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Re: Apple II lores GR "movies"



frank_bklyn wrote:

If anyone's interested, i've finished working an a few 'movies' ...
[snip]
... 19,200 baud should be fast enough for 2 or 3 frames per second of
continuous 'streaming' video as long as the PC handles the front-end
data conversion/data hosting.

Don't neglect to try out that POKE $10 trick that was recently mentioned here for pushing the serial card to 115Kbps! I'd like to find out if that is real or not.


cheers!

Frank
frank_o_rama@hotmail.com

Well I've downloaded and watched Frank's movies from Simon's server, and I have to say this is absolutely marvellous. I found that if I doubled the speed on my emulator, leaned back in my chair and squinted at the display through almost-closed eyes, that amazing computer in my skull took the incoming signal and processed it to the point where I was perceiving a much higher resolution image than I had a right to. The movie of TILA (the dancing girl) was the most remarkable in the contrast between normal watching (just a random bunch of moving coloured blocks) and the lean-back-and-squint technique (schwing!)

Wow. Full motion video on an Apple II. Hoodathunkit.

I've been considering the vast majority of still images that were created for the Apple II in its life (game title screens, graphic adventures etc.) and thinking how bloody primitive they were, usually crude line drawings and solid or dithered fill colours. Even within the severe graphical limitations of the II, I'd had the feeling that much better results could have been obtained. Perhaps because a lot of those images were created by programmers, not artists?

Then Frank's movies arrived, courtesy of Simon, and confirmed my doubts - using lo-res graphics no less! Congratulations Frank on your lateral thinking and the fascinating result.

Martin