Subject: Reply to Steve Cox

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 93 16:03:03 EDT

I agree that SuperScape is powerful, however a lot of that stuff can be done
in Rend386.  If somebody could design a more powerful object format, as well
as texture-mapping, (which shouldn't be too hard seeing the Metal and Glass
textures) Rend386 could be equally powerful.

A lot of those features that you mentioned were not in the demo I saw.  Maybe
that's because I've only seen v1.1, but I still have one reservation about
SuperScape - it's written by the same guys who wrote VRS, and VRS is, well, a
piece of dung.  When it did actually load on my system, it didn't work right.
 On a friend's computer, it would save but not load.  Richard la Bonte, a
person who used VRS1.0 all the time, could not get VRS2.0 working correctly,
such as sound (Add that to R386!), and the animation was the worst I've ever
seen.  Not to mention that the overall graphic quality was terrible.

With a little work, a freeware-type development system could work better than
$8500.  Oh, yes, there's that too - the price.  And the system requirements -
SS requires at LEAST a 486DX-33 with VGA for SLOW performance.  To get
anywhere decent you need a DX2-66 with TIGA.  (TIGA boards cost a few hundred
dollars.)  And SS doesn't allow you to program your own interface, it doesn't
(to my knowledge) hook up to any external hardware besides a Force Ball
(since when is that actively immersive!) and the SCL (SuperScape Command
Language) for control is a pain to learn.  (Might as well use LISP with a
concussion!)

In conclusion, although the samples you've probably seen with SuperScape are
impressive, it would take a second mortgage and a few years to do with
SuperScape what would take a C compiler and a couple weeks with R386.

(Are you reading this, Bernie?)

                                 -Joshua Shagam

8)

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From: [email-masked] (Daniel D. Roscigno)
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 93 12:23:00 -0400

I have a friend with an old powerglove.  He says that there 
used to be a screen that went over the TV screen to use the
glove with.  He no longer has the screen,  what exactly is needed
(other than the rewiring ) to use a power~rglove with REND?