Famous Amiga uses

[guru-666]

well lot's of PC where used also,  All I know is a VFX sup I worked for had (has) a toaster card on his desk that he pulled from amblins farm, man those toasters there big lightwave dongles.  According to him the PC was a god send as the amigas where hard to manage, esp the farms.  The amiga where replaced ASAP.

[Unit21]

In 2004 there was an Amiga-run Information-screen above the escalators at Südbahnhof in Vienna, Austria.
Can anyone confirm that it is still there??
Spotting that screen was the highlight of my holiday that year...

[cecilia]

guru-666 wrote:
well lot's of PC where used also,  All I know is a VFX sup I worked for had (has) a toaster card on his desk that he pulled from amblins farm, man those toasters there big lightwave dongles.  According to him the PC was a god send as the amigas where hard to manage, esp the farms.  The amiga where replaced ASAP.

of course. A similar situation happened in the effects house I worked at also.

the point is that the techniques were developed using Amigas First. People got their start - the businesses got their start using Amigas. And, generally, the main reason Amiga computers had to be replaced was because the company (commodore) wasn't their to support new HW, etc.

and in effects, the speed of rendering is a matter of competition. you lose money if you take too long to render your footage.

I still recall when Digital Domain was making tests for Titanic and it took an hour to render ONE frame. (and that wasn't on amigas).

However, the beginings were based on Amiga. the learning, the training, the foundation (no pun intended) of the work. Amiga is more than just HW. It's how you think about solving a problem. I owe a great deal to my Amiga roots.

[Tomas]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jC6MKcmETWE
 :-D

[AMC258]

Are Amigas still used for the Guide cable channel anywhere?  I assume they quit using them around the time it started getting called the "TVGuide" channel and the video quality turned blatantly peeceeish, obviously rendered in 800x600 and scaled (digitally) down to something less than 720x525.  That was just a few years ago.
I remember back in the good old days when you could turn that channel on at 3:00AM and see someone turning the video on and manually starting the guide program, or if you were really lucky, you'd see a Guru.

[cecilia]

Interview with Ron Thornton

talking about Babylon 5 and mentioning using Amigas.

[Ral-Clan]

There has been a list like this for a long time.  Did you try typing "Famous Amiga Uses" in Google?

[LoadWB]

Funny in the YouTube video that the Guru box surrounds the Prevue logo.

These aren't famous uses, but back when I worked for Famous Footwear, I suggested an in-store kiosk with an interactive interface for customers to query different shoes and brands, get technical information (similar to the documents we were shipped during promotions,) and even find out what we have in stock, and eventually place orders.  I worked for two weeks on a prototype using my A1000 which never saw the light of day.

The word I heard was that someone up in the ranks believed that an interactive computer system like that would take away from the customer shopping experience, and produce lazy sales people.

Later when working at an apartment complex, I discovered that the in-house cable system had recently retired an A500 with a genlock in favor of some video titler to run the information channel.  Never found the old Amiga equipment, though (I think) the cable guy did try his best.

[mikrucio]

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

[LoadWB]

Long list to look through at that site.

Here's a bit about NASA

"The Secret in Hanger AE"
http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~mheine/AEcastro.html

I recently picked up an Amiga 2000 which still had the software and data used for some public access channel.  Before wiping it, I made a backup of the drives -- dunno why, really.

[ErrethAkbe]

The airport in Detroit, Michigan (USA) used Amigas for the video screens that displayed information above the security check points for many years. I suspected this was the case until I arrived for a flight one day and saw all 4 screens with guru meditation errors on them! This obviously removed all doubt as to the system in use. :-)

I would say that the airport didn't update these systems until sometime around 1999. Now they have nice new screens with better resolution all around the airport, but when I walked past one of them the other day there was a Windows Explorer screen up instead of the arrival/departure information.  :lol:

[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

[Bug_racer]

Does anyone know if Michael Jacksons Black and White film clip was done on an Amiga ?


Also some great info there  8-)

[Ross1]

Amiga 4000's were used for years at many production studios including Paramount to do 3D rendering using Ligtwave although the platform has changed Lightwave remains one of the top three 3D software packages and we have the Amiga and Newtek to thank for that.
The Video Toatser and Flyer is still used today in many public television stations around north America for live switching and post production editing. ALthough being phased out as the newer PC based systems are getting better the Amiga still shines in this area due to the quality of video it will process. Newtek's propriatery video compression is second to non when it comes to standard definition video unfortunately D2 quality video is not good enough for Hi Definition broadcasts.