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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

1080p With Vampirepage  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 

Kyle Blake
(Needs Verification)
Posts 108/ 1
31 Jan 2020 18:24


Ronnie Beck wrote:

 
Kyle Blake wrote:

   
Ronnie Beck wrote:

    An ADC won't be useful here
   

    Analog digital conversion is perfectly useful here, because it would convert output from FPGA into some nice analog format like VGA.
   

    That would be digital to analog conversion.  A DAC.  You have it arse-about.  You are free to downgrade your visual experience at your own expense.  Ebay has lots of DIGITAL-VIDEO->VGA converters.  Analog away to your heart's content.
 

 
  On a 1080p LCD panel, 1080p over a VGA cable is visually superior to some 720p or below resolution over a DIGITAL-VIDEO cable.
 
  This is because LCDs have a fixed "native" resolution, which you must match, or else a shitty build in scaler will ruin it to fit. Nothing can be done - except go track down some 15 years old LCD TV in a junk shop who claims to be "HD Ready" with a 720p panel. And those look like total shit in all respects.
 
  Of course in very high resolutions there is potential to pick up some noise on VGA. With shielded cable and being a bit careful not to run too near sources of interference, it can be too small to be visible.

  Do you have other questions about displays or will you continue being pedantic about a typo? :)

It is pretty clear, some onboard VGA output would give Vampire the ability to NOT need 24bitperpixel in all colour depths, which means it could use the excess grunt to drive higher resolutions and framerates instead. It is also clear that Amiga software is all happy to live in much less than even 256 colours, so there is no downside to doing that if the monitor resolution is big enough to need it.

what's a big downgrade is having to see some stretched, blurry workbench. In such a situation 16 million colours is 16 million shades of vaseline.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
01 Feb 2020 01:34


Kyle ok lets us try to sum up some information:

1) First of all Vampire can display 1080p for Workbench.
1080p@25/30 is good for Workbench and is working.
2) Second you can perfectly drive 1280/720p super crystal clear and without any blurriness on a 4K display. As 4K is an even multitude of 720p. So getting a crystal sharp picture is possible.
3) A Digital signal is always cleaner than analog.
So if you drive high resolutions like 1080p is in your favor to do this digitally.


Kyle Blake
(Needs Verification)
Posts 108/ 1
01 Feb 2020 09:44


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  Kyle ok lets us try to sum up some information:
   
    1) First of all Vampire can display 1080p for Workbench.
    1080p@25/30 is good for Workbench and is working.

 
  Entire thread started because it doesn't work for with an actual computer monitor.
 
 
Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

    2) Second you can perfectly drive 1280/720p super crystal clear and without any blurriness on a 4K display. As 4K is an even multitude of 720p. So getting a crystal sharp picture is possible.

 
  Are you offering to buy me a 4K tv?

Cheapest, smallest 4K tv I can find is 40 inches. I don't know how that will fit on anyone's desk.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
01 Feb 2020 09:59


Kyle Blake wrote:

Entire thread started because it doesn't work for with an actual computer monitor.

But this claim is not fully true.
It works for many monitors, yes might not work for all maybe.

Kyle Blake wrote:

Cheapest, smallest 4K tv I can find is 40 inches.
I don't know how that will fit on anyone's desk.

This is not a problem.
4K monitors are available in 24", 27", .. in many sizes.




Jamie Chapman

Posts 69
01 Feb 2020 10:47


I guess if you buy shitty tvs they  will have crap  upscaler  in them.  But as multiple people have stated DIGITAL-VIDEO supports lots of resolutions.  To assume DIGITAL-VIDEO is 1080p is the problem.

Also just but a DIGITAL-VIDEO to DVI lead and connect it to monitor..

The who fuck wants to use VGA in this day and age. 


Kyle Blake
(Needs Verification)
Posts 108/ 1
01 Feb 2020 13:42


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  But this claim is not fully true.
  It works for many monitors, yes might not work for all maybe.
 
 

 
  "Does it work?" Is a binary yes/no. He can demonstrate it doesn't.
 
  Now you can say that there's some displays who are very tolerant and will display this nonstandard signal. But that's just it, it's nonstandard, it can never be expected.
 
  You remember in olden days trying to find a VGA monitor who can take 15khz, which isn't a standard for VGA monitors. Almost none worked because it was nonstandard. An extreme rare few did, but it wasn't reasonable to say Amiga worked with VGA monitors just because you could get extremely lucky.
 
  A salesman in his shirt and tie won't know what you are asking means, but will say yes anyway so he makes a sale. Finding a display that works is essentially a matter of pure luck.
 
 
 
gunnar wrote:

 
  This is not a problem.
  4K monitors are available in 24", 27", .. in many sizes.
 
 
 

 
  And you may buy me one, I'll let you.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
01 Feb 2020 14:32


Kyle Blake wrote:

And you may buy me one, I'll let you.

I offered you explanations, help and options.
You can take them or not.
If you prefer to continue to rant without reason you better leave here.


Ronnie Beck
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 199
01 Feb 2020 15:26


Kyle Blake wrote:

And you may buy me one, I'll let you.

Kyle, your attitude is not in the spirit of a healthy discussion.  Gunnar and at least three others have patiently explained the situation.  You don't have your facts straight and you are just picking arguements for the sake of it.  Stop it now.  If you continue, in this your posts will simply be deleted.


Ian Parsons

Posts 230
01 Feb 2020 22:47


When the Vampire 2 was being designed features were added that harnessed the power of the FPGA without adding significant cost to the boards. So micro SD connector, expansion connector and digital video connector were all included to maximise potential without breaking the bank. The V500 added IDE and the V4 added USB and Ethernet.

The digital video connector allows you to have a true colour graphics card for "free". Most Amigans with a 500, 600 or 1200 had to make do with low res modes in very few colours for Workbench and apps. Big box Amigas with RTG cards were beyond the dreams of the masses and had significant limitations in colour depth, resolution and frame rate. Vampire cards that can do true colour PAL, 720p50 and various other resolutions and frame rates are fantastic.


Ali B.

Posts 24
02 Feb 2020 16:45


Ian Parsons wrote:

Vampire cards that can do true colour PAL, 720p50 and various other resolutions and frame rates are fantastic.

... and comply with the standard not to be named... ;)



Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
06 Feb 2020 12:48


Jamie Chapman wrote:

I guess if you buy shitty tvs they  will have crap  upscaler  in them. 
Oh, yes. I am using one such cheap 50" 4k TV as my main monitor but am running in 1080p (not 2160p), otherwise my eyes will hurt in 15 minutes.

The TV's upscaler, which cannot be turned off (and neither of the presets (that it offers) fixes the issue), has a random tendency to blur the image.

I also thought that because of the 2:1 ratio, the image in 1080p would be sharp on 4k TV, but that is not the case here.

There are certain on-screen combinations of apps and windows that always trigger the internal blur - unfortunately - one of those involves Notepad++, which makes all the code unreadably blurred, unless I move window around enough that the upscaler detects the change and stops the blur.

I wonder how frequent such "feature" of modern TVs is...



Ali B.

Posts 24
06 Feb 2020 20:24


Is the TV set to not cut off the overscan area? Because that would lead to uneven multipliers, blurring the image.


Massimo Billi

Posts 29
23 May 2020 19:10


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
   
  Guys, I think you misunderstand Sam.

  The VAMP supports the 720p and even also support 1080p@24/30 which are optional.
 

is there any chance that future version of the Apollo core will support 1080p/50 too?


Andy Hearn

Posts 374
24 May 2020 09:37


I run handbrake for my media conversion needs, then down to agaconvert if I want to break videos down into cdxl from there


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
24 May 2020 09:45


Massimo Billi wrote:

  is there any chance that future version of the Apollo core will support 1080p/50 too?

 
Apollo-Core/SAGA internally supports 4K resolution.

But physically no Vampire can drive this.
The Vampire V2 was advertised with 800x600
but can drive up to 1280x720@50 or 1920x1080@25
 


Massimo Billi

Posts 29
24 May 2020 13:01


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  Apollo-Core/SAGA internally supports 4K resolution.
  But physically no Vampire can drive this.
  The Vampire V2 was advertised with 800x600
  but can drive up to 1280x720@50 or 1920x1080@25

so it's a definitive hardware limitation, ok.


Willem Drijver
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 127
25 May 2020 18:11


Hi Gunnar, do the same physical limitations apply to the V4SA? Or is the V4SA theoretically capable of displaying 1080p@50Hz or higher resolutions?


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
26 May 2020 19:43


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

 
Massimo Billi wrote:

    is there any chance that future version of the Apollo core will support 1080p/50 too?
 

   
  Apollo-Core/SAGA internally supports 4K resolution.
 
  But physically no Vampire can drive this.
  The Vampire V2 was advertised with 800x600
  but can drive up to 1280x720@50 or 1920x1080@25
   
 

  So, theoretically, if somebody configured P96 parameters properly (for the 3840x2160), could you get a video out ?
 
  I reckon the frequency would be 15 Hz (for NTSC) ? Would it be higher if we used only 4-bit color depth or does that not matter for refresh frequency ? I mean - perhaps internally, V4 already sends out 8-bit RGB to video out anyway (hence it wouldn't matter if the framebuffer depth is lower).
 
  Now, if anything, this is actually pretty useable for plenty game genres. 15 Hz means 4 full frames of CPU time to update the farmebuffer.
 
  Surely, that's enough CPU time to have at least some 2D platformer or some slow-paced turn-based strategy game ?
 
  We could totally use the techniques from 8-bit era where you only updated parts of screen that changed (e.g. sprites).
 
  Or am I missing something here in the way it works ?


Henrich Raduska

Posts 62
26 May 2020 23:20


This would be possible if there is a monitor that supports a 15Hz frame rate.  Unfortunately, the standard is at least 60 Hz and even 50 Hz is a problem for many monitors.


Vladimir Repcak

Posts 359
27 May 2020 02:21


There's no 4k CRT monitor anyway. The highest resolution of CRT era belonged to the dual Trinitron from Sony - don't recall exactly- but it was slightly higher than the usual 2048*1536. Should be easily googlable.

Now, I merely pulled the 15 Hz out of my arse - I have zero idea if 15 Hz is doable. It's 4x the data of 1920*1080, so in theory, it could be 30 Hz/4, but since I have zero knowledge of video out internals, I defer to the experts here.

What I do know however is that Atari 8-bit had nowhere near enough CPU power to drive 320*192 at 1.79 MHz. But lots of games were made with some ingenious design around the limitation.

Unlike 1.79 MHz 6502, we have gobs of CPU powah on Vampire to selectively update only certain portions of the screen that changed.

You may not have a racing game or Fps shooter, but platformer or turn-based strategy is certainly doable at 4k on V4.

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