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- TITLE: New OpCode 6 Addition to ANIM IFF Format
-
- Revision Date: 20.8.91
-
- Prepared by:
- Cryogenic Software
- 13045 SouthEast Stark St
- Suite 144
- Portland, OR 97233-1557
- Contact: William J. Coldwell
-
- Voice: (503) 254-8147 (11a-4p PDT/PST)
- Data: (503) 257-4823 (EMail to SYSOP)
- Portal: Cryogenic
- UUCP: uunet!m2xenix!percy!cryo!billc
- Internet: billc@cryo.rain.com
-
-
- 1. Introduction
-
- In 1989, we added support into one of our commercial products to
- support the Haitex X-Specs glasses. This documentation will not
- go into a detailed description of this product. Contact Haitex
- for more information concerning the hardware:
-
- Haitex Resources, Inc.
- Post Office Box 20609
- Charleston, SC 29413
- Voice: (803) 881-7518
- Fax: (803) 881-7522
- Contact: Shawn Glisson
-
- We found that there was not a supported way to display stereo
- animations using the current IFF ANIM OpCode 5 specification.
-
- Cryogenic supported OpCode 6 as an internal format in our
- commercial programs (see below) and provided Public Domain
- players. It is our intention at this time, to release this
- format to other developers wishing to support stereo animations
- using this OpCode.
-
- When we first started this project, the current Amiga machines
- had a 512K of CHIP RAM maximum. This caused some memory problems
- with some of the higher resolution stereo animations, since the
- Quad Buffers were in CHIP RAM for our players. It was our
- intention to attempt to do some memory magic to require only
- two of the four bitmaps to be in CHIP RAM at one time. It was
- our feeling that this would have caused the animations to slow
- down, due to data swapping that may or may not have needed to
- be done. By the end of 1989, all development had stopped on
- OpCode 6. This left all buffers in CHIP, and the format has
- remained the same since then.
-
-
- 2. OpCode 6 Additions to OpCode 5
-
- Please refer to the ANIM IFF format submitted by Sparta/Aegis.
-
- The format is exactly the same as OpCode 5 but is QUAD buffered
- instead of DOUBLE buffered. This allows the player to show 2
- screens at one time for the X-Specs Glasses. Each picture MUST
- be viewed for 1/60th of a second, therefore to see a 3-D Picture
- the viewer can only play ANIMs at 30 frames per second.
- (2 pictures = 1 frame).
-
- The IFF file is stored exactly the same except that instead
- of having each DLTA (delta) modify bitmap two frames back, it
- modifies the bitmap four frames back.
-
- Example:
-
- ------------------------
- | |
- | BMHD |
- | |
- ------------------------
- | DLTA (1) |
- ------------------------
- | DLTA (2) |
- ------------------------
- | DLTA (3) |
- ------------------------
- | DLTA (4) |
- ------------------------
- | DLTA (5) |
- ------------------------
- | DLTA (6) |
- ------------------------
- .
- .
- .
- ------------------------
- | DLTA (x) |
- ------------------------
-
-
- 3. Playing OpCode 6 ANIMs
-
- Four bitmaps are allocated. Bitmaps 1 and 3 are the left views,
- and bitmaps 2 and 4 are the right.
-
- The First bitmap is gets its image from the bitmap in the file
- (BMHD). The Second bitmap is a copy of the first with DLTA (1)
- performed on it. The Third Bitmap is a copy of the first with
- DLTA (2) performed on it. The Fourth Bitmap is a copy of the
- first with DLTA (3) performed on it.
-
- We now have the first two 3-D Pictures:
- One in bitmaps 1 and 2 and the other in bitmaps 3 and 4
-
- DLTA (6) is used to create the third left view from bitmap 1.
- DLTA (7) is used to create the third right view from bitmap 2.
-
- DLTA (8) is used to create the forth left view from bitmap 3.
- DLTA (9) is used to create the forth right view from bitmap 4.
-
- NOTE: This technique requires 4 Loop frames at the end to
- perform looping.
-
-
- 4. Chunk Changes
-
- In the ANHDChunk structure the only differences between OpCode
- 5 and OpCode 6 are the _Operation_ field which should be set to
- 6, and the _Interleave_ field which should be set to 4.
-
-
- 5. Supporting Software
-
- 3-D Professional 1.0+ (Progressive Peripherals and Software)
- View 1.7 and above (Public Domain) on a Fred Fish Disk
- MSA: Make Stereo ANIM (internal) Available upon request.
- PSA: Play Stereo ANIM (internal) Available upon request.
-
-