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- New to AVS. Can someone enlighten my understanding?
Archive: New to AVS. Can someone enlighten my understanding?
Sherwin Maxawow
6th January 2007 14:20 UTC
New to AVS. Can someone enlighten my understanding?
Recently I had something strange happen to my Geforce graphics card, which just stopped working for some reason. So I have been having to use my very weak on board graphics card which isn't able to run visualizations like Milkdrop which I have always preferred over AVS.
Due to my little break away from using a decent graphics card, I've been starting to discover AVS like I never have before in the past. Perhaps that is because the last time I visit AVS Land, I was using a less powerful CPU. Since then I have upgraded to a much faster Dual Core chip, as well as twice the ram as before and a new more advanced motherboard. Though I am not sure how much the new board and extra ram helped out, if at all. But either way I was amazed at how much nicer it looked compared to how I remember it.
Although perhaps the visual difference I am now seeing is also partly due to the evolution in the AVS programming itself, since I am sure it has been upgraded once or twice since I last played around with it.
Whatever the case may be, I'm been genuinely surprised at what AVS has been showing me. It seems to have a very artistic quality to many of the presets, that I just find "pretty" in a kind a richer way than what Milkdrop usually shows. I only wish that it could perform the same presets in fullscreen in the same high resolution quality and smoothness of Milkdrop. That really is the only downside of AVS.
I would really appreciate it if somebody with a clear understanding of AVS would explain in a basic, simply way just why it would be so hard to make AVS compatible with direct 3D support? I have read over past posts where this was discussed, but I still need more clarity in it all....if someone could deliver that?
Another interesting question I thought would be worth asking is if there are ANY fast CPU's out their or computer systems of any kind that are capable of running AVS as smoothly and clearly as MIlkdrop in fullscreen? Or at least maybe close to it? Silicon Graphics Workstation maybe? Supercomputer chip? Or anything within a realistic price range?
I also would really appreciate if some of you would share your optimistic views regarding AVS both now in the present and looking ahead at AVS in the future. What can we expect to see in the world of AVS? Try to think out of the box on that one as best as you can, please. :)
Is it remotely possibly that programming or the architecture of computer hardware itself could ever make it easier for AVS to spread some 3D wings?
For example.....what if like Intel or some other company suddenly reinvented the wheel so to speak...by designing a new kind of chip architecture which somehow combined both the CPU with the graphics processing into one UNIFIED chip???! Or somehow they made it so there was no separation at all between what we call the CPU and the GPU, making some sort of hybrid computer!
I have no idea how plausible that idea really is or isn't.
But then again how hard in the year 2007 must it really be for AVS to incorporate direct 3D support in addition to the way it works now?
Thanks for any feedback and insights that you share.
Warrior of the Light
6th January 2007 15:01 UTC
AVS runs almost for 100% on CPU, so a newer videocard won't help you much.
AVS's future? it's open source so you can contribute to it if you like.
Downside is that AVS was programmed just to get results fast, and Justing merely made it as an hobby.
This means that the code is messy and that it is really difficult to change things (D3D, hardware support) in it without needing to re-write everything.
Since it's CPU accelerated, every pixel needs to be calculated. This means that you won't be able to get large resolutions with high framerates like with MD.
You do get full customizability though. With MD, at the end, all presets kind of look alike. With AVS you can do (almost) everything you want.
You get the best results with the fastest Intel CPU. more and faster memory helps too.
Read the quickstart guide for more. (click 'download')
Nanakiwurkz
10th January 2007 22:42 UTC
WoTL is right.
AVS is very fascinating if you take your time to learn how it works.
suggestion to learn how to code avs would be to read Pak-9's avs programming guide. its the only guide i think is simple enough but full of advanced topics to get into.
anywho welcome to the world of AVS and its people.
WildJack77
11th January 2007 10:48 UTC
But don't make AVS runs too fast on your computer. I think, the AVS preset's overall FPS must be on 25-45 value.
Mr_Nudge
11th January 2007 13:40 UTC
Originally posted by WildJack77
But don't make AVS runs too fast on your computer. I think, the AVS preset's overall FPS must be on 25-45 value.
idealy you want it running as fast as you can, although there's no point in having presets running faster than 60fps because most monitors don't have a refresh rate over 60hz. any faster than this and the only difference is that per point code is evaluated faster so everything thats framerate dependant speeds up. the preset runs no smoother, just things move/change faster. when cpu speeds reach levels that overtake the demand from avs, and all presets start running easilly well over what they need to be, thats when the 'wait for retrace' option comes into play. that or writing presets with framerate independant coding.
the issue isn't making presets run too fast, at least not yet, for the moment it's making them run fast enough.
jheriko
12th January 2007 17:42 UTC
Re: New to AVS. Can someone enlighten my understanding?
Originally posted by Sherwin Maxawow
I would really appreciate it if somebody with a clear understanding of AVS would explain in a basic, simply way just why it would be so hard to make AVS compatible with direct 3D support?
The is no basic or simple way you can really understand it without learning an enormous pile of things.
Here is a watered-down analogy instead:
Consider AVS to be like a house, somebody built that house but neglected to draw any designs or blueprints. All there is is a few notes scribbled on some post-it notes.
Now, we want to use Direct3D (which is bad, OpenGL is much much better in too many ways for me to bother listing...) to improve AVS. This is equivalent to taking apart the house totally removing the foundations of the house and rebuilding them, then reassembling the house on top perfectly. Remember that there are no blueprints, so we would have to painstakingly measure and record everything first.
Then the question should arise: why not just build a new, better house (AVS)? Since its cheaper, quicker and you get a better house (AVS)...
One other thing to note, Milkdrop and AVS do not compare well. If you were only interested in still images (i.e. ignore framerate) then there is nothing that Milkdrop can do that AVS can't, but there is plenty that AVS can do that Milkdrop can't. In fact using this sort of comparison there is nothing that
Direct3D can do that AVS can't. i.e. AVS has a lot of functionality at the expense of being slow, the preset artist has much more control because of this. Milkdrop on the other hand sacrifices fuller functionality to fit into the hardware accelerated pattern of a DirectX application, but gets a speed boost as a result and can run in higher resolutions faster, hence looking nicer in a lot of ways.
A final point: the slowness in AVS mostly comes from evaluating custom code. Changing the renderer would not remove the slowness at all for old presets.
AVS is plenty 3d enough, check these out:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/2785883/http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/44952368/http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/19182254/ - contains probably the most advanced 3d presets that run at a watchable framerate (compared to other AVS)
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/13908660/ - tech demo of pixel shader type effects done in AVS (very slow with high quality settings)
hboy
13th January 2007 19:05 UTC
just out of curiosity, these new fancy dual- or quad-core CPUs from intel or amd might be capable of delivering quite a big performance boost, right?
jheriko
15th January 2007 13:04 UTC
Yes, but only because some components of AVS have were rewritten fairly recently to use threads, for example DM uses threads to split up its work after evaluating the code.
Most stuff does not thread however, and the time critical part can never be threaded out... consider a superscope with "c = c + 1;" per point, if this is split how does each thread know what their value of c should be?
I wouldn't use the word "big" though. The description "small but noticeable" is more approriate.
hboy
15th January 2007 17:49 UTC
fair enough. i see the point :)
MaTTFURY
16th January 2007 06:19 UTC
the answer lies here
http://www.buyafridge.com/images/fridge.gif
Sherwin Maxawow
27th January 2007 00:25 UTC
WOW....I almost had forgotten all about my post after reading the first reply to it, and I had thought nobody else would really take interest in responding further to it.
But I am glad I decided to check back and find all these very helpful and informative replies from all you people. Thanks a lot for all the feedback.
By the way, in response to the question about dual processors. I happen to have the low end Pentium D chip right now with a gig of ram, and I can tell you I see a big difference in performance compared to what I remember it looking like on my older AMD chip. I can get the AVS window almost as big as my whole desktop screen size which is at 1280 x 1024 resolution, and it runs pretty darn smooth!
But consider the fact that I am still only using the very lowest megahertz Pentium D (dual core) processor. So I can just imagine how smooth AVS must run on the high end Pentium D, or maybe one of the newer 64 bit AMD chips?
I would also like to try AVS out on one of my school's super systems which have server processors in them, one of which uses a new Itanium 2 (ass kickin) server chip inside! Now I would imagine that might run AVS pretty nicely, wouldnt you say?
Nanakiwurkz
28th January 2007 00:16 UTC
you know. i would recommend testing for a nasty little bug in pentium processors called the F-div bug. if you have it. it means your processor is flawed. go to soft.tahionic.com to get the testing tool called thebug.exe
hboy
2nd February 2007 07:33 UTC
64-bit does not help. AVS only requires more and more MHz.