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Author Topic: Would you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?  (Read 21676 times)

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Offline matthey

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #44 on: April 09, 2010, 02:52:47 AM »
@KThunder
I understand your frustration with all things Amiga as we all experience it. That doesn't mean that we have all been lazy and there has been no progress. You need to look around. Gulliver has put together a pretty nice unoficial Boing Bag compilation already. That's not nothing. He is testing 3 libraries I have enhanced. I'm also working on the Warp3D.library in a group effort (Allan Thellier, Bernd AFA, wawa, kas1e, etc) to give better 3D support for the Amiga including a new version of Mesa. I updated a disassembler (ADis) and debugged it to the point that it works quite well when my biggest C program before ADis was a hello world. I helped debug 68k Vasm (Frank Wille) for VBCC at the same time as a disassembler and assembler together can pinpoint errors. I would like to do a version of exec.library next and include some nice patches like my CopyMem, TLSFmem and bug fixes and speed ups. It takes time though. I will probably wait and see where Cosmos goes with his graphics.library but I could probably edit the P96 and/or CGFX libraries to not patch the graphics.library if it didn't need to anymore because it had high color support built in. Cosmos has a lot more time than me though. My day job is busier now than before the slow down while Cosmos doesn't have a day job. I am trying to help the Natami team as well. The question is what are you doing to help the Amiga? I wouldn't ask but you are complaining about people that are involved and doing what they can. That doesn't help.
 

Offline tone007

Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #45 on: April 09, 2010, 02:56:23 AM »
Quote from: matthey;552357
@KThunder The question is what are you doing to help the Amiga? I wouldn't ask but you are complaining about people that are involved and doing what they can. That doesn't help.


My favorite part is when he goes and completely edits a post that someone has responded directly to, making the response seem out of place.  I liked the "wah, wah, why are you ignoring me, Gulliver?" one but that got edited already.
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Offline ElPolloDiabl

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #46 on: April 09, 2010, 02:59:12 AM »
I like the open ideas posts. It's not like it is hogging up space reserved for news.

If you do the poll first you can think, "70 people want to use this software." Instead of, "I wonder if more than 5 people will even like it."
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Offline KThunder

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #47 on: April 09, 2010, 02:59:42 AM »
sorry i'm not really adding anything to this. being more of a pain in the arse than anything.
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Offline KThunder

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #48 on: April 09, 2010, 03:00:52 AM »
i was actually editing post to make myself look like less of an idiot.... it didnt work
and i wasnt whining i asked several questions and made several comments and gulliver didnt respond at all.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2010, 03:03:47 AM by KThunder »
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Offline persia

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Re: Would you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #49 on: April 09, 2010, 03:49:25 AM »
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
- Andrew S. Tannenbaum

To create a new standard, it takes something that's not just a little bit different; it takes something that's really new and really captures people's imagination — and the Macintosh, of all the machines I've ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

- Bill Gates
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Offline ChaosLord

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #50 on: April 09, 2010, 04:22:48 AM »
Quote from: bloodline;552240
What's wrong with P96?

Lots of bugs that the author refuses to fix.
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Offline Tumbleweed

Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #51 on: April 09, 2010, 09:34:37 AM »
Quote from: Karlos;552273
Apart from the possibility of newer/faster drivers and drivers for cards you couldn't use before?


Faster drivers that visibly enhance the user experience that would be good. But what else wil it provide? From what I gather there is a big advantage for those with a G-rex or toher similar bus board as they can potentially use other graphics cards. But for those without a bus board, other than potentially fatser drivers, there is not much else. Or am I mistaken?

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Offline arnljot

Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #52 on: April 09, 2010, 10:09:53 AM »
Quote from: Tumbleweed;552400
Faster drivers that visibly enhance the user experience that would be good. But what else wil it provide? From what I gather there is a big advantage for those with a G-rex or toher similar bus board as they can potentially use other graphics cards. But for those without a bus board, other than potentially fatser drivers, there is not much else. Or am I mistaken?

Weed


Yes the primary benefits for end users would be bug fixes and new and updated drivers (raster accelleration).

The second goal would be to manage to make it "romable", to have it in kickstart ROM.

Also, there is talk about adding RTG support to the FPGA arcade. With an open RTG system it would be much easier for new efforts to add new hardware to the classics family and other amiga related systems.
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Offline Karlos

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #53 on: April 09, 2010, 10:48:11 AM »
Quote from: Tumbleweed;552400
Faster drivers that visibly enhance the user experience that would be good. But what else wil it provide? From what I gather there is a big advantage for those with a G-rex or toher similar bus board as they can potentially use other graphics cards. But for those without a bus board, other than potentially fatser drivers, there is not much else. Or am I mistaken?

Weed


One thing that would be interesting would be a native chipset driver that allows software written for CGX/P96 to run on AGA/ECS. Now, in CGX v3, the was an AGA driver that did indeed allow RTG software to work, but only software that would run on an 8-bit screen. It would seem that all it really did was to ensure PPC friendly alignment of BitMaps and implement the 8-bit pixel array read/write functions of cybergraphics.

Ever since experimenting with different EVD's for shapeshifter, an idea that has constantly intrigued me is a 'full' RTG driver AGA. One that is capable of performing RGB->HAM c2p for example, opening the possibility of running RTG software that requires an RGB display. In this model, RGB bitmaps would have be allocated in fast ram and blitting / WritePixelArray()ing them to screen would invoke the required c2p. Not sure how feasible this would be, but a logical extension to that would be that when opening a fake RGB screen, a fake Screen structure would be returned, hiding the true Screen (which would obviously be a HAM customscreen), where even the screen bitmap would be an RGB pixel buffer. Some process (perhaps triggered on vblank) would be responsible for updating changed areas on the real screen, using a delta buffer and/or using flags that can be set when any potentially destructive (ie can change the buffer) operation is invoked, for example calling any drawing functions or locking the bitmap.

It wouldn't be particularly fast, but shapeshifter demonstrated that the concept of RGB -> HAM c2p is possible outside of demos :)
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Offline Piru

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #54 on: April 09, 2010, 10:52:48 AM »
Quote from: arnljot;552268
I think he was voicing an opinion and not speaking officially for them when he replied.

I talked with Frank about it. It wasn't an opinion.
 

Offline arnljot

Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #55 on: April 09, 2010, 10:57:49 AM »
Quote from: Piru;552414
I talked with Frank about it. It wasn't an opinion.


I'm sorry to hear that. Is there any chance you can put us in contact with him so that we may enter a dialogue. It would at least be nice to know why, so that we can lay it to rest. Perhaps there are some provisions the community could make that would make him feel secure about releasing it?
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Offline Piru

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Re: Would you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #56 on: April 09, 2010, 11:10:33 AM »
It's a commendable idea, but it doesn't work in practice.

I think it's unrealistic to expect someone to write drivers for all the existing amiga graphics cards. Writing graphics card drivers is quite tricky and requires special kind of skillset. There aren't many around who would be capable, not to mention willing.

This would basically lead to a situation that instead of two systems that support different set of hardware we'd have three. Instead of two different systems with slightly different quirks, we'd have three systems with different quirks.

New driver system would also mean that 3d drivers would need to be written from scratch.

I don't have an easy alternate solution to offer, unfortunately.
 

Offline Piru

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #57 on: April 09, 2010, 11:14:03 AM »
Quote from: arnljot;552415
Is there any chance you can put us in contact with him so that we may enter a dialogue.

I'm afraid the answer is no.
 

Offline warpdesign

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Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #58 on: April 09, 2010, 11:23:55 AM »
Quote

This would basically lead to a situation that instead of two systems that support different set of hardware we'd have three. Instead of two different systems with slightly different quirks, we'd have three systems with different quirks.

New driver system would also mean that 3d drivers would need to be written from scratch.

Well, we would only end up with 3 different systems because neither of the two existing are willing to open up their SDK... As always, the lack of open-mindedness is what makes people reinvent the wheel... over and over.
 

Offline GulliverTopic starter

Re: Will you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?
« Reply #59 from previous page: April 09, 2010, 11:30:03 AM »
Dumb question:

Is it technically feasable for this new rtg system to provide backwards compatibility for both Picasso96 and CybergraphX at the driver level? So that there is a chance we can still use old drivers until new ones arrive.