How to do 3D graphics development on the Amiga?

[EntilZha]

We need people like yourself plugging the AMIGA product, people who do know what they are talking about.

Thanks. I don't hear that a lot, most poeple here will tell you otherwise  :-D

[TheJackal]

by EntilZha on 2003/12/5 14:20:52
[...]
The vision is clear: OpenGL *will* be in. Possibily, there'll be another API, but you can definitely count on OpenGL.
 

Count on OpenGL? I thought it was a rendering API, not an abbacus! :-D

Sorry for that, I'll go and stand in the corner now!

PS:I guess it must be Hyperions dinner time? :-P

[Rogue]

In any case, I could care less if Amiga had a DirectX or an OpenGL, or something new.

Agreed. Ideally portability of the API isn't so much of an issue since most of the concepts are the same. As soon as shading languages come into the picture, things get nasty unless you use Cg, or roll your own.

What I care about is that there is some equivelent that lets me write shaders, preferably in a HLSL/Cg/Slang-eque language, which can compile down to the actual Vertex and Fragment program specs, and which otherwise take advantage of all the hardware features found in today's cards.

Like I said, NOVA is meant to be shader centric with the "normal" fixed-function pipeline being a special case.

I don't understand the lack of a concrete vision and story for 3D on the Amiga. Saying that such and such API is possibly coming out, and not knowing what it actually is capable of and how it works, is not what I'm talking about.

Oh, the question is different. It is either OpenGL 2.0, or NOVA, or both. If we go for NOVA, we already have a very clear idea about how it will look. However, the problem is lack of documentation. If we can get a good OpenGL 2.0 support we might drop the idea of rolling our own API, but if we had to write it all ourselves anyway, we'd implement the NOVA proposal (which already exists, internally).

*If* Nova comes out, we know quite well what it is going to be capable of. However, there are too many unknowns to consider (time not the least) therefore anything else is speculative, and saying this or that could be misleading.

At this point I would be happy with a gaurantee that such a featured API is coming out

There will be such an API. It's either going to be OpenGL or NOVA; but it *will* be one of the two, preferrably both.

[Rogue]

a very nice feature for future API/OS would be for each application to render to a texture

Yes, that is a very interesting aspect. On OpenGL you need something like the p-Buffer extension to actually do that, which is a bit problematic (what are you going to do if that extension is missing). Here's my major problem with OpenGL - what if that extension is missing...

As for 3D, it would be nice to have along side vertex and pixel shaders, geometry shaders. So logical operations can be performed on "geometry" (And or Xor etc).

I'm not aware of any modern graphics card that can actually do that. They operate on isolated vertices, or fragments, but not on geometry. There is no connectivity information passsing through the shaders.

[EntilZha]

Count on OpenGL? I thought it was a rendering API, not an abbacus!

Naw, a simple stencil buffer operation can count anything :-D

PS:I guess it must be Hyperions dinner time?

Yep, just finished (which means I should get back to work ;-))

[NicoPPC]

@Lempke

Well, I don't hype up anything.
I've just listed the 3D API available for MorphOS 1.4. I' speaking
bout the public vesion that every Pegasos user can't get freely.

For the moment, the most "compatible" API is Warp3D because it's
available on MorphOS and should be in OS4.
However, I think the best choise would be to use any GL for new
application.

Bye

[TheJackal]

by Rogue on 2003/12/5 14:28:25
[...]
I'm not aware of any modern graphics card that can actually do that. They operate on isolated vertices, or fragments, but not on geometry. There is no connectivity information passsing through the shaders.

Neither do I. I was just putting forward what I see as the way things will be going. DX9 with its Higher-Order primitives is the start of this IMHO. (OpenGL does similar stuff to IIRC)

And when I said geo shader I men't the concept of a shader, not specifics as you mentioned. (Heck, branches in shaders is relatively new!)

Anyhow I dont expect you guys to implement such a thing, (well perhaps in you "spare" time :-P )