Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

AT the beginning of the
Computer Entertainment
Show in September the
usual crowd of computer
journos were invited to the
usual Commodore breakfast
press launch.
Commodore UK Supremo
Steve Franklin took centre
stage and proceeded to spill
the beans on the current
state of the CDTV or
Commodore Dynamic Total
Vision.
The Amiga-based CDrom
machine was originally
scheduled for a September
launch, but rumours of
delays have been circulation
ever since its unveiling at
the Consumer Electronics
Show in Chicago. Inevitably
THE world of ray tracing
has been quiet for too long.
Sculpt once dominated but
a failure to update the software
left it commanding a
stagnant market. Something
had to change.
Now the world of ray
tracing and indeed, graphics
as a whole, is coming back
to life. There has been no
lack of commitment by
users, as entries to this
year's Amiga Centre
Scotland animation competition
has shown. What the
world has been waiting for
is a significant release. It got
two.
Last month we covered
one of those releases, 3D
Pro. The second emanates
from a Finnish company
with the unlikely name of
Rea'soft.
Called Real3D, it claims
to he the "fastest ray tracing
program with animation
and solid modelling for
Amiga users". From what
we saw, this is no exaggeration.
Rendering time has
been reduced from a timeframe
that could be mea-
AMIGA SCENE
CM launch delayed
there was air of expectancy
as Franklin outlined his
plans.
Commodore UK are initially
releasing only about
1500 to 2000 CDTVs to
selected developers, companies
and members of the
media in the next few
weeks.
The plan is to let them to
do the Beta testing and
major bug fi nding. In
exchange for their efforts,
Commodore will give them
a "generous discount" on
the price.
The fi nished product
should he available from
"mid February" with more
than 40 specially written
pieces of software already
Real design, real solutions
sured in cups of tea (in the
Sculpt era) to one measured
in mere sips of tea.
What's more, the rendering
time is more or less stable
— that is, it is less
dependant an the number of
objects being rendered, with
a large percentage increase
in the number of objects,
the render time in a particular
mode is not inbreased
excessively.
Another great saving in
time will be made possible
by rendering only a small
window in the whole
image. It will be possible to
render a whole image at a
very low resolution and
then select just a small area
of interest to be rendered in
extreme detail.
For producing animations
this has the obvious advan-
available. Commodore are
hoping to have sold around
350-500 thousand machines
within a year. By this time
they hope that over 140
titles will be available.
These do not include
straight conversions of existing
Amiga games, rather
unique CDrom-based items
such as encyclopedias and
interactive libraries.
When asked if the CDrom
drive would be made available
for existing Amiga owners.
Franklin said that it was
a possibility, depending on
demand.
In other words, if you
want your Amiga to be able
to support the new optical
media, you'll have to write
tage that areas in which no
change takes place do not
need to be re-rendered.
But speed is not everything.
It is the approach
which matters most. With
an engineer in the programming
team, the result was
bound to be a very CAD-
to Commodore and tell
them.
The delay in the CDTV's
launch may disrupt
Commodore's plans to create
their own standard for
CDroms. The rival CDI system
produced by Philips
looked set to become the
world standard, with only
Commodore's plan to
swamp the planet with
machines using their system
posing any threat.
Obviously. Amiga
Computing are hoping to get
their hands on a CDTV as
soon as possible. although
Commodore PR Andrew Ball
said something rude when
we told him we needed one
more than anyone else.
biased product.
The inclusion of a wide
base of primitives and the
use of Boolean functions on
these shapes enables the
easy construction of engineering-style
drawings.
Unlike Sculpt there will
be no vertex editing. In
Sculpt. objects were all
made up of small facets or
triangles. This meant the
system was fl exible to
manipulating individual
points on an object's surfaCe,
but also led to the dis-
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