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Release 7 - Content Report

Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
18 Jul 2021 23:10


The team worked relentless to revive Amiga and thanks to great efforts Release7 is getting closer.
 
Please have look what improvements and new features it will bring.




Ville Helin

Posts 9
18 Jul 2021 23:21


Holy moly!

> [NEW] Hardware Texture & Lighting 3D instructions

Any info about these? Benchmarks, how to use, what they do... ?

Keep up the good work!


Robert Pulfer-Ridings

Posts 59
19 Jul 2021 00:47


Sounds great, exciting times Gunnar :D


Andrew Miller

Posts 352
19 Jul 2021 05:45


Nice, will we see some ammx/3d code examples in vasm?


Manos Sg

Posts 96
19 Jul 2021 08:23


Great news! And I am very happy that the WHDLoad save bug is in the pipeline to be fixed, fingers crossed!


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
19 Jul 2021 08:39


Ville Helin wrote:

Holy moly!
 
> [NEW] Hardware Texture & Lighting 3D instructions
 
Any info about these? Benchmarks, how to use, what they do... ?
 
Keep up the good work!

Hello Ville,

Our focus for these texture instruction are easy of use,
clean coding, and performance improvements.

We have added the new instructions TEX8, TEX16, TEX24 to the AMMX instruction documentation that you will find under the top tap "Coding".
We are right now prepare some coding snippets to be put in our library for re-used and some demo effects to show the usage and features. Arne will show some examples soon.

Here is a small example comparing old code


Oldloop:
  move.l A2,D4    ; VV.vv
  move.l A3,D5    ; UU.uu
  lsr.l  #8,D4    ; 0V.Vv
  swap  D5        ; uu.UU
  move.b D5,D4    ; 0V.VU
  and.l  #$FFFF,D4 ; 00.VU
  move.b (A0,D4.l),D0

  add.l D2,A2
  add.l D3,A3
  move.b D0,(A1)+
  dbra  D7,oldloop


Newloop:
  tex8.256 (A0,(A2,A3)),D0

  add.l D2,A2
  add.l D3,A3
  move.b D0,(A1)+
  dbra  D7,Newloop

The new code makes texture mapping much simpler to code and increases performance.
Typical "Doom/Tomp Raider" texture code has with it a speed of 1 texel every 3 clocks. Which means roughly a performance increase of 3 times.

TEX8 and TEX16 will make code simpler and cleaner and will improve speed.
The performance increase is about 300%.
Many old games/demos used similar code and these instructions are designed so that they can be used as direct replacement.

TEX24 offers features which were never used on Amiga before.
TEX24 supports direct access to compressed truecolor textures
and also supports gouraud shading of the resulting 24bit texel. Normal 68k code would need over 100 instructions to do the same works, that this new TEX24 instruction does in a single ASM instruction.

The goal of these instructions is to make coding of 3D demos and games simpler and easier and to increase performance so that low end 3D games like Tomb Raider or Playstation 1 games become a reality on Amiga.

The instruction are designed so that they can be shared by the V4 cards (V4,Firebird,Icedrake) but also by the V1200 accelerator.



Rollef 2000

Posts 29
19 Jul 2021 12:29


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

but also by the V1200 accelerator.

Thank you!


Antony Coello

Posts 153
19 Jul 2021 13:27


Great update there Apollo team!

I dont suppose you have any small updates pending for the 500+V2?


Krzysztof Wolf

Posts 16
19 Jul 2021 13:30


Wow!


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
19 Jul 2021 13:51


Antony Coello wrote:

Great update there Apollo team!
 
I dont suppose you have any small updates pending for the 500+V2?

I think that these new features are extremely hard or
honestly impossible to squeeze in an V500 card.

If you are keen on 3D features in an A500 then the very best option is an upgrade to the Firebird.




Antony Coello

Posts 153
19 Jul 2021 14:05


I expect very little as I know the situation with space, certainly not a 3D core! :)

However, you did tell me on discord that the GFXMODE register would make its way on to the v2 500+ at some point in July.

I dont mind if thats all that is updated and I dont mind waiting.

If it cannot be done then so be it, but it was mentioned as coming.

posts 11