PC still playing Amiga catchup

[warpdesign]

Yeah, PC jr failed but IBM PC didn't have the colors, sprites, blitter, sound DACs, etc. and it's price was way too expensive for gaming or for home use.

Then they tried again with the PC/AT and blew everything away. Welcome to 2009

[ElPolloDiabl]

Look here!!! Amiga still in use!

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/06/09/verjee.uk.hacker.extradition.cnn

er lol?

[koaftder]

20 Years from now, when terabytes of non volatile memory are standard and video displays beam 3d images directly into your eyeballs, we're still gonna be arguing about joystick ports and boot up times.



I like PCs, I like Macs, got some SGI hardware, som DEC hardware, I use Windows, Linux, NetBSD, OS X, AROS, and Amgia OS 1.3. I love it all but smoking the dust from a ground up Denise chip is just bad for your health.

[amigaksi]

Then they tried again with the PC/AT and blew everything away. Welcome to 2009

FYI, PC/AT was at 6/8Mhz.

[ElPolloDiabl]

@koafter
The boing balls... nice touch   :lol:

[juan_fine]

FYI, PC/AT was at 6/8Mhz.

...and the AT was released the year before the Amiga came out, what's your point?

[amigaksi]

...and the AT was released the year before the Amiga came out, what's your point?

Go ask the guy who stated that PC/AT blew everything away.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

20 Years from now, when terabytes of non volatile memory are standard and video displays beam 3d images directly into your eyeballs, we're still gonna be arguing about joystick ports and boot up times.

I haven't heard anybody complain about 3d imagery.
But come on! Every OS nowadays is shoddy bloatware. Not that Amiga is nowadays the answer to that, but back in the heydays it was.

We just need a new OS, a new system, everything, and which is instantly on, before we can be the slightest bit excited.

I mean, Vista. hurray for eyecandy :roll:

[amigaksi]

20 Years from now, when terabytes of non volatile memory are standard and video displays beam 3d images directly into your eyeballs, we're still gonna be arguing about joystick ports and boot up times.

...

People decided to argue about these two points because they are capable of arguing them.  They didn't bother arguing about the other points stated.

[jkirk]

...and the AT was released the year before the Amiga came out, what's your point?

actually what hurt the amiga and ALL other computers was the pc/at was closely related to business computing. when people wanted to have a computer at home the first choice was a computer compatible with their work pc. however the aos didn't have any competition(os function wise) till win 95. at this point the amiga STARTED to show it's age. and by coincidence 1995  was 1 year after commodore went belly up. if commodore had survived i believe aos would have kept up with the pc but this was not to be.

granted aos stillhad advantages but in an os you look at the whole package not just bits and pieces. i could have the best revolver in the world but without bullets it is nothing more than a keepsake. maybe in a few years amiga can make a comback but with all the bickering between companies and backstabbing i have my doubts about that.

[Hammer]

I asked you to reply to post #275; you did not but are now expressing your opinion again.

>Well, arguments as stupid as "you may poll the joystick port 1000 times a second, the PC cannot". Well, it's certainly *true*. But it is so useless that no one in the entire Amiga's existence ever mentionned or used it. No one but you...

The people who don't understand the argument are stupid.  Doing a MOVE.W $DFF00A,D0 is superior to polling an analog joystick (period) via port 201h or via USB.  Then I gave an example of River raid where 1Khz sampling can be used (and I did use it in a "Replay" mode) and this sampling is UNDOABLE on a gameport.

>That was my two cents. You can keep on posting detailed reports on how you can poll the Amiga joystick port faster than anything else, but this won't change anything to that...

You haven't shown PC doing faster joystick port input so we can move on to the next advantage Amiga has over PC.

I prefer my Xbox 360 controller (for Windows) over standard classic Amiga digital joysticks i.e. four standard analogue controls (e.g. LT, LT, RS, LS) and vibration feedback.

[Hammer]

Hi,

@Karlos,

I know I am a little late on this one, but this is very noticeable in Windows, on somethings it multi tasks really great on, on some things you might as well walk away from the PC until it gets done, like when I am playing fallout 3, the machine sometimes slows to a crawl, then I go to my main screen and usually Winblows is updating, very aggrevating, especially when your at a really good part in the game and then it reboots to install updates,

Which Windows?

MS Window offers options in regards to Windows updates.  I haven't encountered a slow down, while playing Fallout3 on Vista SP2.

Spec
ASUS G1SN 15.4" laptop.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2Ghz, 4 MB L2 Cache, 800 FSB.
MEM: 4 GB PC5300 with dual channel mode.
GPU: NVIDIA Geforce 9500M GS with 512MB VRAM and Forceware 185.70 driver.
HD: 2.5" 500GB with NCQ.
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 32bit.

Playing Fallout3 at 1280x720p/800p and high details.

[Hammer]

(SNIP)
>Yes, because the concept of kernel mode drivers exists in every operating system available for the PC...

At hardware level programming, the PCs are the same but nowadays you HAVE to go through APIs for much of the hardware.

Software abstraction layer enables the PC to adapt and not being stuck with a boat anchor.

>Data existing is not in itself an indicator that it is important to the end user. As pointed out, the sub-ms state changes are results of switch bouncing. Just because there are millions of magazines in the world doesn't mean that I am missing out stuff that is important to me by not reading them all.

You fell for that speculation that it's a result of switch-bouncing; nonetheless, I wasn't talking about sub-ms.  I answered this in another message.

>Not in a computer game, when the screen redraw is sometimes the only feedback you get.  

User can cause motion via joystick that is faster than refresh rate; he does not have to depend on feedback from display to make moves on the joystick.

>No, it's not bullcrap. YOU HAVE YET TO SHOW ME A GAME THAT USES AND BENEFITS FROM 1 kHz JOYSTICK SAMPLING. That's still true, as it has been since I first pointed it out. As far as I know, there are VERY few games in the River Raid era where even the game logic (all the moving, AI decisions, counting of score etc) operates faster than the screen update.

It's better to understand the LOGIC that millisecond state changes are there and not result of noise.  Also, try to understand that noise is also considered input to machine.

>If you'd ever used joysticks for other things than measuring the time between state changes, you'd know that the values that the joysticks are precise enough, and no, while they are not usually exact they give you more precise control over direction than four on/off switches. You'd also know that in most games that utilize the analog sticks, the walking/turning speed/direction correlates exactly enough to the input.

I know that most games don't need analog sticks and it's a waste of time in reading such sticks for PCs since they end up using some threshold to make them act like digital joysticks do.

Besides the analogue LS/RS/RT/LT, the Xbox 360 controller includes a digital PAD/LB/RB/X/Y/A/B. In most PC FPS and RTS, a mouse and keyboard combo is the preferred method.

Most console-to-PC game ports(e.g. Games For Windows) includes support for the Xbox 360 controller.
 

>If digital sticks with one button were superior for controllability, their market wouldn't have died out in the early 90s.

That's speculation.  They still exist and are being marketed.  You can market "garbage" and sell more of it than something valuable and more useful.  Marketing has NOTHING to do with the product being superior/inferior.

I recall Street Fighter II Amiga port didn't capture the arcade feeling i.e. the 1 button joystick standard is one of these issues.

PS; waiting for Street Fighter IV PC edition.

>No, that was not what I was claiming. I said that developers are trying to move further away from hardware, which is why there are abstractions like drivers and APIs. If you think that the average software developer has as much use of accessing the hardware as before you are wrong.

I am saying it's more optimal to have both available.  APIs and hardware access, but PCs are now getting more and more restricted to APIs so Amiga wins in this catagory.

IF there's a direct hardware access, what happens to the security objects?

[Hammer]

Moi, knock Fallout 3? Why my dear fellow, I have completed it twice and clocked over 250 hours in there in total

I have the first two DLC packs but I don't have Broken Steel yet. Needed to wean myself off the addiction a bit



It's not that bad. The lack of real time shadows means it runs a lot faster than some titles. If you want something that really pounds your hardware, run Crysis with all the detail jacked up. I dread to think how intensive it's lighting engine is alone.

In CryEngine3 switched to deferred rendering for lights i.e. followed Killzone2.

[amigaksi]

I prefer my Xbox 360 controller (for Windows) over standard classic Amiga digital joysticks i.e. four standard analogue controls (e.g. LT, LT, RS, LS) and vibration feedback.

Someone just gave me an XBOX for $4.  I guess it's not 360, but probably same controllers.  Controllers are fancy looking, but they are still analog and confusing due to so many buttons.  Perhaps, they were trying to replace the keyboard with the joystick.  Tried a few games and still ended up doing eenie, meenie, minie moe...I guess they forgot to put in a help button.

Vibration feedback-- is that the propellors that come out of the joystick when player does something wrong and attack the user like Maximillian in the movie Black Hole?

Given all those buttons and killer propellers, I revised my poem regarding which button to press:

Eenie meenie minie moe
pick a button to shoot the foe
if it's wrong then let it go
next time it occurs you better know

[Hammer]

Have you seen typical driver sets for things like graphics cards these days?

Thanks to direct support for CUDA, PhysX, OpenGL1.0 - 3.0, Direct X (up to v10), Pure Video etc, the drivers for my card alone weigh in at around 100 MB, not including tweaking tools.

The linux drivers aren't much smaller.

NVIDIA drivers includes NVAPI i.e. it enables some of Direct3D 10.1 *like* features on current CUDA processors e.g. FarCry2 PC.