This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (639 messages)
Lee: VistaPro is published by Virtual Reality Labs, Inc., who can be found in the Graphics A Vendors forum (GO VRLI). VistaPro does not generate landscapes (other than fractal ones) but it is most often used to render images of landscapes. VistaPro's DEM (digital elevation model) landscapes can be saved…
Rene: Right here! To reach the VRLI section of the Graphics A Vendors forum, GO VRLI. I'll be more than happy to answer all of your questions regarding VistaPro. There is a demo version in the VRLI library. Clint
John: Yes, the VistaPro DOS CD files can be read on an Amiga. I will be putting together an Amiga VistaPro CD (hopefully before Christmas) which will have more data on it than the current DOS cd does. I am going to take a gamble and produce a couple of…
Bill: I don't plan to take out any capability from VistaPro, so FireCracker24, DCTV and HAM-E will remain, though testing the last 2 will be tricky as VRLI didn't know what happened to their DCTV or HAM-E when they turned everything over to me. I still have a Firecracker 24…
David: Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, I don't know the internals of how the Amiga decides which modes to display, but it does sound like some hardware changes confuse it. Clint
Jim: Currently First Light is only on the PC (Windows), and yes it's CD-ROM only. If I can keep Chaocity alive long enough, I plan to port it to the Amiga, though it will probably be a year before it is available (on the Amiga). I think that VRLI is…
Kapryan: Actually, programming _is_ my R&R. The order filling, tech support, product manufacturing, newsletter writing side of things takes up most of my time, so getting a chance to program is a relief. It is definitely possible that MUI or the ASL library could have some impact. The only way…
Matt: I have a Retina 1.1. I am hoping (maybe foolishly) that they maintained software compatibility with their series of boards. The Retina is the one which works the best so far. I am going to be asking for testers for the various boards in a few weeks, so if…
Kapryan: I have the same problem on my 3000 under 2.1, but I assumed that it had to do with having the EGS chipset rather than the AGA chipset. That's why I suspect a bad library somewhere for my user who is having problems. If he had an old pre-AGA…
Ian: Tried having him double click on the various monitor icons in the Devs/Monitors drawer and then check with the ScreenMode prefs. It didn't change anything. He reinstalled the entire OS and it still doesn't change anything. He tried with and without VGAOnly in the drawer. The paths all seem…
Ian: The current version of VistaPro (3.05) doesn't handle running on many graphics boards properly. The next version of VistaPro will support a variety of boards and shouldn't fall apart on the boards that it doesn't support. The problem with version 3.05 is that at the time it was released…
Ian: I will have him try that tomorrow. I've been a bit swamped the past couple of days and haven't had a chance to follow through. Clint
Anthony: First Light is the multimedia upgrade to Distant Suns. It's sort of like Distant Suns, Dance of the Planets and Redshift all rolled into one. It has a bunch of neat animations as well as planetary simulations. Clint
Lepido: The files didn't disappear, it's the modes that disappeared from the ASL graphics modes requester. The files were all still there, and I had him replace them with copies of the originals from the release disk just in case they had gotten corrupted. Didn't change anything. Clint
Marty: Unfortunately, it's too close to release to add Cybervision support for 3.1, though I have it on the list now for 4.0. Clint
Dirk: I am doing a lot of work on the Screen Modes for VP 3.1. I have little documentation, so much of what I am doing is trial and error , but I am implementing the ASL screenmode requester as well as adding direct support for several of the 24…
Lepido: One of the first things I had him do was copy the Monitor types from the master installation disks. He added a Syquest to his system at about the time that they disappeared, and I am wondering if that may have had something to do with the problem. Clint
Peter: I had him try with VGAOnly, but that didn't change anything. I know that there is a special test in the startup that looks for VGAOnly, but I am not sure what that's all about. Clint
#Monitor Modes Missing
Message #209106
I received a call from a user last night who has an unusual problem. He has an Amiga 4000 with a 1960 monitor, running AmigaDOS 3.0. When he selects ScreenMode preferences, his only selections are NTSC related. When he first got his system, he had all of the Monitor types…
Andrew: Current on the agenda for 3.1 is reflective water, DXF output, direct support of Opalvision, Picasso, Retina and EGS (though I am not yet certain that I will get all of those boards working properly in that timeframe) as well as an overall rendering speedup from porting from Manx…
Andrew: If you have an Amiga with AGA, normal emulation may allow VistaPro to work just fine, just without direct 24 bit rendering to the screen. (You could still save the images as IFF24 and then display with a program which supports your board directly.) Unfortunately, I am not only…
John: I will look into it for 4.0. I doubt that I will be able to squeeze it in for 3.1 as I am already pressed for time. I am trying to hit mid November for release and I'm not quite sure where I'll get the time for all that…
Jonathan: It's true that SAS's code isn't great, but it's the best that's available on the Amiga. While some can afford to write in nicely optimized assembly code, most must put up with C, so when doing an apples to apples comparison of what people will find in the real…
Jerry: It's the objective part that is difficult. Everyone has their own personal bias (sometimes more than one) which influences what they consider to be objective. As a programmer, I detest working with Intel processors, MS-DOS or Windows. It takes me 3-4 times longer to get something working on that…
Jerry: That's very possible. Often writers try to guess the future as the lead time on their articles are 3-4 months, and sometimes the future refuses to co-operate. Clint
Jerry: The article in Video Toaster User indicates that Lightwave has been released for the Pentium, however I have not personally seen it for sale anywhere. The benchmarks were supposedly run with the released version on the Pentium under Win32 and Windows NT. (July 1995 VTU) Clint
Jonathan: The closest to a benchmark that we have here is VistaPro. We have a version which has been compiled for the Pentium, for the PowerPC and for the 68040 (we don't have a 68060 to try it on yet). The PowerPC is slightly faster than the Pentium for the…
John: I think that the problem with the current version and the Picasso is with Graphics.library. At the time that VP was last updated, there was no reliable test for the AGA chipset, so I tested for library versions greater than or equal to 39. This was supposed to be…
Peter: GeoForge is still a few month off, but I think that it will be pretty neat. I may end up merging it with GeoMorph (as an upgrade) if I can do it without making it too cumbersome to use. Ultimately, I want to be able to simulate the movement…
Eduard: I will email information on upgrading as CIS doesn't like me to post pricing info in the message base. I am not sure what Star Trek's Genesis thing actually looked like, but GeoForge is a program designed to create entire planets, all of the way down to the 1…
Chris: Actually, GeoForge will have many of the world construction features, including cloudmap design/generation. I have been working on GeoForge intermittantly for about 2 years (I demoed an early version at World of Amiga in Pasadena in 1993). I am hoping to have it ready by Christmas as well, but…
Peter: I checked and you are in the database, so your newsletter should be going out this week. (Just sent it out to be printed.) Clint
Peter: Actually, side grades are handled by Chaocity and are available on all of VRLI's products which exist on the Amiga and other platforms. Prices are in our newsletter which is going out shortly (actually it is out to last names from 'A'..'D', but the rest of the alphabet goes…
Bob: I will email you price info, as posting would be classified as advertising and the powers that be would be upset with me. Clint
Peter: I am still working on version 3.1, which hopefully will be out by Christmas. 3.05 is the latest, which is identical to 3.04b except the version number. (3.04b was a beta for testing purposes, but VRLI got impatient and sent them out before I got all of the replies…
Robert: It should be pretty obvious if they are the original disks, the labels are professionally printed and carry "Produced under exclusive license by Virtual Reality Laboratories, Inc." Sending us a xerox of the Program Disk label is sufficient proof. Sorry if it sounds like I'm grilling you, but I…
David: Let's see if I can remember how John did it. (I don't have a copy of the instructions, but I think I remember how it was done.) Load up Devil's tower. Set the Fractal Dimension to somewhere between 100 and 200. (You may need to experiment.) Use the Enlarge…
Robert: The way in which you described it was that you had a disk with VistaPro, TerraForm, ScapeMaker, etc on it, which is certainly not the way it was shipped. Unless you have the original disks, you have a copy, which is not legitimate. We will be happy to send…
Robert: Don't forget that all of those programs are commercial copyrighted programs and using an unauthorized copy could place you at risk of prosecution. In order to sell or trade those programs, the complete product with manual and original disks would have to be included. Clint
Kapryan: The Fractal Dimension sort of governs the roughness of close up landscape. I will be experimenting with better grass and the possibility of rock-like objects while working on 4.0. 3.1 addresses the major complaints about the graphics panel and the ASL requester with a few additions like reflective water.…
Kapryan: Looking at the code, just about everything with the display is done inside of DCTV library routines provided by the manufacturer. The image which gets saved to iff is basically what a bunch of calls to DCTVCvtLine() return and the colormap is what is in the dctv structure. Unfortunately,…
Kapryan: The save_iff code doesn't make any distinction for dctv, it just saves as many planes as the image has. One possibility is that the save_iff code does pad lines out to even byte values after compression, but this is per IFF spec. Other than that, the image which is…
James: VistaPro will render to whatever detail the data has. Most USGS data which is used with VistaPro is 30 meters between data points (7.5 minute data) or 90 meters between data points (1 degree data). This is fine for looking at mountain scenes but you can lose a baseball…
David: Just convince BG that an unterraformed mars is a threat to MicroSoft and the rest will be easy. Clint
David: Unfortunately, I don't think that NASA has the budget to put a mile long laser into orbit. Maybe Bill Gates would like to tackle the project. Clint
David: That's version 2.0. I can't give people everything first time around, can I? I'm having a little problem finding suppliers for mile long lasers in the quantity that I need and I can't get confirmed shipping dates on the fusion reactors. I guess people will have to settle for…
Scott: If you look at the "About VistaPro" menu item, you will find that you have version 3.10 or later. There were no CDs produced before 3.1. VRLI did not print new boxes as it was not a full level upgrade, so the boxes and manuals say 3.0 but the…
#174822-
#Terraforming Fun
Message #174891
David: You're pretty close with the terraforming utility, though I won't be terraforming the actual planet, but just the DEM data from the planet. Sort of virtual terraforming. Could be called a fractal paint program for DEM data. Clint
David: Someday, there will be a terraforming utility for use with VistaPro. Several people have started them over the past couple of years, but no-one has completed one. I am doing one myself, but unfortunately for most people, it is for the Amiga. (Yes, I am one of those die-hard…
David: Currently you can export landscapes as DXF with the version you currently have. If John can figure a logical way of importing DXF he may add that in the future, but the problem is that the DEM format is really a surface format (sort of 2.5D rather than 3D)…
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