| Developer(s) | Hypercube Engineering, Monkey Byte Development |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 4.2 / 2005 |
| Operating system | AmigaOS, MS-DOS, Windows, MacOS |
| Platform | Amiga, IBM PC, Macintosh |
| Type | Scenery generator |
| License | Proprietary |
VistaPro is 3D scenery generator for the Amiga, Macintosh, MS-DOS, and Microsoft Windows. It was written by John Hinkley as the follow-up to the initial version, Vista. [1] [2] The about box describes it as "a 3-D landscape generator and projector capable of accurately displaying real-world and fractal landscapes." It was published by Virtual Reality Labs and developed by Hypercube Engineering. [3] [1] The latest versions were published and developed by Monkey Byte Development. [4]
Vista operates similarly to a ray tracer in that light paths are generated. The user specifies light sources, and camera angles. The ground may be colored to create different ground styles. Vista has water, tree and cloud effects, making some images almost photorealistic. The ground itself may either be generated from a random (or user inputted) number, or it may use DEM landscape files for real-world views, the software having come with a number of maps of Mars and Earth. [5] [6]
Vista can load and save output images in PCX, BMP, JPG and Targa file formats. PCX files can also be imported as elevations and ground colors to allow third-party creation of landscapes in other image editors.
Trees can be placed on landscapes as either 2D or 3D objects. In 2D, the trees always face the camera and are fast to generate. 3D trees are created using fractals and can be given a variable bending of the branches to make them look more complicated.
For Amiga:
For MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows:
For Macintosh:
The Amiga version of Vista works on all models of Amiga, however due to the low processor speeds generation of landscapes take a long time to complete. It was not unusual for a landscape generation to take several hours on a stock 68000 based computer. Later versions, for 32-bit Amigas, support the MC68881/68882 FPU, speeding up rendering considerably when such a chip is present.
The PC version runs in MS-DOS for the earlier versions, and from 4.00 onwards it runs on all versions of 32-bit Microsoft Windows.
Its most famous use was for the landscape used in the opening credits of The Chart Show. This sequence involved a silver spaceship flying through a series of valleys that had been generated using VistaPro (Vista did not support generating animations until the Pro version was released). Vista was also used (both PC and Amiga versions) for the book by Arthur C. Clarke called The Snows of Olympus, a picture book about terraforming Mars. [25] [26] [27] The 1994 album Landscapes by Susumu Hirasawa's experimental group Shun was inspired by and used images created in the software. [28]
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, most commonly acronymed as POV-Ray, is a cross-platform ray-tracing program that generates images from a text-based scene description. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David Kirk Buck and Aaron A. Collins for Amiga computers. There are also influences from the earlier Polyray raytracer because of contributions from its author, Alexander Enzmann. POV-Ray is free and open-source software, with the source code available under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license.
Deluxe Paint, often referred to as DPaint, is a bitmap graphics editor created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts and published for the then-new Amiga 1000 in November 1985. A series of updated versions followed, some of which were ported to other platforms. An MS-DOS release with support for the 256 color VGA standard became popular for creating pixel graphics in video games in the 1990s.
GS/OS is an operating system developed by Apple Computer for its Apple IIGS personal computer. It provides facilities for accessing the file system, controlling input/output devices, loading and running program files, and a system allowing programs to handle interrupts and signals. It uses ProDOS as its primary filing system. GS/OS is a component of Apple IIGS System Software versions 4.0 through 6.0.1, and was the first true 16-bit operating system for the IIGS.
Microsoft Paint is a simple raster graphics editor that has been included with all versions of Microsoft Windows. The program opens, modifies and saves image files in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats. The program can be in color mode or two-color black-and-white, but there is no grayscale mode. For its simplicity and wide availability, it rapidly became one of the most used Windows applications, introducing many to painting on a computer for the first time.
Raster graphics editors can be compared by many variables, including availability.
Synfig Studio is a free and open-source vector-based 2D animation software. It is created by Robert Quattlebaum with additional contributions by Adrian Bentley.
PC Paintbrush was a graphics editing software created by the ZSoft Corporation in 1984 for computers running the MS-DOS operating system.
NeoPaint is a raster graphics editor for Windows and MS-DOS. It supports several file formats including JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, and TIFF. The developer, NeoSoft, advertises NeoPaint as "being simple enough for use by children while remaining powerful enough for the purposes of advanced image editing".
Micro Machines is a series of video games featuring toy cars, developed by Codemasters and published on multiple platforms. The series is based on the Micro Machines toy line of miniature vehicles.
Stella is a computer program available in three versions. It was created by Robert Webb of Australia. The programs contain a large library of polyhedra which can be manipulated and altered in various ways.
Navisworks is a 3D design review package for Microsoft Windows.
The Master Genealogist (TMG) is genealogy software originally created by Bob Velke for Microsoft DOS in 1993, with a version for Microsoft Windows released in 1996. Data entry was customized through the use of user-defined events, names, and relationship types. Official support for TMG ceased at the end of 2014. Informal support continues through a number of online user groups.
This article deals with productivity software created for the Amiga line of computers and covers the AmigaOS operating system and its derivatives AROS and MorphOS. It is a split of the main article, Amiga software.
AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions of AmigaOS required the Motorola 68000 series of 16-bit and 32-bit microprocessors. Later versions were developed by Haage & Partner and then Hyperion Entertainment. A PowerPC microprocessor is required for the most recent release, AmigaOS 4.
Fractal-generating software is any type of graphics software that generates images of fractals. There are many fractal generating programs available, both free and commercial. Mobile apps are available to play or tinker with fractals. Some programmers create fractal software for themselves because of the novelty and because of the challenge in understanding the related mathematics. The generation of fractals has led to some very large problems for pure mathematics.
iClone is a real-time 3D animation and rendering software program. Real-time playback is enabled by using a 3D videogame engine for instant on-screen rendering.
Retargetable graphics is a device driver API mainly used by third-party graphics hardware to interface with AmigaOS via a set of libraries. The software libraries may include software tools to adjust resolution, screen colors, pointers, and screenmodes. It will use available hardware and will not extend the capabilities in any way.
Sysinfo is a shareware program written completely in Assembler for the Motorola 68k equipped Amiga computers to benchmark system performance. Sysinfo shows which version of system software is present in ROM, which hardware is present, and which operating mode the hardware uses.
3D Manufacturing Format or 3MF is an open source file format standard developed and published by the 3MF Consortium.
