I wouldn't work on a schedule to get things done. I'd just look at this as a possible solution to add to the whole of Warp3D Nova. Regardless of how much horsepower a Sam440 might have, I think it's the same philosophy as carrying the Amiga itself forward. If I can make it work, great. If not, at least an effort was made.

@Bradsco

While I sympathize with your graphics card not being compatible with W3D Nova I would suggest that asking for an update to support this card is not productive.

If any new family support is introduced it should be for future card generations not those from the past. There is only limited developer resource available and that time should be spent on forward-looking projects.

Last edited by gregthecanuck on 28-Mar-2016 at 01:11 AM.

Quote:

While I sympathize with your graphics card not being compatible with W3D Nova I would suggest that asking for an update to support this card is not productive. If any new family support is introduced it should be for future card generations not those from the past. There is only limited developer resource available and that time should be spent on forward-looking projects.

I'm not requesting work be done. I'm offering to write the driver. Or to at least give it a shot.

Last edited by Bradsco on 28-Mar-2016 at 06:45 AM.

@Bradsco

Quote:

I'm offering to write the driver.

Welcome and good luck!

_________________
SAM440EP-FLEX @ 733 Mhz, AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1

Thanks Hans,

at the moment I have a Sam440ep mini itx and I am really happy with this hardware because at the moment it is fully working and fully supported by the system (driver and all the rest). I jumped the 460 and X1000 series because these mainboards weren't fully supported by the system so I waited and in the meanwhile I used my 'old' AmigaNG

This new is a very good news because in the very near future i wll be able to buy a new amigang system ready out of the box: sata driver, ethernet, audio, 2D and 3D driver without waiting for this or that... will it be that?

Thanks again!

Davide/Nube

P.S.: all this 3D stuff reminds me the old warp3D days with the WarpOS exception :D :D :D (Sam Jordan :D )

Last edited by nubechecorre on 28-Mar-2016 at 04:33 PM.

_________________
GDG-Entertainment
OS4Games
Iksnet
Bitplane

Hans is an excellent programmer.
The OS4 community could use a lot more people like him.
If it had them, I'd be in that camp ASAP.

Quote:

Hans is an excellent programmer. The OS4 community could use a lot more people like him.

He has devotion, he doesn't face away from challenges, he genuinely wants to learn and evolve, and he has shown willingness to go into difficult and unknown territories of fundamental importance of an entire community faction, with many eyes watching and measuring his results.



Quote:

If it had them, I'd be in that camp ASAP.

Luckily, the MorphOS camp has all the rest...

@Bradsco

Quote:

I'm not requesting work be done. I'm offering to write the driver. Or to at least give it a shot.

Obviously I need to learn to read...

Quote:

I'm not requesting work be done. I'm offering to write the driver. Or to at least give it a shot.

Yes, Please. :)

Are those dev tools free, or do you need to buy them? Could Hans help you to get start?

Hans has pointed me toward the documentation. I need to get a card for testing, and a bridge, but I'm sure those are the only real expenses.

Correction: I already have two cards! Does anyone have information on which bridge chip/adapter is known to work with the Sam440?

Last edited by Bradsco on 30-Mar-2016 at 04:36 PM.
Last edited by Bradsco on 29-Mar-2016 at 04:27 PM.

@ Bradsco

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=36053&forum=14&start=0&viewmode=flat&order=0

For Official Acube info

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36053&forum=14&start=140&viewmode=flat&order=0#759758

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_________________
Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

Awesome! Someone has used that PCI->PCI-e adaptor and confirmed it works on the Sam 440.

The only remaining question is would that work on a Pegasos or A1-XE?

Just a suggestion, but perhaps have a demonstration video that doesn't show such bad frame rates.
That logo looks little more than 15fps.
Not a good way to introduce something.
Also, perhaps something that demonstrates the 3d subsystem has evolved wouldn't hurt.

If you want to demonstrate a new something its best to show it doing something the old system can't.

@fishy_fis
Quote:

Just a suggestion, but perhaps have a demonstration video that doesn't show such bad frame rates. That logo looks little more than 15fps. Not a good way to introduce something.

Not sure where you get the 15 fps from, because I certainly don't get that impression when I look at the youtube video.

The demo itself is running at whatever the monitor's refresh rate is (probably around 60-70 fps).

Quote:

Also, perhaps something that demonstrates the 3d subsystem has evolved wouldn't hurt. If you want to demonstrate a new something its best to show it doing something the old system can't.

Eagle eyed people have noticed that the logo demo uses per-pixel lighting with normal mapping. Warp3D can't do that.

Sure, it's not exactly a stunning demo, and the per-pixel lighting effects are subtle (as they should be). Nevertheless, it is doing something that the old system can't.

I leave it to other developers to create stunning demos. My task is to work on the API and drivers.

Hans

_________________
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

Some of these are probably addressed already, but adding a few points of mine.

Quote:

If I understand this correct, all OpenGL games has to be rewritten for OpenGL ES 2.0, as ES lacks glBegin() and glEnd() functions.

Nope. Not all OpenGL games need to be rewritten, only those "very legacy" programs that use immediate mode (glBegin(), glEnd() etc.) and fixed function pipeline.

Those immediate mode functions were made obsolete by introduction of Vertex Arrays, which were introduced in OpenGL 1.1, which was released back in 1997. They've also been highly recommended alternative to immediate mode even on MiniGL & TinyGL, so this is not something new, even for us (that we should avoid using immediate mode).

Even on GLES, they were already removed from ES1.0 (except for the safety critical profile), since they were practically useless (as they were on "full" OpenGL aswell).




Not relevant since 1997? Well, that's the ideal world. Of course they have been kept in since then for "backwards compatibility" (and finally removed in OpenGL 3.1 in 2009 for good. Of course the drivers still support them (for old programs), unless you specifically request "modern" OpenGL context (Which you should).

So why it's still been used at all? Well, one obvious culprit is bad online tutorials (such as NeHe), which often only introduce (already then obsolete) immediate mode, without telling anything about its problems, and effectively leading you to believe that's the way to draw graphics in OpenGL.

In any case, it's worth remembering that same kind of rewrite is needed to get the program running on practically any mobile device, so lots of (relevant) older programs are fixed because of that.

Of course there are also programs that use fixed function (glColor() etc.) without immediate mode (which was, of course, the correct way), and that is also something, that needs to be "adapted", when moving to GLES2. Otherwise, the code might run on *GLES1 with minor modifications.

And "why not support older devices", if the gfx chip isn't built to be programmable, it can't be made programmable, simply by writing new drivers for it.

Of course that wasn't quite true. The whole initial idea behind OpenGL was, that some gfx cards might support only some (or even none) of the OpenGL features, and the rest could be done in software. And it worked just fine. Until shaders.

The issue with shaders is, you will basically have a (compiled) C-like program running for each pixel you will draw, that will decide its color. And that is incredibly hard to optimize for software. With "legacy OpenGL" it was much easier, as in the end you got all the relevant coordinates for a triangle, and could draw it which ever way you find most optimal (f.ex. drawing one horizontal line at a time)

So modern OpenGL can run on gfx cards, that aren't "shader-capable", but it will be incredibly slow. And with "incredibly slow" I mean "FPS becoming SPF". So slow that I'd say there's no point wasting time writing drivers for that.

-EDIT-

Of course some currently unsupported cards are probably "shader-capable".

*)Also, I'm pretty sure there are some open source "OpenGL ES1 on top of OpenGL ES2" implementations.

-EDIT-
Here is an old overview I wrote, about writing OpenGL code without shaders on Amiga-like platforms (and well, pretty much elsewhere). It's also got some (minimal) info on how such program would need to be changed to use shaders instead. This is not relevant to "modern" OpenGL, but has some valid points about immediate mode etc.

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@ nubechecorre

Are you going to buy a Tabor (A1222) or a Cyrus (X5000) board?

@Jupp3

Even though it's impossible to support GLSL features with older HW, it would be interesting for two reasons: VBOs and transform & lightning. Here I'm assuming that it is possible to write a simple rasterizer that emulates OpenGL fixed function. This might be faster vs. current Warp3D. But of course I'm just speculating.

If possible, I will try to get a new GFX card for my Sam440 of course...

@Kyle

I want an High End Machine :D :D :D

My own bussiness is going ver well and in the right way so I am planning to buy the best :)

_________________
GDG-Entertainment
OS4Games
Iksnet
Bitplane