Re: Rarest Card

[Joe <joko@nospam.com>]

As promised, I went back through Shareware Solutions II, thanks to ProSel 
16's "Locate String" function, and found a later reference to the 
TurboRez, this one being from November, 1994.
 
As before, I know there's at least another mention or two in the SSII 
newsletter, and I'll hunt those up too...
 
Joe Kohn
 
 
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   News from RezTek:  The TurboRez project still alive !
============================================================
 November 8, 1994
 
It would be an understatement to say it's been awhile since there's been
news from us about the status of the "fabled" TurboRez product. As some of
you may know, since the previewing of a prototype at the last two Apple
Expo's, we elected to do an entirely new design based on the use of custom
gate array technology. Even though underestimating project completion time
seems to be a tradition with computer hardware/software development, let's
just say that even we've been amazed at the degree of difficulty involved
here. This project has had an appetite for resources (like TIME) that has
to be experienced to be appreciated.
 
The current status is that, after more than a year of design and
simulation of the virtual chips, we've got actual hardware up and running.
This happened just in the last 5-6 weeks and the debugging process is
proceeding steadily. So far, the video is looking good and the circuits
seem stable.
 
Our apologies for not being online with some news sooner. With the
pre-announcement situations we've created in the past, it seemed prudent
to wait until there was new hardware actually in operation before making
any public statement. Normally though, given the incomplete state of the
project at this point, we probably would have waited awhile longer. The
announcement of the Second Sight card (by Sequential Systems) has altered
the marketplace however, hence some earlier information from us.
 
On this note, we'll briefly discuss the two products. Operation in a GS
with the stock RGB monitor reveals similarities such as 256-color pixels,
in both 320 and 640 resolution and 400-line interlaced modes. The TurboRez
card has a Display List CoProcessor and a high-speed blitter, while Second
Sight has a microprocessor that does blitter emulation. Now, what about
the particular strengths of the two cards?
 
Comparing The Two
 
The Second Sight card's strongest suite is when it's coupled to an
external SVGA monitor. Here it offers some pretty high resolution, up to
1076 by 768 pixels. Of course, to effectively take advantage of this,
you'll really need a 17 or 19 inch monitor to avoid eyestrain (Price a
monitor this size next time you're at a computer store). Second Sight does
not offer overscanning.
 
The TurboRez card will accept an adaptor that allows attaching a VGA
monitor and sending out a 640 by 480 image, so it appears we come in
second in the resolution department. TurboRez is capable of doing
overscan, however (vertical and horizontal, together or separately).
 
Pictures That Move
 
Where TurboRez does shine is in the area of multimedia animation. It's
nice to be able to show pictures on the GS that have enhanced color and
resolution, but what about bringing them to life? In other words, making
them move and flow. Well, the TurboRez card enhances animation on the GS
with a host of features. First, of course, the high-speed  Blitter for
drawing shapes and objects to the display very quickly. Add to that its
Multi-Plane Overlay capability and Line Drawing (w/Scaling). Let's talk
about those last two.
 
Multi-Plane Overlay Technology
 
The Multi-Plane hardware on the TurboRez card is similar in concept to the
multi-plane techniques used by commercial film animators. Basically, it
means having the various elements of the picture, both moving and still,
on separate "layers". In TurboRez, this means that moving shapes can be
placed in separate image layers (or planes) and pass over or under each
other (or in front of or behind foreground/background objects) without
"interfering" with the other picture elements. In a single-plane video
card (like Second Sight), an animated scene consisting of stacked shapes
and objects is very slow and messy to update fast enough to present a
smoothly flowing image. To alter a shape in the "middle", means not only
erasing and redrawing that particular shape, but also anything that
appears above or below it onscreen. To change that one shape requires
massive amounts of erasing and redrawing even though the neighboring
shapes and objects are not due to change yet. All of this activity
translates to SLOW screen updating.
 
TurboRez, with hardware Multi-Plane technology, doesn't suffer from these
limitations. With separate image planes, the update process is confined to
just those shapes and objects that need it at the time. This means no
wasted time redrawing things that don't need it! The result: Efficient
and FAST animation on your GS (even without a Zip accelerator).
 
Texture Mapping via Line Drawing w/Scaling
 
The other major animation enhancer is the Line Drawing w/Scaling hardware. 
Here we take a common operation like plotting a line of pixels and couple 
it with Scaling logic. Scaling allows magnifying or shrinking a bitmapped 
shape or object as it's being drawn. The scaling operation can be done by 
the plotting software but that approach is never as fast doing it thru 
hardware. By using Scaling along with Line Drawing, it's easy to not only 
alter the drawn size of a source shape but to rotate it as well. 
Similarly, a drawing technique known as Texture Mapping is enhanced using 
the TurboRez hardware.
 
Texture Mapping lets us manipulate a source texture map, which is a 
rectangular, bitmapped image of something, say a picture of woodgrain or 
red brick siding or whatever. The effect is that it's being stretched 
across the face of some 3D object that's in the onscreen image. The 
woodgrain might be applied to the floor of the scene and the bricks to a 
fireplace. Where before there might have been a collection of 3D objects 
with solid-color shaded faces, we would now have objects with realistic 
textures "pasted" onto them.
 
To get a good idea of how effective this technique is, find somebody with 
a 486 PC (50 or 66 mhz) that has the popular program "Doom" and have them 
run it for you. Now, we at RezTek aren't advocating that all games should 
imitate the shoot-em up premise of Doom, but our purpose here is to 
examine the implementation of a realtime, 3D texture mapped universe in 
which the user can move about freely and interact with. The effect is 
quite impressive and realistic. Now imagine something similar running on 
your GS, running at fullscreen size and animating smoothly. How's that 
going to happen? Only with a TurboRez GS card, using its hardware enhanced 
Line Drawing w/Scaling.
 
While we're talking about features, we'll also mention that page-flipping 
is no problem and there's also support for the GS's NTSC video port and 
planned GenLocking support (for instance; the Apple VOC card).
 
What, Where, When
 
OK, by now the questions are when and how much. Well, we've still got
quite a bit of work to do to get this ready for production, so don't worry
about ordering a TurboRez card just yet. There will be more news posted at
the first of the new year (here, on Genie for sure, and possibly in one or
more publications). At that time we should have a better handle on release
time and pricing, etc.
 
Please understand that we're a dedicated but small company (i.e.
understaffed and overworked) and that we'll be needing to apply all of our
energy to completing the TurboRez product. Therefore, for the near future,
answering the phone will probably have to take a backseat to the
production effort. If we're slow in replying to EMail and stuff, just take
comfort in the thought that it was time diverted to a good cause. Also,
thanks in advance to folks volunteering for beta test duty but we're doing
just fine in that regard presently.
 
Thanks for your interest in this product. And stay tuned for more news
about TurboRez GS, the video card that'll bring powerful and dynamic
animation to your IIGS! (..and the company bringing it to you, RezTek, of
course.)