rec.autos.simulators

In reference to the 3D and video warping I will have to make a correction
to something I said.  I had answered a question in reference to SGI, and
apparently I think I was wrong.  Thus I have a quote from a Windows Sources
article (July 95).  One of the authors has written 3 CAD books.

"Internally, 3D modelers define objects in several possible ways.  Polygons
(specifically triangles or quadrilaterals) offer the simplest method for
the software to calculate and to accelerate with hardware . . . The
greater the number of polygons, the more smoothly the product approximates
a curved surface.  But as you might expect, algebraically generating surfaces
provides a much smoother, more accurate representation of non-linear planes
than polygons do.  3D modelers tend to use splines - curves defined using
control points which bend the curves to varying degress - as the basis
for these surfaces..."

So in reference to SGI, it would seem that using their powerful
geometry engines and rasterizers they should handle splines (where appropriate).

--

http://www.racesimcentral.net/~fmah

Hell, no, it's a whole new video card.  I really don't want to use
their wave table since their is no memory on it.  I'd rather keep my
AWE32 as the wavetable card.  

There will be a whole bunch of these 3D accelerator cards comming out
using different 3D accelerator chips!  I wonder how the Edge stacks up
against the Matrox Millenium?  

Anyway, when I placed the order for my P133 from Dell, I made sure
they put in the shittiest video card they had....I plan to upgrade.

If the Edge sucks (which I doubt) you could go with another video card
and buy the Gravis Grip for your digital joystick compatibility
(whenever that comes out).

Yours truly,
                      ___                          ___
                     /   )                  /)     /  )
                    / ___  _  __  __  __  _//     /__/    _      _   _   _
                    \___/_</_/ (_(_/_/ (_(_/__   /    _/_/ )_/)_(_)_/ )_</__
                                                              )
                                                             ()

    _______   ________   ________    Just on the border of your waking mind
   /   ___/\ /  _____/\ /  __   /\   There lies another time
  /   ___/\//  /____ \//  __   / /   Where darkness and light are one
 /______/\//_______/\ /__/ /__/ /    And as you tread the halls of sanity
 \______\/ \_______\/ \__\/\__\/     You feel so glad to be unable to go beyond
   (everything 'cept anchovies!)     I have a message from another time...
-=:)>}]  EAST COAST ANIME  [{<(:=-   ELO: "Prologue"  -=-  Daicon IV

The AWE will probably eat dirt compared to the Edge's sound.  I have the
AWE BTW, not good without expansion.
--

http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah

Gee...When your the best, everyone has to take their "shot"...

Mike Carrothers
Raleigh NC.

Plus the Edge uses system memory for its wavetable sounds,
so you could plunk those AWE simms in your motherboard and
use that memory for other stuff too, right?

I can't see why people are complaining that the Edge would
replace their video cards, when in most cases it will be a
better video card than what they already had for 2D stuff.
An ATI Mach 64 for around $200 plus a 3D Blaster for $350 is
over $500, while the Edge will be at least $200 less than
that combination, with sound capability to boot.  Just sell
your old video card or keep it as a backup, you still come
out ahead.  While Diamond products aren't always perfect, they
have a better signal to noise ratio than Creative Labs gear.

Are any systems venders like Micron, Dell, Quantex, etc.. planning
on creating Edge bundles?  Seems like it would lower the
price since they wouldn't need to include a soundcard.

The SGI rendering architecture is purely flat polygon based - as is every
other available architecture that I know of, except for nVidia (as used by
Diamond). Any implementation of a graphics API which supports splines on those
architectures firsts breaks the splines & curved surfaces into some number of
flat polys.

Cheers, PI

I saw a demo of the Diamond Edge at the ComputerMania show in
Anaheim, California, yesterday, and the MSRP posted was $419.

The only game that I saw on display in the hour or so I spent
at the show was Virtua Fighter Remix.  I don't know what kind
of computer it was running on, but I assume it was a Pentium.  

The game looked good; it was in hi-res, was fluid, and didn't
pixelate in close-up views, but it didn't appear to
incorporate any light sourcing.  Also, it looked to be in 256
color mode.  Basically, it looked like a console game.

I would hope that the hardware is capable of more, with the
right software support.

Ed

Exactly.  NVidia designed the chipset for both DRAM and VRAM.  They licensed
the design to SGS-Thompson, who manufactures all the chips.  NVidia markets
the VRAM version under their own name, while SGS-Thompson gets to market the
DRAM version under their name.

Clear as mud, eh?  :)

--John

John Bennett  =-=-=-=-=-=-=      "They listened intently to what he said,
Phoenix, Arizona USA  =-=-=         and then they ate him." - Anonymous

www.primenet.com/~bennett =   Protect your right to privacy, while it lasts!
Finger for PGP public key =   Contact the Phil Zimmermann Legal Defense Fund:

I'm not sure what you mean.  The AWE is the best?  As I said, not without
being expanded.
--

http://widget.ecn.purdue.edu/~fmah

Err, no, you can't do that.  BTW, I'm no fan of the AWE32, but I
really can't wait for gravis to release drivers for my Ultrasound :(

Well that's easier said than done since most people will want the Edge
rather than a USED Stealth.

Well, Gateway is selling the Matrox right now and DELL seems to be
using those rotten #9 video cards exclusively!  I'm buying a DELL
Pentium 133 with the cheapest card they sell.  I'll wait until the
REAL video cards come out and upgrade.

Yours truly,
                      ___                          ___
                     /   )                  /)     /  )
                    / ___  _  __  __  __  _//     /__/    _      _   _   _
                    \___/_</_/ (_(_/_/ (_(_/__   /    _/_/ )_/)_(_)_/ )_</__
                                                              )
                                                             ()

    _______   ________   ________    Just on the border of your waking mind
   /   ___/\ /  _____/\ /  __   /\   There lies another time
  /   ___/\//  /____ \//  __   / /   Where darkness and light are one
 /______/\//_______/\ /__/ /__/ /    And as you tread the halls of sanity
 \______\/ \_______\/ \__\/\__\/     You feel so glad to be unable to go beyond
   (everything 'cept anchovies!)     I have a message from another time...
-=:)>}]  EAST COAST ANIME  [{<(:=-   ELO: "Prologue"  -=-  Daicon IV

The AWE is the best?  Since when?  It's music quality and
price/performance has hardly been heralded, and from my experience it
deserves the criticism, especially considering the price and the fact
Creative was one of the few boards that required you to load 80K of
drivers to get General Midi compatibility which many board makers were
able to do in hardware for far cheaper.  Creative has this annoying
habit of making these bizarre cost-cutting decisions which really
don't make any sense in the long run (SB16 Value? Multi-CD?
SB-16Basic? Vibra? Sheesh!).

Why not?  If you throw a few extra megabytes of RAM in your main
system for the EDGE to use for sound, it's not going to be
using that memory ALL the time, only when making noise.  At
other times you could use that memory for photoshop or
whatever instead of having it rot in your soundcard.  Putting
all that RAM in an AWE seems like a terrible waste to me.
So this seems like a real good incentive for ditching an
AWE and getting the EDGE.  Why didn't you think this would
work?

Hey me too.. I almost bought the #9 imagine with my p133 dell.  I am so
glad that I went through Sega webpage and found out about the edge.  So,
I told them I wanted no option on the video card.  Now, I only have to
wait for the Edge 3D.

Atip

Well I neither a friend or foe of diamond, but yesterday I saw a demo
of Nascar racing on a tv show. One of Nascar unaccelerated. The second
of Nascar accelerated with a card run with the NVidia chip. There was
no difference at all in the frame rate!!!!! They said you can't see a
difference because they run both on a pentium. The graphics weren't
smooth at all. Isn't that supposed to be at an accelerated game. I
think its because of the lack of Z-buffer of the nvidia chip and
because of the lack of nornal poliygon acceleration which Nascar still
uses not the strange NVidia algorithm. I still don't know what to
think about the card.

Werner Punz