Introducing Warp3D Nova for AmigaOS 4.1

[wawrzon]

actually i wonder how much warp3d has been used really. in its time there were very few programs to use it. on 68k there was a port of mesa called storm mesa, which could actually be used for porting 3d programs (i made few attempts) but since it was using warp3d as backend the results were very limited.

now, what concerns this announcement. its a move in some more reasonable direction than usual. but at this a bit slow time of the year there is usually some announcement like that to fill the gap before amiwest. lets see what and when the actual release happens and under what conditions. if anyone  remembers, last year there was an extended memory addressing patch released for os4, which was also as enthusiastically welcome, because it made it sound as if os4 receives some contemporary os features. it was quite a publicity issue, but im still not aware of a single piese of software using this since then.

therefore, remembering also "xena" fiasco ("the community will show us what can be done with it") im a bit sceptical about expectations towards third party support as of today.

[wawrzon]

Warp3D Nova running under AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition on an AmigaOne X1000

https://youtu.be/G_STXjTaVoY

nice, but these are rather basic demos demonstrating basic opengl capabilities. gears look pretty much the same with storm mesa/warp3d on an 68k amiga. i have spotted some bump/reflection map on the warp3d animation itself, but its just about it so far..

[wawrzon]

actually there is a handful warp3d demos and mostly simple games, not worth any upgrade. almost none has ever programmed directly against w3d, with one notable exception of alain, the autor of wazp. so if daytona writes at least a wrapper for opengl2 (2004) it may have some impact on software, but as such even if laying foundation for this wrapper the availability of warp3d nova is so far simply a nice news item. a direct implementation of gallium/mesa without detouring the interface through some unnecessary orthodox api (and likely introducing additional bottlenecks by the way) would be more sensible for porting software which is using opengl anyway.

[wawrzon]

It's not like Mesa must to be implemented on top of a Gallim3D-compatible driver. Mesa had drivers long before Gallium3D was conceived. It was only introduced to simplify driver creation by implementing boilerplate for a state tracker. My point is that one could use Warp3D Nova as a low-level layer to make a Mesa driver, just like they did with StormMesa back in the day.

thats what the plan seems to be. still how convenient even an updated warp3d as a driver layer is it remains to be seen. i wonder if the old software depending on minigl and the old w3d is supposed to go through this now, as replacement. since after so many years an independent implementation might be more sensible than trying to keep up the compatibility with the old one. i trust this has been well considered.

[wawrzon]

The argument I think a lot of people have is the closed nature of it, and that no attempts at least publicly were made to bring it to MorphOS or AROS. I clearly remember talk of not wanting to be split between red and blue at Amiwest. This still seems like a one sided race to me.

Hopefully I am proven wrong, I have interest in all sides and own hardware that supports all platforms, both NG and classic.

i dont think aros needs it. as mentioned before warp3d has almost never been used directly on the platforms it was available for including genuine amiga. there alsways been soem sort of opengl wrapper in between, storm mesa, minigl, tinygl..

morphos had some sort of warp3d reimplementation or wrapper for some time, the name of goa or something like that, which has been depreciated in the meantime afair. i think today they have a native kind of opengl library same as aros even if possibly not as feature complete, but maybe more optimized.

so in short, im not sure its aros which uses gallium/mesa7 or morphos who need to catch up now, but its still os4 trying to catch up with others. so far we only see some basic demos, so its hard to tell how this will practically impact on application level.

[wawrzon]

I guess the main reason I'm underwhelmed here is that AmigaOS 4.x finally has an opportunity to mature into a standard open-source platform and it's not Nemo, Cyrus or Tabor - it's UAE.

im sorry you have invested your bets with something that was obviously not going along your expectations. os4 is neither going to be open source nor it is going to support uae. it has been told over and over. im not sure how have you managed to skip past these clear statements till today, to grow upset just now.

[wawrzon]

UAE is open-source - I wasn't talking about AmigaOS - if you want to extend the underlying hardware capabilities you can - anyone can.

And regarding my expectations, barring an unlikely shift to ARM/x86 eventually the only way to run AmigaOS will be via emulation - surely you understand that?

Hyperion will support whatever makes them money - if they sell more copies of OS4.1 Classic then they'll support Classic - they'd be suicidal not to.

the question is what one needs os4 for, especially under uae, except as a gimmick. afair there is no native software for it worth mention, that wouldnt be a port from the host or comparable platform. and beyond that we already know that so called os4.1fe "classic" sales (mostly for uae, since working ppc accels are rather few out there) already exceeded the sales for real os4 hardware, probably by magnitudes. and what are the notable results? besides, we also know, that when approached by vampire/apollo team for licenses hyperion demanded rather unrealistic conditions, and refused any development support. so if it doesnt indicate anything, i dont know what does, however you are free to draw your own conclusions, of course.

[wawrzon]

thats anyway quite a high resource demand for such a simple demo.

[wawrzon]

sounds suspicious, dot you think? maybe there is some busy looping in a driver or synchronization or whatsoever. what happens if you run further applications alongside? maybe simply that cpu load utility is wrong?

[wawrzon]

i was miss leaded at the beginning by the name of the package containing "warp3d" and that it was suggested being an upgrade to the previous warp3d. now i understand that it is completely different library the applications need to be particularly compiled against. existing warp3d applications wont take any (speed) advantage of it.
so there is now warp3d.library in the system and some other library for warp3d nova functionality alongside?

[wawrzon]

thx for confirmation. maybe it should be clarified. i have the feeling, users rush now for warp3d nova supported cards, expecting some immediate improvements, even with the existing software, as spectre did in his post about cow3d. perhaps it would be better to hold off till the package is actually released and at least a single actual application is available for it. this might be a better publicity policy in a long run, while avoid disappointments on part of not so well informed customers.

[wawrzon]

On my system (x1k) the Nova gears example barely gets out of the 'rest CPU noise' (as displayed in CPUInfo docky) , at the default window size,

thats how it should be i guess.

though CPU usage does go up as the window size increases.

something is still done in software? on these simple examples?

[wawrzon]

ok, but perhaps the user would be better off, deciding if he needs to buy immediately another graphics card himself upon a consideration based on actual facts he is honestly presented with, rather than driven by vague suggestions, he may find misleading afterwards. there is already enough people complaining about having bought forthcoming models upon such promises.

[wawrzon]

forget it..

[wawrzon]

@ wawrzon:



It would be nice to know to whom and to what you're replying.

Not just you personally, but all posters here who have this bad habit of replying without indicating to whom and to what they're replying.

Is it really too demanding for you to put an "@ xyz:" at the beginning of a posting/reply or simply to use the "Quote"-button?

to you. isnt it obvious, that the post references the one just above if there is no quote?

and isnt it obvious that you cannot fit a pci-e card into the mediator, when there is no appropriate slot?
you can of course be first to try, even if it would require adapter over adapter over adapter just to prove that the driver doesnt work nevertheless, but according to your posts im not sure if the system you are planning to use is stable enough to deliver dependable results.