Review of the Second Sight video board.

[philip@titanic.labtam.OZ.AU (Philip Stephens)]

  Since people have been asking for a review of the Second Sight, and since
I've just received mine and have had a chance to try it out on my ROM 1 with
a high-quality 15" SVGA monitor, I thought I'd post my thoughts.

  Installation: I had to move my Zip GS to slot 1 before I began the
installation, using the "reverse the cable" trick.  In many respects this was
more hair-raising than installing the Second Sight :-)  I can't imagine what
Zip Techologises was thinking when they designed that cable.
  Actually, I had trouble with the Second Sight cable as well.  I had
originally wanted to use the small hole near slot 2, since it was the right
size for the video connector, but the cable was just a fraction too short to
reach! So I had to affix the cable to the top of one of the larger holes; not
the best solution, in my opinion, but acceptable.

  The manual describes an occasional problem with the first batch of boards
(of which mine is one) locking up on start up, which I experienced once during
the evening.  Since a second reset fixes the problem, it's not really a big
deal.  The board itself has a couple wires soldered across the back, so it's
pretty clear the product has been a little rushed to the market.  Still,
Sequential is promising support and free upgrades as the bugs are ironed out,
which is the important thing.

  The quality of the SVGA output is superb.  All of the video modes are
crystal clear, with brilliant colours; not at all washed out as one person
suggested.  Perhaps it depends on the quality of the monitor you have; mine
is a pretty good quality one (borrowed from work :-)

  The shadowed GS video modes certainly look different coming from the Second
Sight compared to the standard video output, but I can't say I miss my fuzzy
AppleColour display.  Pixel are sharp--and square!  Amazing!

  On a 15" monitor the dithered 640 display doesn't quite look the same;
unsurprisingly, you can see the colour stripes.  It's not as bad as it sounds,
though; you still get an impression of 16 colours.  I can live with it.  I
can't stress enough how much difference the improved clarity of the display
makes.  One evening using the Second Sight was enough to convince me that I'm
going to retire my AppleColor monitor.  I've grown tired of fuzzy 80 column
text.

  Die-hard Apple enthusiasts will probably be amused that the Second Sight uses
the standard IBM font for text modes (with additional mouse text characters
added of course :-)  Apart from the * character, which looks real silly, I
found the higher resolution font to be really nice, and extremely easy to read.
Using GNO/ME is going to be a dream from now on...

  Speed: it's true, you can spot the fact that the shadowed modes are being
updated at 15 fps if you look for it.  It's not particularly noticable unless
you're running a game which updates large areas of the screen very rapidly, and
there aren't many of those.  I ran a 24 fps animation demo I'd written, and the
Second Sight actually kept up with that, since it obviously only updates pixels
that change.  So all in all I think the on-board firmware does a pretty good
job at shadowing the existing video modes.

  The only software that comes with the board is a GIF viewer, which is basic
but functional.  Actually, don't bother with the version supplied, as it's too
buggy to be really useful; it causes the Second Sight to lock up when loading
GIF's larger than 512K when they're loaded onto the board :-)  The current
version on Sequential's FTP site is much more stable (but still an alpha
version).

  Clearly there is a need for more software; I may have a go at hacking in
Second Sight support for my Doom engine now that I've got the video board.
Since there is still no developer's kit, I'll have to see how useful the
source code for the GIF viewer is (that is also available from Sequential's
FTP site).

  Actually, just for fun I might try undusting a few of my own hi-res games I
wrote for my Apple ][+, and plonk in Second Sight support just so that we
can get a game or two out for people to play with until the real applications
appear!  For there is little doubt that these new video mode could be used to
great effect.

  Anyway, those are my initial impressions.  Overall I think Sequential have
done a pretty good job, and I'd give the board a B+ rating overall.  With some
software, though, it should really start showing it's true colours.