New OS4 Screenshots!

[mikeymike]

The size of the swap partition worries me a little :-)

Generally looking better, though the lack of window backdrops suggests they haven't optimised the graphics drivers yet.

[mikeymike]

are u meaning the mui skins ?

Yes.

And no, I'm not taking it as a definitive indicator, but I know that if I noticed a lack of responsiveness, the first thing I'd probably think about losing are MUI skins.

How my comment qualified as "troll bait" I don't know!  Guys, it's me, remember, a guy who wants OS4 to happen!  Cannot believe some people sometimes.

(re:VM) Its a cool feature to have implemented properly

I'm not saying it isn't, but 1GB swap should be overkill, no matter what operating system + software you're running!

Huh? Window Backdrops? Do you mean in workbench and reaction windows? If you use a magnifier, you'll see that there *are* window backdrops. They're subtle, but that is intentional. Compare them to the shaped layer window.

Oh ok, hadn't noticed.  :-)

[mikeymike]

WHY do people have to post crap here all the time?!?!?!?! I understand why Hyperion generally keeps away from this site!

?

[mikeymike]

mikeymike:it just sounded like trollbait

Then you or anyone else is very much over-reacting.

[mikeymike]

Maybe, but when I do screenshots, would I care about the speed? After all you can't see that in the first place

True, but looking at a lot of the more recent screenshots, they look like they've been done more "on the fly" rather than carefully prepared, so that was my guess. I imagine you position things a bit to get the best view of certain elements, and maybe fire up a demo.

Yes, as I said on AW.net Picasso96 is still 68k (graphics is PPC now but of course is still patched largely by P96) because of certain delays and other things that came up, although work is underway. However, I can assure you that there is nothing sluggish or unresponsive about OS 4 even with emulated graphics system.

Well, I'll be at the OS4 demo in Newcastle, and be warned, I'm a picky bastard when it comes to GUI responsiveness :-)  Btw, do you have any idea whether that'll be a recent build they're using there?  I just don't like the idea of travelling a few hundred miles to see a build that is way behind the current working status of the product.

Btw, I'm not saying it should be fully optimised now, the product is still in development, the people developing it knows what needs the most work and they'll do the work in the order they see fit.

I had my problems under Linux/x86 with 512 swap when playing some games like UT2003. I'm rather safe than sorry. 1 Gig is overkill, but then, the disk has 40 gigs so I was in a generous mood when I partitioned it.

On Windows, half a gig of RAM available, I have 100MB swap, and I'll be annoyed with anything that is using swap over physical.  I'll quite happily complain to software manufacturers rather than burden myself with even a potential performance degradation.  But this is all point of view on the problem.  For all I know, the swap partition is also used for debugging logs or crash data during testing.

[mikeymike]

I find it very sad that people are jumping on anyone who says anything worse than "wow! how amazing!".

Especially considering how probably the same crowd were complaining that this site is "MorphOS only" and they were being shouted out and flamed every time they said anything contrary to "the belief".

Perhaps you guys ought to look at yourselves before accusing/flaming others.

If your belief about Amiga-related stuff is so sensitive that you can't take a contrary opinion to your own, then why are you here?  If I had said what I said initially about Windows, or BBC Micros instead people wouldn't have been up in arms, because really there wasn't anything to go up in arms about in the first place!

OS4 is in BETA.  That means it isn't perfect.  There are going to be issues, like possibly graphics responsiveness.  If you don't think you'd complain about such things, then perhaps Hyperion should have just released it a year ago and reaped the financial benefits of such a move.  But you wouldn't have liked them or it if they had done that.  So then you have to admit that it's not a perfect product, and anything that isn't perfect isn't above criticism.  If your conclusion to that scenario is that it still is above criticism, you shouldn't be on a discussion forum about it.

OS4 is product I want to use, as I've said many times before.   I'm not sure there are that many people around who troll about something that they're a fan of.  Perhaps you guys ought to have thought about that before you accused me of trolling.

I would like some apologies, but I guess my opinion of some people is a little higher than it ought to be.  People who admit they were wrong stand a chance of earning a little respect.

[mikeymike]

XDelusion, I think you'd be equipped to put your argument a lot better if you were in possession of the relevant facts.

Such as - OS4 was originally intended to run largely under 68k emulation, but when it was seen to be unacceptable performance-wise, Hyperion started writing the code and compiling as PPC native.

Having a graphics driver running in emulation is going to suck royally for emulation.  For something really basic like my WinUAE setup it might work well enough, but my PC's spec would probably outrun the best of the G4 series by at least 150%.  Then there needs to be "room" for other applications, applications which want to use a powerful processor for what its worth.

Also, OS3.1 and previous were written to directly hit the hardware.  This means assembly code, and probably custom-written compilers to directly hit the chipsets.  If Windows' or any other GUI was designed for a single graphics chipset and no other, they would fly.  That is something we have to trade in now to get advantages such as upgrading to decent graphics cards, because no-one is going to fund an Amiga hardware startup to produce the latest and greatest hardware, because it would probably cost billions.

If you think OS4 is just eye candy, I suggest you read the featureset documents available at os.amiga.com.  I also suggest you read past news articles on it, and I think you'll realise that 'under the trunk' it is very different and much more capable than predecessors.

[mikeymike]

I take it you don't play "Operation Flashpoint", then :-D

Nope :-)

I used to be really in touch with the latest games (I have no idea if that's a "latest game"), I think I must be getting old :-)

My gaming reportoire goes something like this now:  Q3, CS, Tomb Raider games, Colin McRae Rally 2, Jedi Knight series, many of my old Amiga games over WinUAE, Dopewars, and that's about it IIRC..

Just port those games and you'll make me very happy :-)

Actually, if you ported those games, I'd probably steal most of my PC parts for an A1!

[mikeymike]

I wan't meaning to Troll.

I didn't think you were.  IMO, trolling means something someone intentionally says specifically to annoy people.

OS4 has quite a history already, and a bizarre but backwards-logical that could be applied the other way development phase.  One benefit certainly will be that the 68k emulation will be far more tried and tested than people would have thought when OS4 was originally announced.

I really have little technical understanding of how all this works, let's take JIT for instance, I have no idea what it stands for or how it works, I just know it makes UAE a pleasent experience.

JIT means "just in time".  I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I think it's a method of queuing and processing stuff better, so that when the end result is happening, it is being done more smoothly.

IIRC, the concept of JIT came originally from the Java world, and the same sort of idea was thought beneficial in emulation as well.

IMO OS4 has a lot to live up to, but it has the advantage of not having to drag around half a hundredweight of legacy, unlike Windows and MacOS.