Warp3D
| Developer(s) | Sam Jordan, Hans-Joerg Frieden, Thomas Frieden, Hans De Ruiter |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 53.22 / May 22, 2013 |
| Operating system | AmigaOS |
| Type | API |
| License | Closed source |
| Website |
Warp3D was a project originally run by Haage & Partner in 1998, that aimed to provide a standard API which would enable programmers to access, and therefore use, 3D hardware on the Amiga.[1]
Its design was similar to that of both the Picasso96 graphics card drivers and operated in a similar fashion to the 3dfx Glide API, which provided a uniform and standardised way for programmers to create software for the 3D graphics cards that were available at the time.[1]
It was hoped that the creation of this API would not only encourage the development and release of more 3D graphics cards, but also move away from the situation where a new piece of hardware had been developed with no software available to run on it. If the particular piece of software used the Warp3D API (enabled through a shared library), any current or newly developed hardware would be able to be used.[1]
In 2014, it was announced that Warp3D is now jointly owned by British company, A-EON Technology Ltd. On April 1st 2015 A-EON Technology subsequently released Warp3D for RadeonHD (Southern Islands chipset) through their Amiga App Store, AMIStore.
In March 2016, A-EON Technology Ltd announced that they had developed the new Warp3D Nova featuring support for Shaders [2]
Running Requirements
Warp3D requires the following in order to work properly
- An AmigaOS compatible system with CyberGraphX or Picasso96, containing:
- At least a 040 processor with FPU for AmigaOS versions predating 4.0
- A PowerPC CPU for AmigaOS 4.0+
- Optionally PowerPC supported on WarpOS[1]
- Any of these graphics cards:
- CyberVision 3D
- CyberVision PPC
- BlizzardVision PPC[3]
- Any 3Dfx Voodoo card
- ATI Rage 128
- ATI Radeon R100, R200
- ATI RadeonHD Southern Islands graphics cards
It also requires 3D hardware to be present, and will not run with graphics cards that are 2D only, or AGA, ECS or OCS.[4]
Other implementations
Alain Thellier created open source clone called Wazp3D.[5] MorphOS includes a Warp3D implementation known as Goa3D Graphics Library developed by Nicolas Sallin.[6]
References
- 1 2 3 4 "What is Warp3D". 2006. Retrieved 14 June 2010.
- ↑ "Introducing Warp3D Nova" (PDF). A-EON Technology Ltd. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
- ↑ "Warp3D 3.0 Read Me". 27 March 2007. Retrieved 12 June 2010.
- ↑ "Warp3D 4.0 Read Me". 27 March 2007. Retrieved 12 June 2010.
- ↑ "Wazp3D". Retrieved 17 July 2010.
- ↑ "Goa3D Graphics Library". Retrieved 17 July 2010.