Atari Falcon demos rules!

category: general [glöplog]

And now I will open a thread about Falcon too :)

No joke, actually few weeks ago I checked some of the best Falcon demos in DivX (cause there is no decent emulator there :P) and was quite impressed. I then searched in wikipedia about specifications and was even more surprised to see it has an 68030 at only 16Mhz. And those highres smooth pixel effects and impressive 3d? Wow! Too much for this processor..

..my question is how it's possible? Is it the DSP processor that does most work? How much did it boost performance and do they use it for calculating 3d or can also boost up pixel 2d effects like rotozoomers and stuff? I read that it has a DSP in more Mhz but I know nothing about DSPs. What kind of diferrent things is it doing from a regular CPU? Would the Falcon demos without that be much slower or simpler?

From the other hand, archimedes has that ARM processor (is it faster than 68030 at the same Mhz) and some demos are nice, but not as impressive (not as huge pixel 2d effects or as advanced 3d) as the Falcon demos in technical terms (which make me wonder because I thought the ARM is maybe better in performace than 68030). And the colors suck in most acorn demos, though I just read about the fixed 256 palete which might be the reason.

Anyways, it's nice to have a good taste of demos in those two early great 32bit machines. Which machine is left for me to check? Maybe Mac? From 8bit, I also haven't seen MSX demos yet, couldn't make up how to run things in emulators, maybe I'll search again in the future. (And why isn't there any decent emulator for the GP32 Yet? ;P)

added on the 2006-06-19 21:10:52 by Optimus

Quote:

some of the best Falcon demos in DivX (cause there is no decent emulator there :P) and was quite impressed

Could you post a few links?

added on the 2006-06-19 21:13:23 by jua

added on the 2006-06-19 21:24:24 by Optimus

added on the 2006-06-19 21:35:27 by havoc

Mmm,. there are some I miss here. And of course the newer CT60 releases!

added on the 2006-06-19 21:39:56 by Optimus

as for falcon capabilities... yeah the dsp makes the difference. but it's quite a bitch to code, apparently. what can it do? decode mp2 in realtime, with no load on the cpu, and then you still have some cycles left. (but not mp3- then the cpu has to do part of the work too). for example "beams" by tscc is a nice example of this approach, and most dead hackers society demos >2000...

some other coders are using the dsp for efx.. such as the (relatively) recent prods from escape, lineout and mystic bytes, but also some classics like sonolumineszenz for example. imho, these are clearly the best demos on standard config falcon, from a technical viewpoint...

added on the 2006-06-19 21:43:47 by havoc

DSP effects in Falcy demos are definitely the cream of the crop. A lot of Falcon '030 demos, perhaps the majority, don't get that far and just use it for the audio ;-) I think you've got a good selection there Optimus.

The CT60 demos, of course use the 68060. In fact trying to use the DSP for effects in that situation may be counterproductive, and you should revert to using it as an audio engine ;-)

added on the 2006-06-19 22:02:30 by CiH

the key to the fast 3d on (standard) falcon is the following:

1) let DSP perform 3d computations while the 030 is restoring the screen background. this saves the most power.

2) exploit the DSP's multiply-accumulate (2 cycles) and parallel memory moves. this is nice for matrix calculations (for instance the ones taking place when the screen is being wiped ;))

3) transfer pixels to the CPU over the host port without handshaking (risky but fast).

that's it for this crash course on std falcon demo coding. as far as 060 is concerned, like CiH says.. on 060 it's a different world. it's actually quite similar to amiga060 stuff, except you get mpeg audio for free.

added on the 2006-06-19 23:10:13 by earx

optimus if you are interested i still have a falcon on my cellar. Yeah the falcon was nice, but :
1) very few were produced and sold
2 ) it was bloody expensive ( I paid about 1200 euros at the time )
3 ) only professionnal musicians and demomakers got interested in the falcon.
4 ) A pain in the ass for graphicians (no real paint sofware on it )

added on the 2006-06-20 10:06:00 by nytrik

wtf? no paint software??

delmpaint (lots of features, 256 colz)
indypaint (simple and elegant, highcolor)
eggpaint (highcolor)
apex media (excellent tool!, highcolor)
fuckpaint (256 colz)
godpaint (highcolor)
...

imo the falcon was _the_ graphics machine. it was the very first computer that was able to actually pixelpaint in more than 8bit...and some of the painters inherited some brilliant ideas on how to handle this, unlike photoshop back then (and still today in several parts)

added on the 2006-06-20 11:51:32 by giZMo^fr

MOTOROLA DSP 56 000 is 32bit Risc chip... When something like that will be at PC???

added on the 2006-06-20 11:51:50 by elan

gizmo: hi ;) well nobody added them yet... they are on
No Fragments - archive 04 - the falcon archive

:)

added on the 2006-06-20 11:57:32 by ltk_tscc

@elan:
1. The m56k series are actually 24 bit DSPs (no need to differentiate between CISC and RISC there, DSPs are a completely other story :)
2. To some extent, there is similar stuff at the PC. Think GPUs, X-Fi or PhysX. GPUs are already actively exploited for non-obvious uses (read: audio, physics, raytracing) right now, and the other processors could be if there were open specs or APIs.

added on the 2006-06-20 15:06:14 by KeyJ

gizmo: don't forget Escape Paint, and Rembrandt (by Next) ;)

but Apex is the best, no doubt =)

True Paint was true crap, heh.

----

The falcon had a small fanbase, no doubt. Compared to a1200 and PC (or even Atari ST nowadays) that's painfully true. But it was a cool machine to mess around with: chunky 16bit graphics, hifi audio, an easy-peasy 68030 and a DSP to bitch-slap. Ofcourse, it had a weak bus that glued it all together. But at least it wasn't plagued by the same things as the a1200 (really slow and uninnovative: it had a good expansion slot, though ;)) I think it deserved a bigger audience. However, looking at the Archimedes, which especially later on had incredible hardware, having an even smaller scene, I think it was acceptable. And with some pain it even allowed some old ST games (80%) to run, so there was a decent amount of stuff available.

----

The falcon's DSP is a 56001 and it's a 24bit chip, actually. There were PC cards with 56K chips, but they were expensive. The PC world settled for custom built (and probably less programmable) DSPs like creative's design especially for audio. Eventually the whole generic signal processing / multiply-accumulate thing was done in the main CPU itself (SSE, Altivec). Also gfx cards inherited DSP ideas, and nowadays they are faster than any CPU or DSP and even seem to be programmable with those non-standard wacky shaders that only work on 2 machines (quite oldschool in that respect).

Anyway, a PCI DSP board by Centek/Czuba was made (the Deesse) but didn't have a great appeal since most
coders are too lame to mess around with DSP.. So, DSP was a nice era full of exploration, but except for embedded applications it's a bit dead now.

added on the 2006-06-20 15:13:07 by earx

Gizmo : nice to see that i was not the only one on falcon ( I m kidding ... many good grapician had a falcon : Mcfly; agent T; Niko; JCS ) !
There was also prism pain and Dune graphics ( developped for Jade ).

But seriously : have you aver tried to do a good pic with apex or Egg.

Amiga was a lot better with brillance and deluxe paint. The proof is that there were much more good graphician on Amiga than on Falcon.

added on the 2006-06-20 15:36:01 by nytrik

I Am Not A Graphician (IANAG) but I agree that Apex is more a coder's dream than a painter's dream. Havoc tells me crackart is quite like Deluxe paint and that's why it was so good. Apex had some aspirations to be like Calamus (beatiful DTP package) and have totally exotic stuff like a DSP driven morphing engine... which aren't the ingredients for a successful tool for people who just want to have a good zoom and palette.. (eventhough i think those don't suck in Apex).

It's true there were much more graphicians on Amiga, no doubt. But in any case, there were more Amiga sceners in any case (note the past tense ;)). No disrespect for all the demo innovations done on Amiga BTW.

added on the 2006-06-20 16:00:04 by earx

Quote:

No disrespect for all the demo innovations done on Amiga BTW.

Oh, you just know someobody will rage about it anyway in a diskmag on Amiga anyway :)

Do Falcons change hands a lot on the atari.org/dhs forums? On Ebay these machines are more rare than relics of jesus.

added on the 2006-06-20 16:34:49 by Shifter

shifter : really ?
I have one in my cellar eating dust ....

added on the 2006-06-20 17:28:21 by nytrik

Well, if you want to sell it for major amounts of cash, upturn an ashtray over it and scribble NYTRIK on the top :)

Or not. Anyway, If you're willing to part with it: I'm sure there's a line :)

added on the 2006-06-20 18:42:40 by Shifter

Quote:

Well, if you want to sell it for major amounts of cash, upturn an ashtray over it and scribble NYTRIK on the top :)

more commonly known as 'pulling a Laxity'

added on the 2006-06-20 19:15:12 by okkie

priceless ^_^

added on the 2006-06-20 23:26:08 by René Madenmann

trivia for falcon paint prog connaisseurs:

what typical demo effect is hidden somewhere in apex?

first to give the right answer gets a beer at the next party ;)

btw, escape paint also deserves some merit... but i've used apex for most of my falcon truecolor gfx. first with the demo release and a screenshot tool, later the crack, and i have an original copy somewhere that i never used, iirc :-)

shifter, i bought 2 falcons thru marktplaats, for 75 and 100 euro, about a year ago... :)

earx, actually crackart has the same keys as degas (elite), but it's much faster.. and yep, the switch from those progs to dpaint isn't so hard, imho (probably mostly because those progs make sense... unlike a lot of other gfx tools :))

added on the 2006-06-21 02:07:44 by havoc

yep, marktplaats.nl is a good place to look sometimes. also ebay.DE (jawohl) is recommended.

added on the 2006-06-21 08:29:38 by earx

hehe yeah ebay.de :) but they are damn expensive :(

added on the 2006-06-21 17:10:54 by ltk_tscc

hm... new IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell procesor look like DSP, or better: like 8x DSP chips :) - each SPU have it's local memory (256KB I think), no cache... like old DSPs :)
beside Freescale (ex. Motorola) release brand new DSP chip these days... I read some info at german c't Magazine - more powerfull than TI DSPs, lower power consumation...
I don't think that time of DSP is over, it's only the begining :D

btw how many atari coders works in game industry? DSP programing skills are good starting point for PlayStation programing, right?

added on the 2006-06-21 18:58:06 by calimero

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Atari Falcon demos rules!

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