Introducing Warp3D Nova for AmigaOS 4.1

[eliyahu]

Introducing Warp3D Nova
Shader based 3D graphics are finally a reality!

A-EON Technology Ltd is pleased to announce that a native 3D Shader-based API has been developed for OS4. Warp3D Nova has been the result of over nine months of hard work by graphics guru and AmigaDeveloper.com Team member, Hans De Ruiter. It offers significant opportunities for exciting advancements in 3D software running on the AmigaOS4 platform.

Why is Nova needed?

The original Warp3D API is over a decade old, and as a consequence, is not based around Shader technology and many related functions that modern graphics cards support. Modern 3D engines require Shaders and having this support on OS4 will remove more obstacles to porting games and applications from other platforms. To further ease porting from other systems, we have contracted Daniel Muessener (GoldenCode.eu) to develop an OpenGL ES 2.0 wrapper for the new Warp3D Nova.

In addition to the coding talents of Daniel, we have been in contact with other prominent 3D developers from across the Amiga community and provided them with early access to the software.

Warp3D Nova Features

• A modern shader-based 3D graphics API for use by 3D software running on the AmigaOS 4 platform
  
• Supports vertex and fragment (pixel) shaders giving developers great freedom over lighting models, effects, vertex transformations, etc.
• Hardware accelerated Transformation, Clipping & Lighting (TCL) is implicitly supported (programmed via shaders)
  
• Uses the SPIR-V standard for shaders. A GLSL to SPIR-V compiler is included
• All rendering is done via Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs) which can be stored in VRAM for high performance Render state stored in Render State Objects (RSOs). Having no global state avoids state thrashing, and allows multi-threaded rendering. Note: While there's no global state, a default RSO is allocated for convenience
  
• Includes an SDK with everything needed to start writing apps & games including examples ranging from querying hardware capabilities through to per-pixel lighting with normal mapping
• Can co-exist with the original Warp3D-SI & MiniGL

Special thanks go to Andy Broad for developing the glslangValidator tool.

Requirements

• AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition or newer
• A supported Southern Island* series graphics card with GDDR5 RAM

- Radeon HD 7750-7970 series
- Radeon R5 230/235/235x
- Radeon R7 250x/265 series
- Radeon R9 270/270x/280/280x

(*Not compatible with HD7790 or Southern Island graphics cards with DDR3 RAM)


Warp3D Nova libraries, SDK and tools

[jdupuis]

This is great news!! Thank you eliyahu!

Cheers!!

[klx300r]

:banana::banana::banana:We love ya Hans & Daniel & Andy :hammer::banana::banana::banana:

:drink:

[lionstorm]

Great news but what about the others like me having older Radeon 9000, 7500 and 9250 in AmigaOnes cpu ? these old cards are supporting shaders as well !

is this coming for free ?

[eliyahu]

Great news but what about the others like me having older Radeon 9000, 7500 and 9250 in AmigaOnes cpu ? these old cards are supporting shaders as well !

is this coming for free ?

at the moment only certain radeonhd cards are supported, but A-EON are making available a DDK for third-parties to develop additional drivers for additional video cards.

as for pricing, that wasn't announced. either way, given that the OS is now so much cheaper, it doesn't bother me much one way or another.

-- eliyahu

[nicholas]

Will it be released for 68k machines once/if drivers for older Radeons are available?

[Acill]

It would be nice to see it released for MorphOS as well. Any word on a possibility for that?

[apsturk]

Wow THANKS and great!!!! Job boys!!!!!

Well done

[amoskodare]

:pint::hat:

[Hans_]

Great news but what about the others like me having older Radeon 9000, 7500 and 9250 in AmigaOnes cpu ? these old cards are supporting shaders as well !

The shader capabilities in Radeon 7000-9250's are really really basic. That's why ATI never wrote a GLSL compiler for them. Of course, if someone wants to have a go at creating a Warp3D Nova driver anyway, then that's cool. Just know that it'll only ever be able to use really basic shaders.

Hans

[gregthecanuck]

Very cool indeed!! Nice work Hans!

I wonder why the DDR5-only limitation?

[Hans_]

Very cool indeed!! Nice work Hans!

I wonder why the DDR5-only limitation?

That's a limitation of the 2D RadeonHD driver. DDR3 cards have a poor track record, and so far I've been unable to figure out why.

Hans

[Gulliver]

A closed source 3D API only for OS4?

Good luck!
You will need it.

On the other hand, if it gets open and available for MOS, AROS, Amiga, etc it will indeed be something positive and worthwhile. If not, it will certainly languish in obscurity within time.

[gregthecanuck]

Gulliver:

Congratulations on being the first d!ck in this thread.

You could have asked if there were plans to port to other platforms in a nice way but instead chose to don your flame gear and toss an incendiary device.

What has been accomplished here is an amazing amount of work in nine months by a small team on a likely fairly limited budget.

Requesting that this becomes "open" and available to other platforms is naive to the extreme.

Normally I don't do the "angry" type of post but really dude, get a clue.

[mbrantley]

Looking forward to putting Nova to use on X1000 with R9 270. There may be hope for 2016 yet.