From: sam jordan
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
comp.sys.amiga.misc
comp.sys.amiga.hardware
comp.sys.amiga.graphics
comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: 3dfx for AMIGA: To be or not to be
Date: Mon, 07 Dec 1998 14:14:17 -0800
Hi
This newsletter is intended to be written for all
those AMIGA users, which really care for the
future of the AMIGA, especially concerning games.
I would like to show anyone what we can expect in
future, what will be possible and what the AMIGA
users themselves have to contribute to make all
this possible. Now a very important decision is
to be done, which will influence the future
development of AMIGA games, and how the decision
will look like, depends very much on the AMIGA
users themselves.
In the past weeks there were a lot of discussions
about the Villagetronic project, which is supposed
to bring the Voodoo1 hardware for AMIGA. I will now
explain, what this project means for the potential
customers and what it will mean for the AMIGA as
a whole.
First, for all those, who spreaded wrong information:
Villagetronic still need pre-orders! The decision
about the project will be done in a few weeks, so
there is not much time left. If they don't get the
expected 500 preorders, they will definitely cancel
the project. Pre-orders can be done on the
villagetronic websites.
I'm sure that there are a lot of people around,
which might be interested for such a hardware, but
which fear, that this hardware will become as
useless as all other 3D graphics board up to now.
The reason for this lack of supporting software
were the missing 3D drivers (a situation which
is unthinkable on other platforms, where the chip
manufacturers themselves provide appropriate drivers,
most often with support for Direct3D and OpenGL).
The same is now coming for the AMIGA, the Warp3D
driver system intends to give the programmers an
instrument in their hands to be able to use the
advanced 3D features. Its API is hardware-
independent, so that any 3D hardware will be
supported for AMIGA. The Virge driver is done, the
Permedia2 driver in work and any other driver
will be written, so that every new 3D hardware
will come with complete drivers and software using
them (and the drivers will be there at the first
release of the hardware, not months or even years
later!). The 3dfx hardware will be definitely
supported by Warp3D.
With the first release of Warp3D (coming this
or next week) there will be a release of the first
game supporting Warp3D: ADescent. This game
demonstrates the features and performance of 3D
hardware and shows that it is even possible to
play games fast with fast 68K processors. The
difference between the new Warp3D-Descent version
and the previous version with Virge support (through
some unfinished beta drivers) are:
- The W3D version supports any 3D hardware, while
the old one only supports the Virge
- The W3D version runs with P96 and with CGFX, while
the old one only supports CGFX
- The W3D version has an extremly better graphics
quality than the old one, because these old drivers
were unfinished and didn't support many features, which
improve the graphics quality a lot. The W3D version
provides on the Virge bilinear filtering, mipmapping,
trilinear filtering and fogging for top graphics
quality.
- The W3D version runs much faster then the old
version, since the Virge driver for W3D was optimized
like hell (core parts of the setup stage were
written in ASM for both CPU's). While Descent
is only playable nicely in resolutions up to
320*400*15 on the Virge, it will be possible to
play it in 800*600*15 on a Voodoo1 card at nice
frame rate (and Descent looks incredible at that
resolution!)
This feature list should show, what it means to
have hardware-independent drivers. You can develop a
software today and it will work with hardware of
tomorrow, without any single change of code.
Meanwhile there are a lot of developers which
have access to the beta files, which partially work
for commercial game projects, so that we can expect
a lot of applications which support 3D hardware. The
game company Digital Images has announced support
for Warp3D and WarpUp and they have some promising
game projects. A list of those projects will be
available on the 3DWorld web sites soon.
As we all know, there were PC games around which
supported OpenGL and achieved a fantastic graphics
quality, like Quake2. There is a slight chance to
get games like Quake2 for AMIGA, but it is ABSOLUTELY
NECESSARY to have *TOP* 3D hardware available to run
such games fast enough. The Virge has no chance to
achieve that, while the Permedia2 should give
acceptable frame rates and the Voodoo1 will fly.
OpenGL with 3D hardware support is also coming to
the AMIGA. At the same time with Warp3D there will
be the release of StormMesa 3.0, which supports 3D
hardware through Warp3D. I demonstrated this at
cologne, but the performance was even improved very
much meanwhile, through many optimizations. I spend
very much time to get out the max. of OpenGL and
3D-hardware (by rewriting tons of functions to
ASM for both CPU's) and the results are very
impressive even with the Virge.
StormMesa 3.0 and Warp3D will be available for
68K and PPC/WarpUp, so that it would be possible
to play games like Quake2 in high resolutions at
very high speed. Even the Virge accelerates those
demos by several factors, so that real good
hardware can cause real miracles.
But all this requires, that there are enough users
around with *FAST* 3D hardware. Games like Quake2
and Wipeout really need 3D hardware to run nicely,
so all these projects are in real danger, if there
is not enough fast hardware around. Running an
OpenGL game on a plain PPC without 3D hardware
support means the same as playing Quake1 on a
68040 processor. It is useless! And the companies
will also come to this conclusion, so they need the
perspective to sell enough copies of the game.
Please note, that it is completely impossible to run
3D games on the AMIGA in high resolutions at high
speed, if there is no 3D hardware present. To
display the graphics data, it has to be
transferred through the Z3 resp. CVPPC bus,
which is dead slow. The PowerPC is really
useless for these high resolutions. The 3D
hardware are the only chance to bypass this
bottleneck.
To come to the initial point: I strongly believe
that the decision to make or not to make the
hardware has a *major* influence to the future
game market. Many promising game projects are
announced, but only few of them will actually
be released, because the other ones need more
power than there actually is (in terms of sold
3D graphics boards)
Just a question to all those people, which would
like to buy those new announced PPC boards: what
serious 3D accelerator do you want to buy? There
is a simple answer: there is none. Except if the
3DFX overdrive is released. Let us have a look at
the other 3D chips available:
- Virge: very old, very weak compared to modern
3D chips, only usable for custom engines and for
low resolutions. Too weak for serious OpenGL
(serious means beeing able to achieve a good
frame rate for complex applications like those
games)
- Permedia2: newer than the Virge, much faster,
but restricted to be used together with the
Phase5 hardware (please forget the idea, that
those new boards will provide the CVPPC slot,
this won't be the case). And for those, which
might have a look at the crazy idea to run one
of those Escena boards in parallel to the
CyberVisionPPC: The Escena board will probably
not have access to the CVPPC, so the hardware
could only be accessed via the 68K by trapping
the accesses and processing appropriate exception
handlers. This means: major slowdown, especially
for 3D operations (it takes at least 10 register
accesses for one single triangle, and modern games
draw several thousands of them per frame).
Now it's up to those users, which didn't decide yet
to pre-order the 3dfx overdrive, to do it *NOW*,
because a few weeks later it will be too late.
The hardware will be released together with
complete drivers, with OpenGL support, with
several hundreds of OpenGL demos, together with
Descent (executable only), and all game projects,
which are now in the making with W3D support,
will instantly work with the hardware.
To all others, which won't buy it because they
don't own a PIV or because they already have
another accelerator: please talk with people
which might be interested in this hardware,
tell them what I have written here. Also address
people which don't have internet access, spread
this message. All users which pre-order a hardware
will get a top hardware together with tons of
supporting software and they will help the AMIGA
very much, since they give the game developers
the sign, that it is really worth to support
this technology.
Please spread this message, display them everywhere,
send it to every mailing list, talk about it, do
all you can to support this fantastic project!
Convinve the people to pre-order the hardware!
By supporting the 3DFX project, you are also
supporting the Warp3D team, which spend incredible
much time to give the AMIGA the possibility to
run games at never-seen speed, and all that for
free.
If you have some questions addressed to myself, then
please write them to one of the eMail addresses below.
You can also ask all members of the W3D team (Hans-Joerg
and Thomas Frieden, and myself).
To be or not to be, that's now the question.
bye
--
Sam Jordan
Member of Haage&Partner PowerPC Development Team
s.jordan@haage-partner.com (business related)
sam_jordan@bluewin.ch (private related)