hard Disk, because it stored it ANALOGICALLY (i.e.) with a  very smart trick it stored the digital result of the video signal wave (if I remember wellthe method used).

The ULTIMATE CLASSIC AMIGA: THE ULTIMATE AMIGA CLONE!

DRACO Motion System:



http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/draco.html



http://www.amiga-club.de/bild02.html

[Raffaele]

One TV for all in the world:

Here is a german regional TV showing their use of Amiga and Scala:

http://selica.ch/twelve/content/view/56/103/

Site has been modified last time October 2005 (less than two years ago).


-----


Very important!

Regarding uses of Amiga on broadcast TV worldwide, I want to signal you one example for all:

I remember CNN has used Amigas in a vaste number of programs, and some years ago you could spot Amigas various times a day, because it was also used in CNN Weather Report (upto 3 or 5 years ago).


-----


Also here in Italy there are many animation studios using Amigas.

For example the Lanterna Magica Studio. They made italian animation beautiful movie "La gabbianella e il gatto" (Little girl seagull and Cat) from a tale of Luis Sepulveda famous writer from chile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Sepúlveda

Original title of the tale is "Historia de una gaviota y del gato que le enseñó a volar" (1966), or in English: "the Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly".



In english speaking countries you could had spotted it with the title of "Lucky and Zorba".



Animations stages were made by hands and then rendered and colorized with Amiga and then passed to other computers for color final touch, and recording on professional tapes.

The Lanterna Magica Studio, made various movies, all aided with Amiga scenes and amiations "the freccia azzurra" ("the blue arrow"), "Opopomoz", "Momo and the conquest of time".



Also one of the biggest animation studios in Italy (very little if compared with american studios) the Studio Rainbow uses Amigas.

They are famous for the cartoons of the "Pimpa" (by italian comics-maker Altan), "Winx Club", "Tommy and Oscar".

Pimpa:



Winx Club:



Tommy and Oscar:




Here is the line of production for Tommy and Oscar:

http://www.lafolla.it/lfst.php?id=lf29rainbow

Divisione dei compiti

Pre-produzione, sviluppo dei personaggi, degli story-board e delle sceneggiature, ripulitura dei personaggi, degli sfondi e lay-out: queste mansioni sono svolte da talenti italiani per mantenere un livello alto di qualità.

Realizzazione delle tavole di intercalazione e la pulitura dei disegni sono compiti affidati a strutture straniere.

Le attrezzature tecniche
N. 2 workstations Silicon Graphics Indigo 2 con Software Power Animation.
N. 1 workstations Maya con Software per la modellazione e le animazioni tridimensionali.
N. 8 postazioni di lavoro Animo 3 per l'animazione bidimensionale, la colorazione ed il montaggio digitale, completo di 2 scannerB/N 1 a colori.
N. 8 postazioni Windows con Software vario (Photoshop, ecc) per la colorazione dei fondi e per lavorazioni accessorie.
N. 2 sistemi Video Hollywood per uscita in digitale.
N. 2 Betacam SP 1400.
N. 2 sistemi Video Velocità, sony BVW 70, per montaggi video
N. 2 Digital Betacam
N. 2 Betacam Broadcast
N. 2 Monitor 20'' Grado 1
N. 2 Amiga 3000 con video camera ad uso Line Test.

[Raffaele]

Framiga wrote:
Raffaele

X-DVE was by ClassX, an italian company still active on titling, FX and more (often bundled with Matrox NLE systems)

ClassX Development

Yes. Thanks to their work there were literally dozens of TV in Europe, mainly in Italy ad Germany using X-DVE because it was cheaper than Scala.

Also a very large amount of professionals in video productions preferred X-DVE approach because it was really simple.

I contacted them for last Pianeta Amiga (Nov. 2006), to check if they could be present.

Unfortunately they were enlisted to another exhibit dedicated only to video productions which was held in the same period, so they couldn't attend to Pianeta Amiga.

But speaking with them they seemed to me enthusiast that there are still persons involved with Amiga, and curious about new PPC machines.

They said me they hope could be present in next Pianeta Amiga 2007.

Also I contacted Libero Moschella from ACube-Samantha asking him if ACube could financing re-issue of some good Amiga software like X-DVE.

Libero said ACube is interested in creating a suite of Amiga software to be sold to enhance new Amigas, and that they had had contacted ClassX in the future.

In these days ACube announced that they contacted author of ST-FAX and give him enough funds funds to build another (and modern) version of ST-FAX for PPC Amigas.

[Raffaele]

Framiga wrote:
@Raffaele

i met Michele Puccini at a show in Milan some years ago (that was around the first issue of Bitplane magazine) but beeing all theyrs products JAVA based, it would be hard to sse them ported on Amiga.

A bit of patience to have java on Amiga.

Anyway it would be better to make a correction to your post about the URL of X-DVE. Thanks :-)

I linked to Haage & Partner page of selling X-DVE packages, because it gives quickly some informations about characteristics of this program.