stbenge wrote:
> That was a compelling monologue. You brought us from the pits of 
> computational hardship all the way to the clear mountaintops of current 
> home computing. Good job!

Why thank you! I'm glad somebody enjoyed me slacking off for the entire 
morning as much as I did. ;-)

> Invisible wrote:
>> Then there were ground-breaking AF coverdisks like Imagine 2, Real3D, 
> 
> Ugh, not Real3D! That was my *first* introduction to 3D graphics, and 
> let me tell you I was *not* impressed. Back in '97-'98 it had no 
> raytracing support, and the other features were all very disappointing. 
> 'Refraction' was simply an environment map applied to the inside of an 
> object... no attempt was made to distort pre-rendered objects behind the 
> refractive one. And then there was the problem of surfaces shadowing 
> themselves. Strange, dark-gray lines running along a surface when you 
> want it to be smooth can really piss you off, especially when it takes 
> so long for the program to compute and render the image in the first place.

Mmm, interesting. I never had any problems with it. I still have the 
coverdisk laying around somewhere I think. And the little manual they 
gave away with it. (Written by Amiga Format, not Real Software Inc.) It 
was my first introduction to ray tracing and CSG. (And basically 
modelling without triangles.)

Of course, using a point-and-click interface, it's not possible to do 
POV-Ray style tricks like positioning a sphere exactly at the end of a 
cylinder... the CLI has plus points! ;-)

Unfortunately I can't find it anywhere online, but Real3D had a rather 
nice set of glassware showing off the refraction capabilities.

Now Imagine 3D was another matter. You had to add objects to the scene 
in a certain order (!!) in order for them to reflect. As in, the 
reflective objects had to be added last. Any object added after the 
reflective one would cast no reflections. God only knows what happens if 
you want recursive reflections...

> Thank goodness for the open-source movement!

Yeah - I'm still puzzled by all that. The Amiga had a strong "shareware" 
scene, but I'm puzzled by this sudden new craze of giving away 
fully-supported commercial-grade software (sometimes that *was* 
commercial!) for free. It suddenly seems to be the "trendy" thing to do, 
and I'm not really sure how that happened.

Not that I'm complaining about it mind you!

>> In fact, it seems that only high-end, professional audio and video 
>> tools actually cost money any more. (I'm thinking... Cubase, Cakewalk, 
>> Photoshop, Renderman, and so forth.)
> 
> Since you mention Cakewalk in your list of commercial apps, let me 
> mention JazzWare as a free alternative to it. ModPlugTracker is another 
> one, though it's quite different.

I already own Cubase, but thanks. ;-)

Actually, if anybody knows of a good freeware software synthesizer and 
sequencer that's easy to set up (ideally zero-install) and runs on 
Windoze, I'd be interested. Sometimes when you're using a strange PC, 
it's nice to be able to just throw out a few bars of music using only 
what you have on your USB stick...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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