#New Amiga from SGI!
12 messages in this thread
What's EGS?
-Steve
EGS stands for Enhanced Graphics System. It is actually a display device
independent software system far superior to Amiga's native Intuition, Graphics,
and Layers libraries. All applications written to it can assume they have a 24
bit color space, and even if they physically don't, EGS will do the dithering
and mapping automatically. Font sensitivity, better use of color, tear off
menus, windows that can be partially off screen, multiple monitor support, and
on, and on, and on. EGS does it all.
Our EGS 110/24 is a very powerful graphics display card that comes with EGS
software drivers. Our card can do a ton of different resolutions, even ones
like 1600×1280 in 24 bit I think. It can accomodate 4 or 8MB of RAM, and
connects to the back of our Combo 030 or 040 accelerator cards on an A2000.
Shortly we will be releasing a card for all machines with slots that does
slightly less but for a lot less money (less than $600). It is MUCH faster
than cards like Retina, I am told, which is basically a dumb frame buffer.
Our cards come with Workbench emulation as well, which actually runs Workbench
faster (and in much higher resolutions, of course) than the native Amiga chips.
The newer card will have auto-switching video pass-thru as well, so one can
plug the Amiga video out into the card, and for programs that can't run on the
EGS card native, it will switch to the Amiga video mode automatically, without
requiring any switchbox, for example. It's very cool.
Hope this answers your question!
Paul.
Can it provide overlay of its own display over Amiga displays? Or only
passthru (turned off, in essence)?
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Only pass-thru, not overlay.
That last feature should be completely useless due to the fact that there
just aren't monitors which can scan both megapixel resolutions and Amiga
modes. Otherwise it'd be *really* cool.
OK, some people think that 24-bit graphics is neat and would want to use
them in relatively low-res, but I can't imagine having the capability to
to 1000×800 plus and not getting a monitor to take advantage of it.
Dale Larson
– An Amiga Software Engineer with some time on his hands.
Although many new monitors can't do 15.75KHz, the switching feature isn't
useless since A4000's can output 31KHz and many older Amigas have either
Commodore display enhancers, FlickerFixer cards, or IV24's, all of which output
the Amiga modes at 31KHz.
Presumably if you need compatibility with old modes, it's going to be for
a game or something, and that is going to mean something other than 31KHz.
I shouldn't have said completely useless.
I'm just so damn frustrated with the imposibility of using one nice
monitor to meet all my Amiga needs!
Dale Larson
– An Amiga Software Engineer with some time on his hands.
Thanks for the info. Is there some technical pamphlet I could get?
Also, will EGS accelerate graphics computations (ie: 3d rendering,
gradients, anti-aliasing, etc.) or is that left to the 030 or 040
accelerator.
Is it just 24 bit or perhaps (hopefully) 32 bit (hardware alpha channel).
-Steve
32 bit for under $600? NOT. As far as 3D rendering in hardware, no. It's a
graphics card with a fast graphics controller with built-in blitter, etc. It
won't be for everyone, but it will be what a lot of people can afford and want!
Paul.
So what, exactly, will it make faster? Something like gradient fills? Move
large clips about the screen (while showing them instead of a bounding
box). It sounds like its more for graphics for print rather than graphics
for video.
-Steve
Stephen, my fingers are getting shorter from all the typing I've done online
lately, so maybe you should just wait until the ads hit AmigaWorld. It's a
very fast graphics card. Blocks of graphics can be moved about very quickly
(much in the same way the Amiga works only it's chunky data and not bitplanes),
and using the EGS drivers, yes, windows AND THEIR CONTENTS can be moved around
in real time, not just the frame.
Hope this helps,
Paul.
P.S. – my last day possible online here is Friday – so please excuse if I don't
respond to any response you might make.
Paul,
No Problem! Thanks for all the info you have supplied. I really do
appreciate it.
-Steve