Stephen wrote:
> Orchid XP v2 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> 
>>I'm sure we've all seen a demo like this on some old 8-bit home computer
>>of some description somewhere... The original uses special video RAM
>>trickery to create the illusion that your little 2MHz machine can
>>actually animate billions upon billions of balls around the screen
>>effortlessly... Actually it's all just blit tricks ;-)
>>
>>Of course, *this* version does it, like, _for real_, in true
>>tripposcopic 3D baby! A metallic version is rendering as I type. ;-)
> 
> 
> Nice and pleasing to the eye. I would like to see the spheres start to

> 
> 
I think Andrew is referring to the time when there was a sort of
competition going on on Amiga's who could have the most balls
moving at the same time. I think at first people used sprites for
that. That would limit the number to 8 (IIRC) unless you used
some tricks with the coprocessors. Creative use of the coprocessors
thus became a sport. Then someone invented a technique with the use
of extensive double buffering and use of BitBLT only to simulate
an infinite number of balls in real time. That was very impressive
when you saw that first and you knew how difficult is was to get
even 16 balls all moving at the same time. It also spoiled the whole
bouncing balls thing in one stroke. So to cut a long story short,
*not* being cyclic was what made it impressive. Usign POV and
infinite amounts of RAM and precomputing the animation is just
cheating IMHO.

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