Vampire 2 Amiga 600 FPGA accelerator
category: general [glöplog]
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I do however agree that the people most likely to be a target for a new high-powered "pseudo-Amiga" are the ones who'd also do c2p-stuff on 060/AGA if nothing else shows up.
The real target are the jazz musicians. Those extra MHz and Mbs are great for Octamed Soundstudio or DigiBooster Pro.
:)
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I'm interested in seeing what I can do within the existing limitations of a couple of platforms that I know well, not what I can do on new hardware that happens to fit within the same plastic cover as those machines. :)
fair enough. but can we please also grant other people to have different interests/opinions?
and btw. time will tell anyway: if a significant number of people will own a vampire there'll be an audience for vampire demos - if you like it or not. simple as that. and potentially this audience could be larger than the 060 community. everybody is watching 060 demos on youtube anyways..
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boy, for pc coders it's normal to learn new stuff every time a new 3d API version/extension is released. If we were like that you would still be looking at fixed-function vertex-lit single-textured crap..
If amiga coders still want to dick around with crappy chunky-to-planar routines that run at 10-15 fps on 060, fine. I just would have been curious to see what amazing things britelite, kalms, co. would be able to pull off.
You talk about it like these are two different races of people. As someone who releases on both (all three) platforms, I have to object. :)
I enjoy doing stuff for Amiga (000/OCS as well as 060/AGA) for (at least) two reasons:
1. To delve even deeper into something I am already intimately familiar with (i.e. have been doing for well over two decades).
2. To continually push a fixed and well-known platform.
Coding for the Vampire would be very easy to adapt to but still only partially fulfill 1 (since experiences having to do with performance would be mostly useless). And it would fail completely at 2.
I also enjoy taking advantage of the ever increasing power and flexibility of modern GPUs. Vampire doesn't bring anything new to the table here either. It falls between two stools, so to speak.
If I was using an amiga for stuff (e.g. music or 2d graphics) I'd be very interested in that.
For demo coding though? Nah. The fun in going back to amiga would be in the limits and the custom hardware. I'd go with plain a500 or maybe a1200 (perhaps with extra RAM).
Maybe after a few years of writing for base machines I'd want to try pushing the hardware more with a faster CPU to drive it. I think I'd want an FPU though, and I wouldn't want a graphic card of any kind.
For demo coding though? Nah. The fun in going back to amiga would be in the limits and the custom hardware. I'd go with plain a500 or maybe a1200 (perhaps with extra RAM).
Maybe after a few years of writing for base machines I'd want to try pushing the hardware more with a faster CPU to drive it. I think I'd want an FPU though, and I wouldn't want a graphic card of any kind.
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and btw. time will tell anyway: if a significant number of people will own a vampire there'll be an audience for vampire demos - if you like it or not. simple as that. and potentially this audience could be larger than the 060 community. everybody is watching 060 demos on youtube anyways..
There's always an audience, but what really matters is if anyone will be arsed to support the platform by actually producing something for it
Guy doing some flame effect coding stuff with the Vampire.
Seems there is some excitement going on regarding the vampire, more and more videos popping up. Lets see if someone actually makes a demo for it.
Seems there is some excitement going on regarding the vampire, more and more videos popping up. Lets see if someone actually makes a demo for it.
rtg demo on a600 :) :)
https://vimeo.com/156679312
https://vimeo.com/156679312
nice!
if you want to know what accelerators like this mean to the scene, just look at what the SCPU did for the C64 scene =P
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and potentially this audience could be larger than the 060 community.
Q.E.D.
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everybody is watching 060 demos on youtube anyways..
Yeah, everybody is doing that. Because there are absolutely no people with 060 Amigas left. *sigh*
which is pretty funny with 060 demo..the machine to emulate it is much cheaper than reaal 060 amiga ^^ most video of 060 demo are not running on a real hardware :)
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most video of 060 demo are not running on a real hardware
And how exactly would the Vampire change this? It would still not be running on the real deal ;)
Here's my humble take on this:
As a half-native development machine this could be really interesting.
Running development tools like ASM One/Pro, Octamed SoundStudio or even ArtEffect IV (should work on RTG output) in a decent speed and resolution is verrrry tempting for non 060+gfx board owners who want to work on the real thing, sort of, instead of an emulator.
As a competition- platform other than "wild hardware", I don't think so.
As a half-native development machine this could be really interesting.
Running development tools like ASM One/Pro, Octamed SoundStudio or even ArtEffect IV (should work on RTG output) in a decent speed and resolution is verrrry tempting for non 060+gfx board owners who want to work on the real thing, sort of, instead of an emulator.
As a competition- platform other than "wild hardware", I don't think so.
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which is pretty funny with 060 demo..the machine to emulate it is much cheaper than reaal 060 amiga
pretty funny with PC demos... The machine to watch on youtube is much cheaper than real PC as well :)
That aspect of demomaking, which was making things with computers that would otherwise be impossible, is long gone. Get over it. Find other ways to make your demos interesting to watch on the real hardware if you care. One possible way is interactivity, and I'm sure you can come up with more ideas.
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Yeah, everybody is doing that. Because there are absolutely no people with 060 Amigas left. *sigh*
sorry, I was a bit exaggerating, not intending to upset 060 owners. Let me reiterate that I like 060 demos a lot.
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Quote:most video of 060 demo are not running on a real hardware
And how exactly would the Vampire change this? It would still not be running on the real deal ;)
always better to watch demo on real hardware ^^ but yes the vampire is not the real hardware.. perhaps a vampire card for a 1200 with the exact speed of a 060 would be a good deal.
Then they'd first have to write a 060 core without "improving" things like they did with the 040 core.
If there was some way of having the 68000 and Vampire running at the same time, with the Vampire running the system and keeping to its own graphics hardware, and the 68000 banging the Amiga hardware, this could actually be a really nice development platform for ECS demos. :)
Hi all, can someone please report if Vampire II for A600 with SAGA driver 1.4.1 (which already supports FPU?) is running for example Starstruck any better than this capture? It would be nice indeed to have finally Amiga capable of running accelerated demos and don't spend "fortune" on it...
Skipp/Ptn is making a lot of captures using Vampire. Here is Starstruck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQ_t3dcdng
ah... never mind! exactly the same capture as your link :)
It would be cool if Skipp could test the demo again with latest fw. As other demos works fine, this is probably a matter of time (or actually already working nicely). I just got noted the card is ready for me. Even SAGA fw is not stable yet, according to captures from Skipp it seems viable...