Conference hydra::amiga_v1

2571.0. "The World's Best Arcade Machine (a re-post)" by LEDS::ACCIARDI () Wed May 17 1989 13:45

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Note 480.0               The World's Best Arcade Machine               5 replies
LEDS::ACCIARDI                                       57 lines  16-MAY-1989 22:53
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    I guess this isn't the best conference to post this, but it may be of
    interest to Atari enthusiasts and games fanatics in general...
    
    I have seen and played the World's Best Arcade Game.
    
    I really mean it.  My socks are gone, I'm dazed and confused and words
    fail me.  Take the absolute best 3D graphics that you've ever seen on
    an ST or Amiga (like Starglider II or Falcon) and they look like the
    work of bumbling amateaurs programming on a Timex.
    
    I stumbled onto a new system at our local coin arcade called 'Hard
    Drivin' which is made by Atari Games Division (I don't think that
    they're directly affiliated with the home computer division).
    
    It's essentially a 3D driving simulator with a bucket seat, steering
    wheel, 4 speed gearbox, clutch, brake and throttle.  Before I describe
    the graphics, I'll explain the mechanics, which also happen to be a
    major breakthrough in realism.
    
    The steering effort is proportional to your road speed and steering
    angle.  The engine response is coupled to your clutch effort, ie; a
    poor takeoff causes the engine to bog.  Engine RPMs are directly
    proportional to throttle position and load.  In other words, the user
    interface mechanics are exactly like a real sports car.  This is a
    major breakthrough in arcade machines.
    
    Now the graphics... sigh... If you've ever seen clips of the simulators
    that the military or Boeing Aircraft used, you probably dreamed of
    someday being able to use such spactacular hardware/software yourself. 
    This system creates realtime 3D graphics that are as good as any of the
    simulators that I've ever seen on TV.  The frame rate must be 30 FPS. 
    The basic scenery is created by polygon rendering, but uses spectacular
    speed and real-time shading to create an uncanny feeling of motion. 
    The effect is so good that as you zoom over the jumps at high speed you
    actually get light headed.  You can feel your stomach coming up into
    your throat.  Folks, this is orders of magnitude better than anything
    out there.
    
    It would be pointless to try to explain any further how good this
    machine is.  I can only ponder how on earth Atari Games has made such a
    quantum leap over the competition (Sega, Bally, etc).  I actually think
    that they may be using a Transputer system, since I've only seen custom
    mainframes perform this well.  I think one can safely rule out any
    conventional microprocessor application.  Even a large MacII or 386
    system could never achieve even a fraction of this kind of graphics
    performance.
    
    The mechanical engineers deserve kudos for integrating many complex
    electro-mechanical servo loops with the software.  This was a major
    project, as the titles list about 50 engineers involved with the
    development.
    
    The per-play price is steep at $.75, but this is an experience that is
    not to be missed.
    
    Ed.

Re: .0

As it turns out, I know something about Hard Drivin'.

Last week I was at the first meeting of the Numerical C Extensions
Group held at Cray Research.  The purpose of NCEG is to consider
possible extensions to C to make it a language more suitable for
numerical programming.  The idea is to provide guidance for new
language features that were not included into the ANSI C standard
(for the good reason that such features were not ready to be
standardized yet).

A great deal of the discussion dealt with C language support for
vector and matrix programming: an area where C is very weak.

One of the representatives at the meeting was Kevin Leary of
Analog Devices, Inc, of Norwood, MA.  Mr. Leary's company
manufactures Digital Signal Processors, or DSPs for short.

DSPs are little vector engines (usually using fixed point numbers)
that can be programmed to do general numeric processing, image
processing, instrumentation, and all sorts of signal transformations.
Coupled with A/D and D/A converters, DSPs can function as modems
or FAX machines.

One of Analog Devices' DSPs provides the graphics in Hard Drivin'.

The NeXT machine has a DSP chip (I don't remember whose).  The
DSP chip in the NeXT is used to provide the 9600 baud modem in
that machine.  I believe the DSP in the NeXT can also be used as
a general computing resource.