TomSoft - Virtual World - Amiga Demo (50 FPS)

Virtual World by TomSoft, released at Amega 1991...
Credits:
Code and Text: Tom, Performer
Graphics: C. Dryk, Elmer, Skrew, Tom
Music: Audiomonster
HD (50fps on compatible browsers)
#Amiga30

[@cedric.peresse]

Yeah ! So great, I'm C-DRYK (one of the GFX of this demo) and I'm very proud, so many years after... Very thanx a lot

[@johanjanssonkth]

Fantastic work! I remember watching this with awe in 1991 when I was 12-13 years old.

[@DanielKolsi]

Yes, this demo was exceptional when released in 1991 and demonstrated great talent. But the most exceptional part was that it like came outside of core demoscene and the coder used his own real name.

[@IntrinsicPalomides]

Hell yeah! And contains one of the finest tunes ever, by the awesome Audiomonster in the 1st part.

[@UserX860]

*Apocalypse* by Audiomonster 👍👍

[@karl-heinznapp2874]

Another reason why I can't understand why Odyssey was so hyped...

[@seuck1870]

Audiomonster's music is brilliant

[@kangarht]

10:26 was my workbench background for ages

[@ILMprod]

This changed my life lol

[@volo870]

Would it run on my A500? I want to show off the awesomeness on original hardware.

[@RetroDemoScene]

+Volo No Sure will ;)

[@richardbird1596]

Maybe the NTSC/PAL thing wasn't as much of a thing on the Amiga as it was on the C64, or maybe I just didn't notice. I'm from the US and downloaded this as 1 or 2 DMS files (don't remember) off of Monkey House BBS in Salt Lake City ages ago. At first I thought the virtual world stuff was more impressive, but man, still like Hysteria.

[@KuraIthys]

No doubt it varies enormously by machine, but it's pretty persistent. Basically it's that the two systems have a different balance between video display and CPU time. It persists even into the 16 bit consoles. SNES has 2.68 megabytes per second of DMA time. This works out at about 170 bytes per line, but you can only actually transfer data during Horizontal or Vertical blank. On NTSC systems you get 60 frames of 256x224, on PAL you get 50 frames of 256x224 or 256x240. But, the actual frames, including non-visible portions are 340x262 in NTSC, and 340x312 in PAL. 2.68 mb/sec / 60 / 262 = ~178.76 bytes per line, and 2.68 mb/sec / 50 / 312 = ~180 kilobytes per second. However, the number of lines during which the screen is not being updated is quite different. This means at 256x224, DMA time for an NTSC system is at a minimum, the difference between 262 and 224 = 38 lines per frame. (~6.6 kilobytes a frame). For a PAL system, the difference is 312 - 224 or 312 - 240 = 88 or 72. This means the DMA time per frame is 15.46 kb, or at higher resolution, 12.66 kb per frame. Both of which means for any given frame of graphics drawn you have anything from 2x to 2.5x the DMA transfer time. This is a HUGE difference from some seemingly trivial changes. This is one random example. What any given system gains from the PAL vs NTSC difference can vary quite a bit, but the pattern is pretty consistent. More CPU time per line of graphics drawn. More time spent in V-blank vs actively drawing. More time during which you might be able to mess with Video RAM without disrupting anything. But... A lot of it really does depend on how the hardware does things, and the kinds of resolutions it uses, as well as architectural issues. (for instance, the Amiga time-shares memory access between the CPU and Graphics chip. So does it actually NEED the graphics chip to be idle while the CPU is messing with things? If not, this kind of difference will be less meaningful than it otherwise would be...) There's lots of little things like this. In general PAL systems have more CPU time available per pixel drawn onscreen. That's what the advantage is for pretty much every system that benefits from it. But how much of an advantage that actually is clearly depends on the exact architecture. So you may be right - the gap may be less impressive for the Amiga than it is for the C64... (To do anything non-trivial on the C64 required doing a LOT of calculations and timing very specific to the screen update rate. You often had to fit important code inside an interrupt which then had to run during H-blank... All very timing critical, and closely tied to how much CPU time you had in the moments the graphics chip wasn't updating anything.)

[@friendsofjames3033]

Please, can you explain what is it? I never heard about Virtual World game for Amiga. I really want to know source of this fantastic soundtrack. And, by the way, what game shown at the second part of video?

[@d_vibe-swe]

It's a demo, not a game. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene