Thoughts about Second Sight

[ug0a@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Alexander Siegfried)]

Some thoughts about the Second Sight Board...

There seems to be plenty of enthusiasm out there concerning the
Second Sight board from Sequential Systems. However, I tend to
ask the question: Is it really worth it?

First, the promised JPEG display software that was said to ship
with the board is not available in the final version. There is
only 8 Bit TIFF and GIF (8 Bit). In other words, there is no
True Color picture support yet! Speaking of the more advanced
graphic modes, what can you really DO with them? Answer: Not
much. The board is too slow to manipulate pictures in modes
beyond 320x200x256. In my opinion, they will be only for
viewing nice pictures. But what about the 320x200x256 mode?
Even in this mode, you won't be able to do a smoothly scrolling
(60 Hz) full screen action game, since the board is too slow
for manipulating huge amounts of pixel and sprite data. A game
like Doom also won't be possible on a Second Sight GS. A fast
graphic board alone can't do the job, you also need a fast CPU,
which even an accelerated GS does not have.

The software anounced to support the Second Sight is a bad
joke. Who needs dozens of GIF/TIFF displaying programs? A
screen saver supporting Second Sight? Ripped IBM graphics in
DungeonQuest (if it will ever come out...)? Where is the
software that enables the users to really USE the features of
the board? Will there ever be an enhanced Platinum Paint? Will
there ever be an enhanced GraphicWriter (hey, it took them 3
years for an update...)? I guess all this won't happen. There
aren't enough talented programmers left anymore to program the
board, the same goes for GS artists (are there any?) to create
cool GS specific graphics. Sure, new text drivers for GNO are
nice, true ANSI in Spectrum is nice (I'd rather like to see a
REAL (!) VT100 emulation...), but is all this worth spending
$180 for the card PLUS several hundreds of dollars for a new
monitor?

What about software and hardware incompatibilities? Jawaid
mentioned 3200 color mode won't be possible with the board.
What about the demos and games that go deep into the hardware
(Task Force, Rastan). What about this 15 FPS limitation? Will
the dithered 16 colors in 640 mode really look that good (hey,
this is the mode you work in all the day)? What about the ugly
looking square VGA pixels you will have on a VGA monitor? I
don't consider this display an enhancement over the actual GS
RGB display, this is WORSE! I hope you can turn off the Second
Sight while the GS is running...

I fear the TurboRez might have been the better GS specific
video board. It was by for more down to the existing GS
hardware (and monitor), and also seemed to be a kind of a dream
for GS programmers (despite the fact it was FASTER).

Well, on the other hand, there IS a new piece of GS hardware.
So lets see what happens...

Christopher Heck