Forgive me as I do not understand german - but I was wondering if at the Bad Bramstedt meeting this past weekend, it was stated when the new panel system will be ready for prime-time?

Will this be something to look forward to with 2.7?

Any other tidbits of information come from the meeting by the way?

Thanks

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Only if 2.7 gets seriously delayed....

Yesterday I managed to start a "new" panel from an "old" panel's prefs-file, so that went better then planned.

Next step will be fully loading&saving the panels compatible with old panels AND with all new features.

Thats planned for later this month but this version won't support any prefs-GUI nor extra classes like spacers and bookmarks so it's not ready for release.

After that I will be working on merging the panel-prefs with the general Ambient-prefs (as thats where they IMO belong). Adding a few extra features this might be ready to go out to the (then 2.8) devs/testers early next year.

Did you just say that 2.7 will be before early next year ?

Thanks Kronos .. looks very promising nevertheless. :)

Those in the know claim it will be out before the end of the month....

> Did you just say that 2.7 will be before early next year ?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7464&forum=11&post_id=78783#78783

I'm looking forward for a new panel system. Thanks for your hard work!

Some pics I took last weekend:
image gallery at AmigaPage

I might write down a couple of lines of comment as well, if I ever find some time...

Kind regards,
Andrea

[ Edited by guruman on 2010/11/11 19:54 ]

@guruman

http://www.amigapage.it/index.php?pl=image-view&modo_view=3&categoria=fiere&name=I11112010-12
nice photo

Hey Guruman nice pictures, oh Frank and Mark will love that picture you shoot of them.

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Sure...




PS - @ Guruman: Thanks for the pics.


[ Edited by ZB on 2010/11/11 22:20 ]

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Eh, that's an hard and dirty job, but somebody ought to do it! After all, that's what good paparazzi do...

Kind regards,
Andrea

Guruman!
Thanks for the pics! Looks like a fun time and productive! I wish I lived in Europe.. (though my "European" isnt that good" hahah)

Wow.. Look at the ram test numbers on the G5 HOLY CRAP Its awesome that they are still working on g5 support. I love how it shows "unregistered" lol
When you say bluetooth input devices work is it with usb adaptor or native bluetooth?
Did bigfoot say when WOlfenstein is going to be released? New 3d drivers? What boards?
Cool Efika in the A600 case whos is it?

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Hmm wonder which one is "bigfoot" lulz

> When you say bluetooth input devices work is it with usb adaptor or native bluetooth?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7238&forum=11

thx guruman for the pics!
i've seen the picture of the morphos media center. whats the status about it? its been developed since ages (which is good, as hopefully it will be a very mature and feature-packed, yet simple and easy to use app:). i havent seen any mention of it in the reports of the show nor video about it (guess there wasnt a presentation of it or was it?).
so whats the deal with it? me not asks for a release date ofcoz but its state and how it perform in its current form.
(in the meantime a.m.c. arrived and ready to steal the show - we'll see how a multiplatform, hollywood-made app could stand up against a native morphos app after both are released:)

About MorphOS Media Center, you better ask Geit... He told it's not quite finished yet, so you'll still need to wait.

About the short report and magnetic's question... Let's see:
- on Saturday at 11:30 PM there was a MorphOS presentation (also known as "The Saturday Night Show") on the big screen where we were shown a few bits. First of all bigfoot demoed Return to Castle Wolfenstein on his Mac mini. The game is done and so is the installer (even though "Frank finds it confusing. But he doesn't like to have to press less than 10 buttons to get things done, so it's not going to change") and it will be released real soon now - as soon as Mark solves some problems with his server. Those attending the Amiga Meeting Nord, including yours truly, have received a PreRelease archive directly from bigfoot's hands, as you can notice in one of the pics I posted from the number of monitors displaying RtCW during Saturday night. Then we were shown the updated 3D drivers, reaching 140fps in Quake III running at 800x600 on an humble Mac mini. That's roughly 50% better than last year, that in turn was already 100% faster than what we have in the public version of MorphOS... Then we were shown MorphOS 3.0 (the development branch) on a PowerMac G5 2.7GHz. The port is still in the early phase, MorphOS doesn't control the software controlled fan, so it will stand still for the first 3 minutes (with the risk of a "thermal crash"), then it will realize it is not being software controlled at all and will start spinning at the maximum speed for the time being.
- After the presentation there was time for some questions. Here is what I gathered, feel free to correct me if I am wrong. MorphOS 2.7 is due really soon, hopefully by the end of the month. It is mainly a bugfix release for the PowerMac G4 issues. Good news is that finally the new graphics drivers are going to be released, and tentatively this is going to happen for MorphOS 2.8. In the meantime work is ongoing on drivers for R300 and R400 based Radeon cards (this includes 9600/9700/9800 and x800). Inside the PowerMac G5 a Radeon 9600 and an X800 were swapped during the 2 days. bigfoot and kiero would need to be motivated to work on an updated TinyGL (R300 and R400 could introduce Shaders and T&L, and thus OpenGL 2.1 compatibility). I guess that some third party coder abusing a bit more TinyGL might help here: I still find it kinda sad that most of the advanced 3D software was written/ported by the 2 themselves. And Fab of course (who is another team member, though). With notable exceptions of Blender and VGP2.
- About the releases for other Apple hardware: Frank basically told to enjoy what we have and kind of stressed that registrations on hardware currently supported is a good way to motivate the team to improve and extend the OS further while waiting forever for some still unreleased port is not going to help a lot. That said, he told the PowerBook G4 version basically ony lacks graphics acceleration support for R300 chipset and wireless support. The first one (both 2D for enhanced displays and 3D) is a must have, while the second is really a nice to have for a portable, but nobody is working on it right now and so a first PowerBook release might eventually happen even without the wireless supported. Frank used his PowerBook G4 as his only machine during the 2 days and it seemed stable and nice.
- Support for PCI SATA and SCSI boards is currently disabled on PowerMac G4s due to some problems, but will reappear some time in the future.
- People registering MorphOS 2.x at the show were given a personal CD with MorphOS+key in it in a special box. Those already registered could buy the limited edition box (a box with the QBox character and... "a box") and printed CD for 5 Euro. I got mine with signatures from the team members Frank and Mark...

In other news:
- There were various presentations. Carsten Siegner showed his Magical Ink vector graphics program that is shaping up very nicely. He also showed FireWire stack Helios developments and the usage of Bluethooth keyboard and mouse in MorphOS. Stefan 'Kronos' Kleinheinrich showed the new Ambient panels with true transparency support and with the possibility to create MUI classes similar to the .sbar modules (ScreenBar modules) to populate them.
- there were overall about 60 visitors and some 45 brought computers with them. There were mainly "NG" systems, about a dozen AmigaOS 4 machines and between 20 and 30 MorphOS machines. The event was very nice and I wich to thank the organizers. I had quite some nice time chatting with a few guys and in particular with Mark and Frank who had to bear me for a few hours and during dinner as well... But we had a few beers as well.

A few videos if you still haven't seen them:
http://amition.de/bb.html
http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2010-11-00025-DE.html

Well, enough for now, as usual it turns out that I write more than I would expect...

Kind regards,
Andrea

Edit: typo

[ Edited by guruman on 2010/11/17 1:24 ]

> R300 and R400 could introduce Shaders and T&L

T&L has already been supported in Radeons since R100, and R200 added support for pixel shader up to version 1.4.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform%2C_clipping%2C_and_lighting#Usefulness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_shader#Hardware

> and thus OpenGL 2.1 compatibility

Yes, OpenGL 2.1 needs pixel shader version 2.0+, which is not supported by Radeons prior to R300.

> Support for PCI SATA and SCSI boards is currently disabled on PowerMac G4s
> due to some problems, but will reappear some time in the future.

Yes, supposedly in MorphOS 2.8.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7464&forum=11&post_id=78798#78798

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But have pixel shaders 1.4 ever been implemented on anything that is not Windows? Basically, they are part of DirectX8.1 and not of OpenGL 1.3, and R200 were OGL 1.3 compliant. On Windows there were OpenGL extensions using the shaders, but they were for sure using the underlining Windows drivers... Did such features ever land on other OSes like Linux and MacOSX?
But anyway, I am quite proud that this not so short report caused only a few clarifications after your scrutiny... (just jokin', you know!)
On the other hand I would have hoped that almost one hour of lost sleep would have resulted in a bit more feedback, considering there is actually quite some material in it!

Kind regards,
Andrea

> have pixel shaders 1.4 ever been implemented on anything that is not Windows?
> [...] Did such features ever land on other OSes like Linux and MacOSX?

It's probably been Windows-only.

> R200 were OGL 1.3 compliant.

...and OpenGL 1.4 :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon#Processor_generations

> I would have hoped that almost one hour of lost sleep would have resulted in
> a bit more feedback, considering there is actually quite some material in it!

Most of it had been covered before in other threads I think.

Wow! Thank you all (especially Guruman)for the great news. It's like an early Christmas present knowing that all that hardware developments I'd ask for (if I had to ask) and all the recently announced software is right on track.

Frank recently hinted that R400 support was eventually going to be introduced, but confirmation of this is great news. If an R200 can produce 140fps at 800x600, I can't wait to see what more powerful graphics cards can do.

The thing I can't get across to other OS users is how reassuring it is to know that the developers of your OS of choice have such a good track record of making good on their announcements.

I had my Powermac set up with a host of accessories long before 2.6 was released (and everything that I was told would be supported was - and more).

Post Genesi MorphOS has been great stuff. Thanks for the solid work guys.

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Granted, Andrea, your report was great, and one of the most detailed I've red in ages. It's a pity we focus on the information given, and forget that someone actually put it all together!

Meh, I didn't want to sound like a spoiled brat! I was just suprised that there wasn't much discussion as there would have been in the good ol' times. I guess we are more satisfied with what we already have nowadays, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. And as Andreas correctly pointed out, much of the information was more or less already in the known.

Kind regards,
Andrea

No Andrea,
That was a great post. Comfirmation of some things just hinted at, great pictures, good job.
Thanks again.

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ummm Genesi did ALOT to help morphos development. so dont make uneducated statements please.