New OS4 Screenshots!

[lempkee]

just to have it said, i am very picky also when it comes to responsiveness , thats why i aint on a PC! using windows!

i wasnt amazed the first time i saw os4 demo'd , but the second time it started to get interesting, 2 months later (around december) i was blown away.

huge changes between theese dates (goes for a1 only ofcourse) , and i cant exactly say its dissapointing to see how its now atm

anyway its like an taste, hard to say and its based on your own opion etc, so i think u have to see it to belive it.

as for the demo on the 8th of feburary,i guess thats the pre release they will show, and as far as i know that aint even final (still sorting out stuff) ... its just a guess and not a quote my point is, if it had been final pre release then everyone of the a1 owners would have it by now, or?

cheers

[JurassicCamper]

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

See you there... I'm hoping you'll be impressed .
Don't forget its people like me and sicky etc. who are also driving hundreds of miles and giving up a weekend, so you can get to have a look at it.   :-)
You'll get to see the latest beta build.

[Lando]

I think I won't comment on the pictures, as everyone seems to be trigger happy here.

Nahhh... Just remember to use lots of superlatives and exclamation marks and you'll be fine ;-)

[downix]

@warface

I said the same thing to myself.  Keeping comments quiet.

[Doobrey]

Wow.. gotta say Hyperion and the dev team are doing a great job.
If only I could afford an A1 to run it on  :-x

[mepmepmep]

@Rogue
Does window scrollbars dissappear when not needed (window content is fully visible) or do they stay?

[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.

[mepmepmep]

Oh, I admit it, I was wrong and I'm sorry about it:)
Not that I have critisized you but I'd just like to cheer you up;)
I also think that we must be able to critisize any product, how else can it improve? People are probably just very edgy from previous experiences.

[WarPiper]

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?

 :-?  :-?  :-?  :-?

[restore2003]

@Warpiper:

There must be some surprises that hyperion got for us  :-)

[XDelusion]

As before it looks like OS 3.9 with a few more pieces of eye candy basically. Guess I'd actually have to use it to understand  how much better this is going to be compared to what we have.

The thing I TOTALLY don't understand is this:

Amiga OS has always been for the 68k CPU family. And it has always ran VERY VERY well on those CPU's even on the very low end stock Amiga's with only a 68000 and 1 Mb or Chip RAM. As long as you did not have a fancy back drop with a lot of colors going at once, things ran smoothe, but if you have a 50 Mhz 030 and turned up the GFX, you could add some eye candy and still run smoothe.
 The part that gets me is when you see a Demo of OS 4 which is running on a PPC CPU of some kind which can run circles around a 50Mhz 030, that and PLENTY of RAM, yet the responsivness of the OS seems absolutly horrible!!!! Even when there are no fancy backdrops being used or anything. Is this a temporary bug due to how complicated it is to port something from 68k to PPC, or is Amiga OS on a highway to BLOAT hell!?!? They say better drivers would fix this, but did classic Amiga not have hardware accelration like we have today, and still respond very smoothly?!?!? Come on, we're talking PPC here not 68000!!!

 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.


 P.S. is MorphOS suffering the same nightmare?

[xeron]

@XDelusion

Don't worry. I'm using the latest version, and it is very responsive. Once Picasso96 is PPC, it will get even faster still. I wish I could post a really interesting benchmark that was placed on the betatesters list by one of the Friedens in the last couple of days, but I can't... anyway... responsiveness will not be a problem.

[ikir]

s before it looks like OS 3.9 with a few more pieces of eye candy basically. Guess I'd actually have to use it to understand how much better this is going to be compared to what we have.

Uh? Are you joking? OS4 have a lot of thecnical and graphical evolution than 3.9. Moste of them can be spotted in these screenshots.
If you say this,also MorphOS, WinXp, MacoS can be 3.9 with a few more pieces of eye candy basically :-?  :-?  :-?  :-?

[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.

[Warface]

 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.

The reason behind crippled responsiveness of the early version of OS4 is down to two keywords: 68K code and static emulation. There was no JIT emulation of system parts, and some elements of the OS are still 68K. Once all key elements will be PPC native the OS will regain the responsiveness of the Amiga.

P.S. is MorphOS suffering the same nightmare?

No. MorphOS is PPC native for a very very very long time, and has awesome responsiveness. But it's off topic.

OS4 will perform regarding the responsiveness to the same degree once all work is done, I presume.

[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