CompuServe Messages

I don't have a PC with Imagine to compare my Amiga Imagine to, so I can't give you speed comparisons. I believe the Amiga has an edge because of the custom chips. The Amiga also has the edge for setup time. On the Amiga, you just decompress the software to the hard disk and start to explore. On the PC, you must manually configure your system and take the risk that you have something that Imagine doesn't like. Imagine will quickly become one of your favourite renderers, in any case. It is well thought out and v3.0 promises to give you MUCH more power for your PC renderings, as well as many leading edge features to keep you in bliss. Back to speed comparisons, you might want to contact Impulse about that. A big plus for the Amiga side, is the new generation of models such as the A1200 and A4000. Both will allow Amiga Imagine 3.0 users to render, display and playback 30-60 fps animations and pics with up to 262,144 colours displayable along with a built-in 24 bit palette. The graphics equate to 18 bit, which is all of the colours you could possibly need for broadcast television. The Amiga 1200/4000 also have NTSC video timing built-in. You also get built-in stereo audio to lay down sound with your animations. So, in my opinion, if the PC Imagine renders are quicker, the Amiga would still have the edge for cost-effective video work. If you were interested in using both, I would recommend this: Use the PC's to do the bulk rendering, because 486's are cheap enough to buy for this purpose. Then transfer your work to either an A1200 or A4000's Imagine to compile and dump your animations to video. The A4000 would be the preferable of the two. Alot of the "play computer" feeling came about because of the Amiga having inherently better computer games. This proved to be a distraction from how well suited the Amiga was/is for multi-media and video. Fortunately, more people are fairly looking at more than one or two systems, as more users are becoming more concerned with productivity than old alliances. You'll probably be seeing all of the platforms becoming more and more capable of readily exchanging data formats as time goes on. We've already seen a great deal of this. Anyhow, whatever you end up doing Imagine work on, Imagine is terrific! -= Vance =-