@Helgis

Quote:

Should most have the Radeon 9200, or should we go for the 9800?

At this time, I can only make commitments to produce a driver for the R100 and R200 series, that would mean Radeon 7000, 7200 (aka Rage 6 AKA original Radeon), 7500, 8500/9100, 9000, 9200. Anything else *should* come but I can't say for sure, nor give any timeframe.

For Warp3D, the 9200 will be sufficient. The shader or T&L hardware is not used. For Nova, we will at the very least support the T&L of the Radeon series, and will have one (as of yet undisclosed) full target which will have the full range of shader hardware supported.

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

@Samwel

Quote:

So you HAVE a release date in mind? Not the usual "WHEN IT'S DONE" stuff.

Of course. I am just not saying it because.. well, you know what I mean.

Quote:

If you can't make SNAP work correctly before the release date you'll release OS4 as is and incorporate SNAP in 4.1 instead?

I don't know what management has planned. It would certainly be an option, although I would prefer to have it in the final package.

Quote:

I just thought OS4.0 development could go on forever until all the features you wanted in were finished. I thought that's what "When it's done" meant.

I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate if the thing gets released finally. We can't go on with this indefinitely. We *are aiming at a release date. We have always been aiming at a date, but had to correct that frequently. The feature list, as posted on amiga.com, is "subject to change". If it doesn't work out, one or the other feature might be dropped, and one or the other feature might get in. We have already taken some features that where only planned for 4.x into the 4.0 release.

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

@Steff

Quote:

Hopefully Hyperion will release some games at the same time

It is planned to release an update to one or the other game soon after the public Warp3D release.

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

@Rogue

I hope that between the lacking things there is not the WarpOS/PowerUP support

_________________
BACK FOR THE FUTURE

http://www.betatesting.it/backforthefuture

Sam440ep Flex 800 Mhz 1 GB Ram + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6
AmigaOne XE G3 800 Mhz - 640 MB Ram - Radeon 9200 SE + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6

@Rogue

I know I am asking a lot here, but I am curious about warp3d and miniGL.. I have seen these and hardware implementations. I am wondering how much of the 3d drivers will address GPU programming and any types of pixel and vertex shader technology. Until Nova happens I really can't see many folks porting their game engines. Is there any place we can learn about Nova and how it compares to things such as Cg Shaders and HLSL shaders, or will it be something lower level requiring programmers to write ASM (GPU assembly language) shaders..

It would be really important to know some basics on how you all might plan to address shader technlogy. It would be really nice, if I could port some of the Cg (nvidia) shaders and Microsoft HLSL shaders easily to AmigaOS 4x as there are tons of libraries of FX shaders already out there, including toon shaders and others..

-Don

@samo79

Quote:

I hope that between the lacking things there is not the WarpOS/PowerUP support

WarpUp support is being worked on. PowerUp support - I don't think so. I don't think we have anyone in the team that actually knows PowerUp.

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

@Rogue

If we have warpup, I think theres a powerup emulator that runs under it available for download somewhere.

Mark

_________________
IceStar Media Ltd.

@DonnieA2

Quote:

I know I am asking a lot here, but I am curious about warp3d and miniGL.. I have seen these and hardware implementations. I am wondering how much of the 3d drivers will address GPU programming and any types of pixel and vertex shader technology.

Warp3D lacks the API support for that. As such, fixed function pipeline support or even shader hardware is not an option at the moment. We could add that, the vertex array functionality is there and we could theoretically add the required API calls to support at least a fixed-function T&L support, but I don't think we should do that. In retrospect, there are amy small and large mistakes in the Warp3D API (the most obvious being the fixed vertex format of V1-V3) .

Nova is still a bit off. I expect the first prototype in about five months. The technologies are quite well understood, and the work on optimizing the Warp3D drivers has taught us many a lesson. I'm also glad to say that we will have full support for at least one target graphics hardware initially, and hope to add more to that list.

What we want to achieve with Nova is a completely shader-driven API. You define a a vertex stream as input and connect the inputs to shader variables. The vertex shader (or the fixed-function pipeline) reads these and outputs them to a set of pre-defined output variables. These are either read by the pixel shader (if active) or by the fixed-function rasterizer backend.

We want the shader language itself to be compatible (at least largely compatible) to the OpenGL shader language. IIRC, though, the Cg compiler by NVidia is opensource and you can add backends to it that target specific API'S and/or shader models, so porting Cg would definitely be an option as well.

Shader programs can either by in the high-level language, or in some sort of assembler language (especially for pixel shaders since these can be quite limited in space). They can also be stored externally as a text file, or in "object code format", which is a hardware-neutral bytecode that can be translated into native shader instructions by the driver.

I guess that translating from one High-level shader language into another is quite straightforward, and as I said, we're aiming at something similar to OpenGL 2.0's shader language. If a technology like Cg is possible, all the better

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

Thank you, everybody, for all the replies. It seems exciting things are afoot in the Amiga community.

@Rogue

Quote:

We're currently still woring on finalizing the current Warp3D, which is our own native driver system. We're currently supporting the Permedia 2, Voodoo 3, 4 and 5, and the Radeon 7x00 series. The Radeon 8x00 and 9x00 will follow shortly.

Reminds me of the time I spent on the BeOS OpenGL beta :) Will the cards you've listed be usable with the standard BIOS installed on them? I've got a large 'collection' of video cards, and as long as they work standard it would make scalability testing a breeze.

Quote:

We are working on two OpenGL options for OS 4, one is a full-fledged Mesa port, the other is MiniGL, our own small OpenGL subset. MiniGL is as good as finished, while Mesa will stil take some time.

Is there a listing of core functionality that MiniGL supports? Most of my projects are/will be retrogame updates, so I'm not necessarily dependent on a programmable pipeline and other recent features.

Quote:

edit: Forgot to mention: For OS 4.1 and beyond we plan to replace the current Warp3D with something that has the project title "Nova". Nova will be a new API that is based entirely on shader languages, with the fixed function setup being a special case rather than the rule. However, it will not be ready for OS 4.0.

That's great to hear, I'm really excited about the possibilities! Seems that's all the convincing I needed. Now I just need get my wife to understand that buying into the platform is worth the cost/time for development.

@Rogue

Ever since it went for sale (on playstation) I've been crazy about Wipeout 2097, when it was ported to Amiga I was very exited (wel, sort of...) but it needed a PPC board wich I didn't have or could afort.

Now I have a PPC board (A1 ) but I still can't play it without buying a Playstation, Pegasos, Cyberstorm for my A4000 wich can all run PowerUp software.

Now I'm sad.....

Is there any way, to make this happen ?

Cheers,

Martin

ps, how about FPSE ? Does that run Wipeout at good speed ? Maybe I should try that

_________________
Theres a time to live and a time to die
When its time to meet the maker
Theres a time to live but isnt it strange
That as soon as you're born you're dying

@Metalheart

The Amiga version of Wipeout 2097 is WarpUp based, not PowerUp, as far as I can recall - so presumably, once OS4 implements WarpUp and Warp3D support, you'll be able to play it.

@WilleKe

Realy ? Are you sure ?

Am I confusing it with another game, that IS PowerUp only ?

Thanks,

Martin

_________________
Theres a time to live and a time to die
When its time to meet the maker
Theres a time to live but isnt it strange
That as soon as you're born you're dying

@Metalheart

Quote:

ps, how about FPSE ? Does that run Wipeout at good speed ? Maybe I should try that

I've tried Wipeout 2097 on FPSE, and it plays OK, although you have to put up with the odd visual glitch - the odd missing polygon, etc.

Stimpzilla
====

_________________
incredibly irritated owner of an A1G4-XE800 that won't even work these days...

@PolygonSoup

Quote:

Is there a listing of core functionality that MiniGL supports? Most of my projects are/will be retrogame updates, so I'm not necessarily dependent on a programmable pipeline and other recent features.

Unfortunately, no listing (that would be too large, 176 functions ), but I can summarize:

- The complete range of the "push" API, i.e. glBegin/glEnd, glVertex, glColor, etc.
- Vertex arrays
- ARB_multitexture
- Experimential lighting support
- minimal GLUT implementation

Todo:
- User clip planes (need that for a current project)
- Stencil buffer support (also need that for a current project).
- Integration into SDL

Plus, you'll get the source code, so you can add whatever you want

MiniGL was initially built for supporting our games ports to the classic Amigas, since at that time, Mesa was much too slow to be usable. So it originally supported all the functions needed for Heretic 2 (our first GL game).

Later on, for Shogo, we added vertex arrays (since we realized that the amount of vertex data Shogo used was too big for the usual glBegin/glEnd paradigm).

Of course, we're also working on a Mesa port which will give you the full OpenGL API.

_________________
Thomas, the kernel guy

"I don't have a frigging clue. I'm norwegian" -- Ole-Egil

All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Hyperion Entertainment

@Metalheart

Wipeout is definitely WarpUp.

_________________
Thomas, the kernel guy

"I don't have a frigging clue. I'm norwegian" -- Ole-Egil

All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Hyperion Entertainment

@Samwel

Quote:

Of course you should buy a 9800Pro supporting voltage of 2x, 4x & 8x AGP.. A 256MB if you can afford.

That may be all and well for the AGP slot owning XE/SE users, but remember MicroA1s only have a PCI slot, and the last time I looked, the 9800s were not made in a PCI form (PCI-Express yes, but that isn't the same PCI on the uA1 either )

_________________
Test sig (new)

@Mark

Frank Willie made the PowerUp-Emulation for WarpOS, the last version I saw and used was 0.9c, which you can download from his site - ppclibemu 0.9c.lha.

He has many other useful utilities you can also gain from his Website.

I do not know if they would work on the A1 though. They have only been tested AFAIK on WOS on a CSPPC or BPPC.

_________________
Test sig (new)

@Rogue
Quote:

WarpUp support is being worked on. PowerUp support - I don't think so. I don't think we have anyone in the team that actually knows PowerUp.

Frank Wille knows powerUp very well, he may be interested in integrating a powerUp emu

_________________
The only spanish amiga news web page/club: CUAZ

@EntilZha

Quote:

The complete range of the "push" API, i.e. glBegin/glEnd, glVertex, glColor, etc. - Vertex arrays - ARB_multitexture - Experimential lighting support - minimal GLUT implementation

That seems much more than adequate for what I've got planned so far. Depending on how the project comes together I might be able to make use of the stencil feature.. just need to figure out what the best way for shadows will be.

Quote:

Plus, you'll get the source code, so you can add whatever you want

Just to verify, will MiniGL be available with a release of 4.0 or is it part of the SDK now?

@EntilZha

Cool ! Thanks for making my day (sort of...)

Martin

_________________
Theres a time to live and a time to die
When its time to meet the maker
Theres a time to live but isnt it strange
That as soon as you're born you're dying