#Amiga's "image"
38 messages in this thread
Dave,
So true – have you seen Commodore's two-page ad in the latest issue of
AmigaWorld? "Presenting. The Future of Business"?? I think the period after
"presenting" is meant to be very *significant*.
In very small print (as in "where did I put that magnifier?") at the bottom of
the page, it says "Optional non-Commodore hardware and software required for
some applications". Which I suppose justifies the claims of "a complete
desktop publishing center", "your own catalogs, brochures and magazines in up
to 4096 colors", "a better preview of your laserprinted half-tone pictures than
Macintosh SE ever could", "professionalquality 3-D animations" and "all the
power you'll need for your everyday business needs, too"!
Vince
Vince,
Yeah, I've seen the ad. I'm pleased as punch that CBM is finally
advertising at all, but this is the sort of ad they should've run two
years ago when the Amiga was first introduced. Granted, the software
wasn't available then (tho Professional Page isn't available now,
either) and the B2000 is a "new" machine hardware-wise, but the ad's
overall style suits a brand new machine, not one that's basically two
years old.
An ad appropriate for _now_ would feature, say, the "professional-
quality 3-D animations"…and NOTHING else. It would mention Animator:
Apprentice, Forms-In-Flight, Sculpt- and Animate-3D, Silver, and Video-
Scape 3D, and show examples created with each of these packages. It
would proclaim the Amiga as _The_ Video Machine and would proudly
display the goods to back up that proclamation. What a TV commercial
this would make! Air it during the Super Bowl, and you'd blow a hundred
million people out of their seats! Actually, you wouldn't even have to
mention the packages by name. (Maybe it'd be better not to.) All you'd
have to do is show what they and the Amiga working together can do, and
you'd have a killer ad. Tailor other ads for other applications, like
desktop-publishing, and then aim those ads at the appropriate audiences.
It's really not that difficult.
Dave
P.S. I think it's a bit early in the game for Commodore to be touting
the Amiga as "a complete desktop-publishing center." But we are getting
there. If Professional Page turns out to be as good as it appeared from
the demo I saw 2 months ago, then they'll have something to talk about.
Dave,
Right this minute, that claim of "professional-quality 3-D animations" is
probably a bit premature. The programs you mentioned make all the other
personal computers look sick, but have you seen "Computer Animation Magic" on
PBS? The opening sequence shows several metallic ray-traced dinosaurs running
across a weird landscape – after seeing it, I think your "several million
people" would stay firmly in their seats during the "Juggler" or the "Red
Baron". The Amiga will never be able to produce results like that (one company
is using a Cray), but I think it has the potential to get a lot closer than it
is now.
I bought my Amiga primarily for its graphics and have done a lot of work
(strictly "hobby" stuff) with Animator, DVideo, DPaint and Digi-View, so was
really looking forward to the release of Videoscape-3D. Having tried it (and
Sculpt-3D and Forms-In-Flight), I'm back in my "looking forward to" mode.
John Foust has just released "Interchange", which (among other functions)
converts Sculpt-3D objects for use with Videoscape-3D (Videoscape has no real
user interface), and there are rumours of even better things ahead. So I think
I'd wait a while before making any extravagant claims.
Vince
Vince,
The clue is that it took a Cray to do that..and an Amiga to do Juggler.
A Cray starts at 14 Million, an Amiga starts at $500. Quite a difference, I
would expect the Cray to be able to do real time ray traced animations…or
something close to them.
The Juggler is a set of 24 frames run together into a brief animation,
there is nothing (other than disk space) preventing more intermediate steps and
frames in the animation itself…the only limit or problem is moving that data
into CHIP RAM quickly to display it on your monitor. However, nothing would
prevent you from doing a frame by frame store to a VCR and then playing back
the entire sequence (no matter how long) as a video tape. Then the only
limiting factor is how long it takes you to generate each frame.
Don
"The Amiga will NEVER be able…"
Another point to add to yours, Don: the Amiga most certainly CAN do exactly
what was shown as the opening shots to the show. In fact, the Amiga can do
anything the CRAY can. (So can an IBM, or an ST, or a Mac, or… when it comes
to generating the files.)
The only thing the Cray really has going for it is SPEED. If someone is
willing to devote lots and lots of computer time to ray-traced animation,
spooling the results to video tape, I have no doubt we could in fact do just
about anything that's been seen so far… out of real time.
Rick
Rick,
(This is for the benefit of the populace at large; I know you already
know this stuff.)
The Cray has two other advantages over the Amiga: (1) Color palette;
and (2) Resolution. Now, resolution isn't much of a factor because the
Cray's graphic output has to be scaled down for broadcast purposes to
NTSC (or PAL) anyway. (The Amiga outputs NTSC (or PAL) straight from
the box, which isn't necessarily a performance advantage tho it should
make interfacing with other NTSC (or PAL) devices easier.) That leaves
color palette. A larger palette makes for a smoother, more realistic
image. In my view, the 16-level RGB (4096 color) palette is the weakest
link in Amy's graphical chain. Programs like Sculpt-3D use dithering
algorithms to compensate, but this results in a grainy-looking image.
The difference between the Cray's output and Amy's (for you photography
buffs) is sort of like the difference between Kodachrome 25 and Koda-
color 1000. Of course, you can photograph the same scene with both
types of film. Thus, Amy should be able to render any image or ani-
mation sequence that the Cray can render. But Amy's overall quality
won't be as good.
I'm looking forward to seeing the up-coming 3rd-party frame-buffers,
like the one from Mimetics. Those gizmos should boost Amy's graphical
performance considerably.
Dave
Dave,
More correctly, the Cray output is fed to a peripheral for rendering. The
Cray, as it comes "out of the box", has no inherent "resolution". That is
determined by the peripherals and the software required to drive them. Speed
and capacity are definitely the advantages.
Regards, Larry.
Larry,
Yeah, that's correct…s'pose I should've mentioned that. I've just
never seen a Cray hooked up to a 640×400 (or thereabouts) display–
multi-meg pixel graphical interfaces (understandably) seem to be the
norm. I would still rank color palette (and number of bit-planes) right
up there with speed and capacity.
Dave
David,
remember, there is nothing stopping you from hooking up multimegapixel
displays to the Amiga either.
Regards, Larry.
Larry,
True enough. But then you're getting into multimegaBUCKS, too. I
want it all, and I want it _cheap_! 8^)
Seriously, I'm more than happy with 640×200/400 for most uses. The
1008×800 monitor Hazy mentioned in CO last Wednesday is something I'll
definitely look into, if/when it becomes available, for word-processing
and telecomm use. (Guess I might have to go NewZapping into Aterm again
<grin>.) My main concern is that Amy needs a bigger color palette to
really compete graphically with the big boys.
Dave
Vince,
The Amiga is a _personal_ computer, and as such obviously cannot
measure up to the likes of a Cray (or a Sun, or an Apollo, or a VAX, or
etc.). But I've seen stuff done by local video artists with Silver,
Sculpt, and Videoscape (no user interface is right!) that make Juggler
and Red Baron look sick. The state of the art is advancing rapidly.
I don't think proclaiming the Amiga to be The (Personal, mind you)
Video Machine is extravagant at all. I also wouldn't want to be
bombastic about it, tho. Just state it, and then prove it with
examples. I still think it would make a terrific ad.
Dave
Dave,
Agreed – right this minute, proclaiming the Amiga as the "Personal Video
Machine" is completely justified. My point was that, in a few weeks or months,
CBM's broader claim of "professional-quality 3-D animation" (even by "running
dinosaur" standards) will be plausible. Some of the other messages in the
thread are saying more or less the same thing. We need:
– the 68020/68881 version of Sculpt-3D, which I hear is nearly ready.
With CSA's 20MHZ 68020/68881 card (or something similar), this would
make ray-traced animation practical (not a Cray, but better than what
we have now)
– the final version of Animate-3D, which sounds good in the ads
– a *big* improvement in the Amiga's NTSC output to a VCR
Then, as both Don and Rick have pointed out, just about anything would be
possible.
Vince
Vince,
Ok, I gotcha.
Good quality NTSC composite output is a fairly expensive proposition
at the moment. I hope that the up-coming group of Amiga 2000 video
processors addresses this. What I'd really like to see, tho, is a
consumer-grade VCR with an RGB input. I'm sure it'll happen sooner or
later, especially if Super VHS takes off.
Dave
Dave,
On a previous thread, Joanne Bandlow said she was getting great results (even
in the reds) by sending the RGB output to an external encoder, but that's a bit
out of my league. (A) I don't have one, and (B) I wouldn't know how to use it
if I did.
Of course, even if you clean up the NTSC composite, you're left with the
problem of recording single frames accurately on tape, which seems to be more
or less impossible on a 1/2" home VCR. Buying a pair of 3/4" decks and a
time-code generator is a pretty expensive solution for hobby use.
For my own stuff, I'm photographing the Amiga monitor (single frame on 16mm.
Ektachrome with an old Bolex), and letting a local film-to-tape transfer
service do the rest. The results are great, but the method is too
time-consuming for commercial use.
Vince
Vince,
Hmmm, your method sounds interesting. You must have a lot of stamina
and patience to do it that way if you're producing something of any
length.
Photography is my favorite hobby other than computing. I have two
35mm cameras, both Nikons: an old F-2 and a newer FA. I shoot mostly
B/W, tho lately (due to Amy, I suspect) I've been using more color neg
film than I used to. One of my friends owns a local pro photo lab, so I
get to print using his equipment. I was attracted to the Amiga mainly
because it's such a visually-oriented machine, tho I must admit I
haven't done much with any of the graphics packages I own (DPaintII,
DigiPaint, and Sculpt) other than play. But I sure do like the stuff
I'm seeing from the folks I know. Some of them, like you, are using
16mm equipment to capture their creations. You're right, the results
are great.
Gotta beg off now, as I'm leaving on a ten-week trip (work and
pleasure) in 2 days and have lots to do in the interim. See ya when I
return.
Dave
Have a great trip Dave! Marlene
"Just about"? "JUST ABOUT???"
8)
Rick
The running dinosaurs – Chromosaurus, it is called – is a great demo, but it
isn't what most business users want. Consider how long they've been satisfied
with a choice of six graph types in Lotus 1-2-3. Consider how much *direction*
the dinosaurs need… where to go, how to run, etc. Business users want
flashy, perhaps even animated graphics, but they don't have the directorial
skills to do it. Even with a super user interface, they don't want to spend
time pushing 100 buttons to make a pie chart slice move from here to there.
They want pre-made, canned, pre-chewed systems for doing presentation graphics.
I think this is the reason we've seen so few VideoScape animations. The
average user doesn't have the smarts or inclination to supply all the low-level
details of an animation.
What was interesting to me is a friend who walked into the office where I'm
doing some contract programming today and, with a grin, said "Have you seen
this?" as he plopped a full color two page Amiga spread on my desk (probably
the same ad). The first thing *I* did was flip the cover to see what magazine
it was… and nearly fell out of my seat. Forbes!
Way to go, Commodore! Let's not preach to the converted or biased (computer
magazines). Let's talk to the people that need to KNOW about this machine.
Congratulations on a good move.
Rick
F o r b e s ! ? ! ? ! ? COMMODORE? 2 (two?) pages?????? <reeling away in shock>
–Ben–
Heard a report that an ad had appeared in PC Week as well.
oops… here ben, let me help you up.
Regards, Larry.
Yeah… isn't it wild? <Grin>
Rick
After not advertising anywhere for months, Commodore has taken TWO pages in
Forbes? And Larry says they also have an ad in PC Week – glory be!
I thought two pages in AmigaWorld was pretty big stuff for CBM – now I just
don't know what to say …
Vince
Maybe OMNI doesn't fall into the same category as Forbes or PC Week but CBM has
a full page add in the November issue. I believe they will have one in the
December issue as well.
GreG
I think that's a good move; Wonder if they'll throw one in Mr. Guccione's
_other_ magazine? <grin> (I only look at the pictures) Even though OMNI does
have a few _really_ flakey cols (UFOS!), it's an interesting mix of
pre-digested science and fiction. It's well read, too. –Ben–
Ah, I can just see a Spread featuring Amy. With captions about here being able
to accept some 8Megs of RAM. Can accomadate any size HARD drive. And that she
is studying to be a neuro surgeon! <grin>
GreG
What? You don't believe in UFOs? Hmmm, I thought they were the perfect
explanation for Momar and Khomenie (sp? on both of them).
From the people I know who read OMNI, and the ones who read Forbes and/or PC
Week, my guess is that there are probably more potential Amiga buyers in the
OMNI bunch. My friends may not be typical, but the Forbes/PC Week readers are
mostly "IBM" types.
Can CBM be starting to do things right?
From the looks of things, CBM is starting to do things right. Look at the new
commercials they have. So far there are two of them with two different
endings: "Try that on your monochrome Mac, Jack" and "Try that on your Tandy,
Andy". Seems that CBM is being much more agressive than they had been. Makes
me feel warm all over! <smmiiiille>
GreG
GreG: Where did you see theswe commercials? (I watch very little, if any, TV,
and so am clueless here) –Ben–
Ben: I have only seen the "I am the Amiga 500" commercial. The one with
Juggler & Zues leading it off. Larry Phillips told me about the others, as did
a few others.
GreG
Maybe what we all need to say is that perhaps the change in management WAS a
good sign. We can dream, can't we?
Rick
Rick,
Alright! That's a definite start. Now let's hope CBM tailors their
ads to effectively reach those kinds of markets.
Dave