Re: Second Sight Card

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) wrote:

>I'm not saying we should be critical of everything released, but when
>something [Second Sight] is blantently bad we shouldn't pretend it's
>not.

In order to be fair, you have to actually use the card before you jump
to conclusions about it.  As you've pointed out, the card is not a scan
doubler.  It redraws a shadowed GS video screen with the VGA chip
and memory.  If your purpose is to play GS animations, the card is
never going to be as fast as the raw GS video signal.

The card has much potential in another area.  If you were to animate
in VGA mode, the card can go much faster than it does shadowing
existing GS modes.  The Z180 MPU chip can act as a software blitter
for moving graphics around much faster than the GS can itself.  Sadly,
this potential was never tapped.  Without software support for direct
use of the new modes, all the Second Sight's fancy hardware ends up
repeatedly copying GS video memory to the VGA output over and
over again -- what a waste of silicon.  If the card was released three
years earlier, it would have been much better supported.  The hardware
is not as bad as you think, only the lack of software to support it.