This effectively became the showcase picture of DKBTrace in the very 
early days.  The data file was created by Rick Demers at Carleton 
University where I studied.  After we released DKBTrace, he was kicking 
himself for getting the offsets wrong on the arches making them offset 
from the top of the pillars.

Regardless, this picture turned a lot of heads at the time.

David Buck

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David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> This effectively became the showcase picture of DKBTrace in the very
> early days.

I can imagine.  Back then, there were no 3D accelerator cards, no Playstation.
Just simple 2D bitmaps on screen...

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nemesis wrote:
> David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
>> This effectively became the showcase picture of DKBTrace in the very
>> early days.
> 
> I can imagine.  Back then, there were no 3D accelerator cards, no Playstation.
> Just simple 2D bitmaps on screen...
> 
> 

On the Amiga, the highest graphics format I could display this in 
properly was 320x400.  The mode was called HAM (Hold and modify) and I 
had to write a special program to produce it.  The format used 6 bits 
per pixel.  Of the 6 bits, 2 bits told you what to do with the other 4.

00 - interpret the other 4 bits as the index of one of 16 color 
registers of 12 bits each
01 - take repeat the previous color replacing the red value with the 
lower 4 bits
10 - take repeat the previous color replacing the green value with the 
lower 4 bits
11 - take repeat the previous color replacing the blue value with the 
lower 4 bits

Late in the history of DKBTrace, I agreed to let an Amiga hardware 
peripheral company use the images for advertising in return for one of 
their higher-end graphics cards that got closer to 24 bits of color but 
still used the hold and modify technique.

David Buck

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nemesis schrieb:

> I can imagine.  Back then, there were no 3D accelerator cards, no Playstation.
> Just simple 2D bitmaps on screen...

High!

Oh glorious CGS pioneer days... I remember, back in summer of 1991, 
staring totally stunned at at endlessly looped animation running on an 
80386 on display in a computer store showcase (by the way, in the 
medieval Old City of Augsburg, Germany), which showed (what else?) a 
RSOCP orbited by several smaller RSOCPs!

I myself back then had an Atari 1040 STFM to type my papers for college, 
1 meg of RAM, which came with  a monochrome 11" monitor... but to change 
from 640 x 400 monochrome to 320 x 200 color mode, I hade to plug it to 
a color TV set... in the following year, I bought myself a second-hand 
Amiga 500, hoping to catch a very first glimpse of 3D graphics (as I 
started to toy with the idea of "Khyberspace", a virtual Afghanistan), 
but it wasn't until 1995 that I discovered PoV-Ray!

See you on www.khyberspace.de!

Yadgar

Now playing: Pteranodon (Ozric Tentacles)

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> nemesis schrieb:
> 
>> I can imagine.  Back then, there were no 3D accelerator cards, no 
>> Playstation.
>> Just simple 2D bitmaps on screen...
> 
> 
> High!
> 
'Low!    ;-)

> Oh glorious CGS pioneer days... I remember, back in summer of 1991, 
> staring totally stunned at at endlessly looped animation running on an 
> 80386 on display in a computer store showcase (by the way, in the 
> medieval Old City of Augsburg, Germany), which showed (what else?) a 
> RSOCP orbited by several smaller RSOCPs!
> 
I also remember that image well -- it was fairly well-known at the time. 
  There was another cyclic image at about the same time of a rotating 
clown's head.  They were both said to be created with POVRay -- the 
first I had heard of it.  And I agree that these were very impressive at 
that time.

A couple years ago I decided to try to reproduce this image myself -- 
and this is virtually my only stab at animation.  I'll attach the source 
to this message (it's quite short, <50 lines) if anyone wants to play 
with it.  One difference from the original is that the original was a 
2x2 red and white checkerboard and mine is 4x4.  I don't remember what 
the original background was, mine is a simple sky_sphere.

> I myself back then had an Atari 1040 STFM to type my papers for college, 
> 1 meg of RAM, which came with  a monochrome 11" monitor... but to change 
> from 640 x 400 monochrome to 320 x 200 color mode, I hade to plug it to 
> a color TV set... in the following year, I bought myself a second-hand 
> Amiga 500, hoping to catch a very first glimpse of 3D graphics (as I 
> started to toy with the idea of "Khyberspace", a virtual Afghanistan), 
> but it wasn't until 1995 that I discovered PoV-Ray!
> 
I don't remember what hardware I was running at that time, but I think 
it was a Heathkit H-100 (same as a Zenith Z-100, but in kit form).  This 
came out about the same time as the IBM PC and also used the 8088. 
(Actually it was a dual processor, 8088 and 8080, and could run 8-bit 
C/PM, or 16-bit C/PM-86 or MSDOS.)  I still think it was a better design 
than the IBM, but of course, IBM had the name and reputation so the 
industry followed them.

The color graphics on the Heath/Zenith was FAR superior to the 
then-current IBM CGA (I still that think was the worst looking graphics 
card ever!).  But the only directly available way to use or program the 
Zenith graphics was through MS-BASIC.  To me, this was unacceptable 
because I was programming in C at the time (hobby programming, never 
professional -- and although I haven't done much programming lately, 
when I do it's still C or C++).  The Heath/Zenith graphics documentation 
was very minimal, and accessing it was very strange (non-contiguous use 
of graphics memory, separate segments for the three colors...).  But I 
was finally able to write my own graphics library for C, somewhat 
limited but still useful.

I could go into more detail, but this is already getting too long (and 
very off-topic) so I'd better quit.  Besides, this stuff is probably 
older than many of the readers of this forum.  I still have my original 
Altair, unused and stuffed in a closet, but I still have it -- 30+ years 
old!

> See you on www.khyberspace.de!
> 
> Yadgar
> 
      -=- Larry -=-

> Now playing: Pteranodon (Ozric Tentacles)

Now playing:  Beethoven Symphony #6

PS.  Just before posting this, I decided to attach the image also -- 
first frame only, not the animation...

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Wow, now that brings back some memories....As do the others.

Jim

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Wow.  I spent many an hour drawing images in that paint program that 
allowed you to use HAM.  I can't remember what it was called now, but I 
still have some of those whopping 320x240 images on floppies.

HAM was an amazing kludge, and it got you the graphics of a high end 
machine for under $1000.  How times have changed.

By the way, the Juggler was what convinced me to get an Amiga instead of 
a PC (although I did buy a 386 about 2 years later) and I got a lot of 
mileage out of my A500.  I seem to remember hearing that the Juggler was 
originally rendered on a VAX.

David Buck wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
>>> This effectively became the showcase picture of DKBTrace in the very
>>> early days.
>>
>> I can imagine.  Back then, there were no 3D accelerator cards, no 
>> Playstation.
>> Just simple 2D bitmaps on screen...
>>
>>
> 
> On the Amiga, the highest graphics format I could display this in 
> properly was 320x400.  The mode was called HAM (Hold and modify) and I 
> had to write a special program to produce it.  The format used 6 bits 
> per pixel.  Of the 6 bits, 2 bits told you what to do with the other 4.
> 
> 00 - interpret the other 4 bits as the index of one of 16 color 
> registers of 12 bits each
> 01 - take repeat the previous color replacing the red value with the 
> lower 4 bits
> 10 - take repeat the previous color replacing the green value with the 
> lower 4 bits
> 11 - take repeat the previous color replacing the blue value with the 
> lower 4 bits
> 
> Late in the history of DKBTrace, I agreed to let an Amiga hardware 
> peripheral company use the images for advertising in return for one of 
> their higher-end graphics cards that got closer to 24 bits of color but 
> still used the hold and modify technique.
> 
> David Buck

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