Save Scening with AAA

[gregthecanuck]

Hi there - this is my first post so be gentle with me... might as well dive right in ... :-P .... what are you guys thinking???

The graphics card market is so cut-throat and rapidly evolving who would want to waste their time developing a custom graphics chip set?  This kind of R&D money is better spent developing abstractions for off-the-shelf cards.  Way, way cheaper and a better end-result.

Same idea goes for sound cards.  Creative's newest Audigy 2 has pretty good specs (192Khz, 24bit) and even supports 5.1/6.1 sound.  Also includes a built-in firewire port - all for 100 bucks on eBay.

Custom hardware is dead, dead, dead.

The better path is to take the best hardware out there and do a great job making it all work together.

OK, flame away - I can't wait for my first flame....  ;-)

[gregthecanuck]

Hi Downix -

YES - I meant custom-designed and fabricated chip sets.

Anything you custom-design for the small Amiga market will probably be eclipsed within 6 months to 1 year.  Got a few millions to tens-of-millions to throw out the window?

Microsoft supports new hardware features by continually updating the feature-set supported by their Direct-X system.  In fact some of their latest software specs for Direct-X are pushing the graphics card manufacturers into developing certain features.  Yup, software is driving the hardware.  Funny, eh?  

You seemed to forget that most/all game consoles are a money-losing proposition.  Microsoft's X-Box is still not profitable.  Only Bill Gates ego is keeping it alive.  They have the billions in the bank to wait it out.   Most companies don't.

The best Amiga can do is something like Direct-X but with as few layers of "crap" between the software and the hardware.  



Greg

[gregthecanuck]

@ Atheist

Hello there!   :-D

There shouldn't be any custom graphic or sound cards developed unless there is a very compelling reason (i.e. a customer says "develop _this_ and I will take 1 million units").

If someone wants AGA then write a chipset emulator in software.  Way cheaper and easy bug fixes.  Isn't UAE getting close to that stage anyway?  This shows it is entirely possible.  In fact UAE appears to be a reasonable way to support hardware-banging applications (usually games?) on a new PPC platform.



Greg