On the 10th of October 1997 Wildfire starts the PPC competition!

After over 2 years of development for the Amiga Version and after some really hard weeks where almost all time was spent for converting some routines to use the PPC Boards from Phase 5 we are more then proud to present the first Alpha Version of THE special effect animation/picture processor for the PPC-Amiga. It works together with the Phase5 software Solution, there will be no support for WarpUp.

On the Aminet there is a demoversion:

--> All needed files to run the PPC AND Amiga Version of WF:

biz/demo/WildfirePPC.lha 1968373 Bytes

--> Additional Special Effect Operators:

biz/demo/WildfirePPC2.lha 718103 Bytes

If there is NO PPC in your system then Wildfire will use the normal routines, otherwise the PPC routines for selected operators will be loaded. You have the possibility to turn on/off the PPC routines of Wildfire allowing you to compare the speed very easy.

At the Computer`97 in Cologne (14. - 16. November) the full Version of Wildfire Amiga and Wildfire PPC will be available at Oberland Computer.

There you have the possibitly to talk directly to Andreas Maschke, the program author and to Andreas Kuessner, the Wildfire Project Manager. The Amiga Version and the PPC version will be shown live at the fair, of course.

If you have any questions about Wildfire do not hesitate to contact us at:

Wildfire-Support:

eksec@eure.de (Andreas Kuessner)

Wildfire-Homepage:

http://www.oberland.com/amiga/wildfire/

Wildfire Distribution:

Oberland Computer
In der Schneithohl 5
61476 Kronberg
Germany

Tel. ++49-(0)6173-6080
email: info@oberland.com

This early preview of the forthcoming commercial Wildfire version "5\PPC" includes:

-full CyberGraphX-support
-full PPC-support (using another type of "PlugIns": ELF-modules)

Because most of the planned features are already implemented, this preview version is one of the first APPLICATIONS for the brandnew PPC-boards.

Highlights you may enjoy:

-Truecolor-support:
*24 Bit-Previews (many operators seem to work "in realtime")
*24 Bit FilmStrips
*24 Bit Thumbnails

-PPC-support
*3D-engine (all of the 3d-operators like Wave3D, LWOB, ColorCube, ...)
*DLA

-the new ColorWindow (CreateImage, DLA, Text, ...)

Performance-Tests (time in seconds)

A) Procedures (Image-Size: 640x480)

 Procedure     M68060 50 MHz       PPC 604e 200 Mhz    Notes
 iScale           3.34               0.66
 iCrop            0.02               0.02
 iDisplace        4.00               0.26
 iHalve           0.14               0.02
 iDLA           133.88               4.34
 iLUT             0.14               0.04
 iMedianFilter  113.08              19.90
 iOilTransfer   182.78              25.66
 iNegative        0.12               0.06
 iRotate          6.64               1.84
 iTileBrick       0.12               0.04
 iColorToGray     0.14               0.06
 iTwirl           5.88               1.48
 iWater           6.10               0.46               (without rendering)
 iWave3D          3.58               0.32               (without rendering)
 iTwirl3D         7.92               0.46               (without rendering)
 iRender3D       41.23               6.80               (quadrangles)
 iRender3D       20.76               3.84               (phong-shading, triangles)

These values were obtained from the Shell-output after starting wf with the "-debug" option. Note, that you may switch on/off the PPC-code from within the Preferences-Window during runtime.

B) Example-Images (of different size)

  Image         M68060 50 MHz       PPC 604e 200 Mhz    Operators
  he2_f          68.48              17.34               LoadImage, Bump3D,
  (640x480)                                             Wave3D, Magnet3D

  parPlot24      23.66               6.66               ParPlot, Axis3D,
  (960x768)                                             ColorCube

  WFLogo         70.36              33.24               CreateImage, Text, Compose,
  (unknown)                                             Convolve, Neon, Threshold, LUT,
                                                        LoadImage, TileBrick, Bump3D,
                                                        Transform3D, Wave3D