CompuServe Messages

well, it's horses for courses : The PC ====== 3D Studio is absolutely amazing….it is incredibly fast at rendering..incredibly powerful at modelling and tremendously versatile at building animations. It's only drawback is a lack of raytracing..which for *some* applications is important. It's reflection abilities and shadow mapping is however excellent, it's add-ons (camera flares, explosions, glows, tornados, trees etc..) are also staggering. Oh yeah, it's very expensive too! The Windows environment is inuitive, powerful and win based applications are *by and large* far superior to their amiga counterparts. Word Processing, drawing, DTP, retouching is all impressive and integrated in Windows. Speed (so long as you have buckets of RAM) is great. "Snappiness" is graphics card dependant..and the ATI Ultra beats the AMiga hands down (in hi-res i.e 800X600X256 and better). The Amiga ========= Is great at any composite video related task. The Toaster is a great product and lightwave is a powerful 3D program with tremendous raytracing abilities. Compared to 3DS (756*482*24bit) with shadows on..it is *slower*. It's modeller is less powerful than 3DS but hey, for $2,000 it's the most impressive software/hardware bundle I've ever come across. WARNING ======= MIPS and other CPU measurers are totally useless at cross-platform comparisons. (GO AMIGATECH for details!). CONCLUSION ========== The PC, with higher quality software and faster and broader applications wins in a straight shoot-out. For video related work, however, the toaster puts the Amiga back in the frame. (P.S. 640*480*256 anims at near 30fps have been possible on the PC for quite a while).