CompuServe Thread

#VistaPro

2 messages in this thread
#182832From: arthur argoteJan 22, 1995 10:42 PM
Great to see that you stepped in to reply. I was wondering how bad things were if you guys are having an up hill battle trying to negotiate the time needed to further develop the Amiga version. I use an EGS system w/ WB 2.1 & I've had no success in trying to get WB to run on it, let alone any other program being "promoted". So I wonder if that is part of your problem. I've checked out KPT Bryce and the images look really stunning. Granted they're ray traced & time intesive, but the water in them look great as well as the anti-aliasing. Would any of this be incorporated into a new VistaPro? Good luck! I've always loved your software. CyberCruising at ya from Brooklyn, NY on Autopilot, —Archie
#182864From: Clint Woeltjen@VRLIJan 23, 1995 1:48 AM
Arthur: Actually, the viability of a product on the Amiga has a lot to do with the program, programmers and just how much work is involved in putting it together. VistaPro for the Amiga has at least 4 man-years of work in it, between John, Brick and myself, and given the size of the market and the price point, it's really hard to keep it profitable. At this point, I don't know how much original work I will do on it, but I will continue to port the additions and changes that John does to the PC version. (This allows leveraging the programming changes for the Amiga off of the size of the PC marketplace.) We've had some success in experimenting with mirrored water, including adding a little "texture" into the water, so it's not quite a perfect reflection, more like it occurs in nature. Adding raytracing would require rewriting the entire rendering engine and would greatly slow down the rendering time. Also, as trees are created at render time, and are not "objects", they wouldn't be visible in a raytraced reflection. I expect to add anti-aliasing in 4.0 as an option. It will require rendering to a much larger screen than the final image size, so it will be pretty memory sensitive. Clint <VRLI>