New OS4 Screenshots!

[Rogue]

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.

Yeah, very much so. I just positioned a few windows of what I have installed and started up SGrab.

do you have any idea whether that'll be a recent build they're using there?

I'd guess they have the recent beta stuff. One problem with shows is that you cannot really install the latest stuff a day before the show, since you never know what might hit you...

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

[Rogue]

Nice screenshots, but is there any mention of real applications to go with the fancy OS or are we suppose to just play aroung with the new OS and old software running on an emulator?

There are.

[Rogue]

Please someone explain this madness to me. I really look forward to OS4, but at times I begin to freak out about the whole deal.

You've probably seen a different OS, because I cannot see what you are talking about.

[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!

[XDelusion]

I wan't meaning to Troll.

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.

When I say that all I notice is eye candy, I don't mean that in a bad way AT ALL, so long as it does not bog down the OS itself. Rather what I was getting at is all I see are screen shots, and that is a pretty exciting thing, but what I REALLY need is a hands on experience so that I can compare the new Amiga OS experience with that of the past. I know it is no longer written for custom chips, and that it is being ported from 68k assembly to PPC C code, so that is a tough thing and will hit performance a bit, but...

...I still expect Amiga OS 4 to FLY when it is done, that is what I am anxious to see. I don't doubt that it can happen it is just that the videos I have seen looked BAD, as in SLOW, and being that I am not overly informed on all the technical jargon, it is hard for me to uderstand why the videos looked like OS 3.1 running on a stock 500 with icons turned on! I'd expect the icons to draw themselve out in like a milisecond, and all Amiga apps (being as tiny as they are) to launch in a milisecond as well. None of this Winblows/Linux/Mac crap where we have to wait five years for the screen to draw itself, because I know the OS for once is not Bloatware, so it should not run like it.


 Some of your explenations have helped so far thankx!

[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.

[whabang]

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.

AFAIK, it's like emulating a CPU with a 8 meg L1 cache, instead of one without cache at all (which, IIRC, is the "normal" way of emulating). This is said in extremely simplified terms, and I'm no coder, but that's how it was explained to me... :-D

[bloodline]

JIT, is basicly a Dynamic recompiler. One cannot just convert the who 68k code into PPC code (or x86 or whatever) in one go because there is no way the recompiler can know how the code is actually going to run (condtional branches, self modifying code etc...). So the JIT has another solution it only recompiles upto the next branch. and then executes the code block of code that has been recompiled. When it reaches the brance it can then jump to there the branch pointes to and recompile that block upto the next branch. It can do this untill the entire program (or at least as muh of the program that has been executed) is converted into the native code :-) Simple really.

An interprative emualtion just emulates each instruction. No recompilation occures. even if the emualtor is only executing teh same three instructions each one has to be emulated each time.

[whabang]

Sooooo... So I wans't that wrong, then? :-D

[bloodline]

Yeah, you were pretty close ;-)

[amigakid]

Wow that's it Im ordering my A1 this month:) and I better get a copy of os4 soon after if not with it, I can't wait any longer, give it too me.

By the way it looks really nice and ahhh!! Descent 2, what a fun game, i just loved all of them.

[XDelusion]

Decent 2?

 I'd still like to see an Advanced DOOM engine such as DOOM Legacy, JDOOM, or ZDOOM instead.

 Of course Marathon 1 and 2 would be nice, Duke Nukem (or do we already have that one) ect.