CompuServe Messages

[Continued] In addition, many of the boards support higher refresh rates than VGA's for a more visually appealing screen. One area that REALLY benefits from accelerated boards is in the keyframer when moving from frame to frame. Accelerated boards will enable very smooth motion, while VGA's will tend to be sluggish, especially the VESA VGA driver! What many users have discovered is that some external drivers are dramatically slower in the display modules than the built in VGA. There are two reasons for this. 1) 3DS is wraped around an interface that REALLY slows it down, ADI. The best way to think of it is like taking a Porsche (3DS) and putting in a Honda Civic engine (ADI) into it. What a waste! 2) The main ADI calls that 3DS sends to an ADI driver to draw items with is generally one of the SLOWEST adi calls! Most driver developers did not pay attention to these calls and 3DS suffers greatly from it. What Vibrant has just developed is a technique where much of the overhead that ADI imposes on the system has been removed, thus improving user interface performance from anywhere from 20% to 60%+. This, combined with a good accelerated board, really make the 3DS display modules scream! (Just ask Greg Pyros<g>). When choosing a board make sure that it does support the VESA VGA bios, because the internal built-int flic player in 3DS does not use any external driver. Thus any board is NOT VESA VGA compatible (and even some that are) will have a bunch of problems viewing flics while in 3DS. We are currently working on solving that problem…keep your fingers crossed<g>. Jack Bayt – Vibrant