SSolie quote - "Warp3D is going away"

Stated here: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2457

The thread has been locked by SSolie as he states there is no point discussing Warp3D as it is going away.

For me, that means RadeonHD Warp3d is cancelled and that (with my optimistic head on) a replacement 3D system for AmigaOS4 is imminent.

How do the rest of you see things?

That all welknown since years that warp3d is depricated.

As for radeonhd , probably there was some problem to solve which need to loose some time, and seems decision was made to spend that time on the gallium instead and not loose time on w3d.

Probably there was hope that it can be done indeed fast and all will be fine, then realizing that not everything that easy-peasy -> on hold -> die in rest :)

Some may ask, why there was news about if it not finished ? But then, the same ppls will ask, why there is no news and roadmaps :)

@ddni

Warp3d have less of directx 6 video card specific ...
Think this the old radeon 9200 was direct x 9 compliant.
Now the Radeon HD are direct x 12 ready..

The only way right now for have a 3d on amigaos is hope in a good Gallium/Mesa3d conversion plus a video system (like direct draw/direct Video) for have full acceleration for the Video play

@ddni
Quote:
It means Warp3D is going away. It does not mean anything else.

The RadeonHD Warp3D driver is a project 100% owned and operated by A-EON. I do not speak for A-EON. If you want to know what is going on with that driver then talk to A-EON.

Just because the AmigaOS development team declares something obsolete or deprecated doesn't mean 3rd party developers can't continue to use it anyway.

A-Eon where is the update? Please let us know something about Warp3D HD

@ddni

It has been known for 10 years now, that Warp3D and MiniGL was obsolete old and outdated, and that we needed full OpenGL support, just because better 3D support was around the corner just 2 more weeks, I have not even taken then time to learn anything about “GL”.

Ssolie, thanks for the clarity. Although it is the usual not our project so ask them... very irritating.

@ddni
Quote:
Well, I get paid exactly nothing for doing all this AmigaOS coordination stuff and I have enough trouble keeping track of all the AmigaOS projects that are going on simultaneously. I really don't have time to monitor all the 3rd party projects as well. Irritating indeed.

@ssolie

Don't take my comment personally. I am aware that you don't make the rules and that you, like the devs and testers give your time freely. Your efforts are recognised and valued.

Despite this, the collective silence on promised projects and developments from a-eon and Hyperion remains irritating.

The heads up from amigakit on Amistore was very welcome. I hope that the store will be well stocked with indie, a-eon and hyperion products.

@ddni

when Gallium Mesa 3d will be ready will really simple make a warp3d wrapper... so will be better have the first one :)

@ddni

I'll risk a comment of my own here, uninvited and unprovoked:

Many would like to hear more regular news about project development. We must be a passionate group to have survived this long.

But there is a flip side. If a project is announced, and any sort of delay comes along, there is a long line of people who would jump at the chance to scream and moan and prophesize the end of the world.

For myself, as a developer, I would NEVER release ANY information about someone elses project. This is a very sensitive subject for many, and the events that have brought it on are too numerous to list.

If there is a project that _I_ am working on at the request of someone else, I STILL make no public announcements, unless first getting explicit permission from whoever I am coding for.

Neither of the above are actual "rules" told me by anyone else, but they seem perfectly reasonable and sane given the way things work.

Finally, on projects I am doing just for my self, I might, MIGHT make an early announcement if I feel like it. But I am still quite careful about that anyway. Why? It's all posted above.

I currently have at least a half-dozen "open" projects in some state between started and finished. Some I have discussed openly, some only with one or two trusted friends. Actually, a dozen might be a closer count.

Some will certainly be finished, some may never be. Even if I wanted to I could not predict a hard release date for any of them. It's not unusual for a project to be 97% complete and stumble on some detail that prevents it from being released.. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe to be shelved until some later date.

All dates after "today" are speculation. Pure guesses.
As long as a fair percentage of the community continues to complain about "broken promises".. No, wait, let me be more clear:

As long as developers still remember being the subject of complaints about "broken promises and missed deadlines", you can expect most of them to release little or no information until they are damn good and ready to. And if that is not an option they might well stop developing entirely.

This entire post is my opinion only. it is not the opinion of Steve, it is not sanctioned by Hyperion, it is not the position of A_EON, it's all purely Lyle Hazelwood, May 15 2014.

If I have offended anyone, ask yourself what you can do to improve the situation and then move in that direction.

Now I'll go back to one of my super-secret, highly classified, AmigaOS projects.

@ddni

Quote:

But none of that was said, Ssolie simply said there no point discussing extensions to an API that's going away.

@Lyle

A good description of the reality of being a coder in this environment.

Lyle, good post I concur with your points completely.

My interest in AmigaOS projects does not lie in trying to glean information on unannounced projects, rather just on those that have been announced.

As you say, making premature announcements about projects is fraught with dangers and may well be considered fool hardy.
It is with this in mind, that announcements of projects from the big AmigaOS players lead me to believe that the project must be well advanced and close to release.

Should said project hit a deal breaking issue at 98% then that is bad news, but "that's life".
What causes concern/uncertainty/irritation is the vacuum that follows big announcements. If an announced project fails, tell people. If it is cancelled, tell people. Better no hope than false hope.

As for broken promises, that is not a term I would level at anyone. As we all know, no Amiga devs make a living from Amiga coding. They invest their free time and code for fun. Outside of the 4.2 upgrade which I paid for with the purchase of my X1000 no one has promised me anything for AmigaOS. I appreciate every app, development and fix that is released.

With regards to moving in the direction of being able to help. I am a user and accepted long ago that my ability to code will never get beyond BASIC. I have previously on a number of occasions spoken to Amigakit and emailed ssolie offering my time to beta test AmigaOS and associated apps. So far, my offer has not been taken up.

I agree with Lyle .... and I also agree 100 percent with ddni. :) People paying thousands of dollars for the hardware/software to run this operating system deserve to be in the loop quite a bit more than they are now, is my firm belief. I can take bad news. I can take realistic news. I'm starting to be anxious, I freely admit, about the repeating cycle of announcement followed by vacuum.

I appreciate all the work everyone is doing, but I don't think there are any trade secrets to be hidden or any real competition to hide things from. It's all about catching up, or at least slowing the fall-behind rate. The trolls will make noise no matter what is said or not said, so forget them. They don't spend money anyway. Let's all see behind the curtain already. Might make me feel better about spending more money.

Agree too with ddni and mbrantley...

We are, at maximum, 500 active users.
Why make secrets about advancments of actives projects ? Who cares about AOS4 little world ?
Why, A-Eon or Hyperion, not officially admit when a project is dead ? (netbook or Warp3D on Radeon HD)

We all know that AmigaOS4 is a hobbist system, it's a fun one but not very stable, we are all beta-testing it.
Therefore, why not release, for example, this pa6t_eth.device driver for every 3000€ x1000 customer since 1 year of beta-testing ?

We are accustomed to some bugs on AOS4 and this driver works for a lot of x1000 beta-testers, release it please !!!

We are volunteers; too, but as customers, we trusted the (falses) announcments...

Really discouraging.

Now, waiting for a PC (after a lost of time spent on AOS4)...

+1 to the two previous posts.

Time for customers to feel valued and not simply like an irritation for requesting information on their hobby.

@mbrantley

Well said Mike.... same for Lyle.... all good words.

My 2 cents....
What it seems to me is the small Amiga platform that we enjoy as a hobby, the few that actually own the product in our discussions.... the Hyperion's and A-Eons, etc.... seem to keep any left "feel good" about days gone by where holding onto secrets until revealed at big trade shows like CES, and even the great smaller shows (big though for the time) Amiga shows.

Seems like an Apple move where they have something they want no one else to know about and trade secrets are kept in Steve Jobs locked box until the last minute.

As cool as Amiga is, and I have come to see, those days are gone. I am sure Hyperion (or they should) see no real money is left in AMiga OS (at least that I see). Nothing like Apple or Samsung with phones, etc...

It is a Hobby OS for Hobby Boxes. A-Eon is doing a kick ass job making new gear but I doubt Trevor and Matthew are doing it to make real huge bucks. If they can pay the bills and get by I think is all they see.

Why Hyperion at this point wants to keep super secret on anything is beyond me. It is the users and developers it seems to me keeping the boat moving and the small Amiga market alive.

If you tell the world about something.... Warp 3D we are working on, or whatever, it just seems to make most sense to offer progress reports, even if it means very limited (we are working on it still but no new news when it will come). Keeping everyone in the dark in such a small market seems to upset more than I think what the owner will gain back.

My moto with customer service is.... if you call me at 4:59, 1 minute before closing for the day, I will still call customer back even if it is to say "thank you for calling. Your issue will take a little longer to get figured out and we are now closing for the day. We will call you back 1st thing in the morning and see what we can do".

Common sense. Common caring. No secrets. That is just silly stuff from an era gone by.

My 2 cents is not singling out any of the folks offering their free time, developers, etc.... it is targeted at those like Hyperion, A-Eon, A-Cube, etc.... You make nice stuff... thank you so much for doing so.... But, this is 2014 and not 1985.... no one is after your trade secrets. You are working on getting tha 2nd core working in a $3K computer or getting 3D to work.... awesome..... keep at it... but no need to be so secret about it. Just let folks know if she is still being worked on, and progress reports you want to share, and if non, fine.... but let folks know if cancelled or on backburner, etc...

TJ

@ddni

ddni said:
"With regards to moving in the direction of being able to help. I am a user and accepted long ago that my ability to code will never get beyond BASIC."

I am sorry if that sounded rude.
I know we are not all developers, for whatever reason.

I _am_ guilty of saying "Go download a compiler", but I usually reserve that for people who tell me "I can't write any code, My contribution is to tell the programmers what they should be doing.".. as far as I know that's not you.

What I should have said, if I were taking more time as I should have.. We all care a LOT about AmigaOS.. Many of us wish something or other was different. We can focus that desire in either direction.. either promoting positive things, or complaining about the things we don't like.

I'll make a few examples, hopefully without pissing anyone off.
Have you heard of Epsilon? As far as I know, he's not a programmer. And I believe it's safe to say he is an "enthusiastic member of the community".. I don't know how much time he spends putting his blogs together, but there is little doubt that he is promoting the entire community in a positive way.
In truth I have never met him. I am making guesses based purely on what he adds to "us", the Amiga community. We are damn lucky to have him.
There are other ways to help as well. Any time a programmer is working on something that will not be part of the OS, he needs to find his own Beta testers. I put together a short list of folks that play with MIDI gear when I was working on CAMD things.. they were all really helpful.
Another example.. Many programmers write great code, but are loathe to document anything. If there is a program you are familiar with that has sucky or no documents, ask the author if you can write some. If there's no place to keep those documents, ask Steve if you can keep them on the Doc Wiki. He just might grant you editing rights.

Maybe my whole point is poorly made. I am not really trying to push anyone into servitude.. I was really just pointing out that the actions we each take can promote the greater good, or not. If you're going to expend lots of energy, you might want to check which direction you're pointing towards at the time. That's all I am saying.

I never intended this to become a soapbox speech, and it's NOT aimed at anyone in particular. I have no axe to grind with anyone posting in this thread... I'm just talking too much.


:)

Hoping I pulled my foot out of my mouth instead of sticking it in deeper,
LyleHaze

@AmigaSociety

Quote:
It has nothing to do with trade secrets, it's about making realistic promises. In the not-so-distant Amiga past things were announced whenever someone came up with an idea - with very few actually living up to their announcements. The community got fed up with this and asked Hyperion to please only announce things when they are ready. This is what we get.

I, too, would like to hear more news and read juicy progress reports. But these are tricky things: in this dry land, any news concerning a promising project will automatically instill hopes and expectations (often unrealistic) - whereas the reality is that the project can soon become abandoned due to hardware failure/lack of time/loss of motivation/wife trouble etc. Failed expectations hurt and make the atmosphere more depressing than a lack of news.

@LyleHaze

Get back to your dungeon and code. hehe

Your words are always great Lyle.... thanks for speaking them.

It seems like such an easy answer to everyone's own idea of what the cure would be. Mine included.

It is all relative in some way, shape, or form.

In the end, life is a soap opera. No matter what we say or do, it will be the same in the end and a new episode airing around noon tomorrow on daytime Amiga TV.

LOL.

Thanks to all those that have made computing fun again, even if that means some of us have went greyer or balder waiting for new tweeks to play with.

TJ