Re: Second Sight....

[philip@labtam.oz.au (Philip Stephens)]

Lim Thye Chean writes:

>That's exactly what worries me. If you can really do a good, fast 3D DOOM
>type game, you will be the new legend of the II's land. Everything is always
>possible for Apple II programmer.

  *Heh Heh*  So we keep saying :-)

>How about having a display without much texture map, but render at 12+ fps?
>Speed is very important in DOOM.

  The speed of the renderer isn't really dependent on how complex the texture
maps are.  Screen resolution and the complexity of the world layout is what
dictates how fast the renderer can draw. 

  What this means is that I don't have to comprise on how _good_ the images
look, but I do have to compromise on what resolution to use and how fancy
the 3D worlds are.

>Currently I see nothing above is on the horizon, as far as I know. What's the
>use of buying a graphics card without support for anything I want? Even the
>new Spectrum only mentioned ANSI... no VT-100. OK, maybe I can write a new
>version of Mandelbrot IIGS... but...

  I think a bunch of GS programmers should get together and make serious
plans to develop a replacement toolbox with support for the Second Sight
video modes.  I'm not sure whether it's feasible to design a toolbox that
would use the higher video modes transparently (how many of the tool calls
assume a maximum screen size of 320x200 or 640x200?), but it would be cool
if it could be done. 

  Of course, I realise that without the toolbox source code it would be
a very big task indeed to rewrite the graphically-oriented toolsets to have
the same functionality as the originals.  But we can dream :-)

=========== Philip Stephens, Systems Programmer, Labtam Australia ============
====== Owned by Motor (Mo for short), the power-purrer from Down Under =======
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