Is Opal Vision any good

[amigakid]

I feel kinda like a doofus cause i been in the Amiga scene since 87 and have used too much stuff (software and Hardware wise) to begin to mention, but one thing I came across in an A4000 that I recently restored is an Opal Vision card. i know this is a 24-bit 2MB card and the tech details on it, and I remember vaguely seeing advertisements in magazines but have never used one. So it is fully functional and I was wondering if it is worth a darn or not, and if like Opal Paint?? and the other graphics software (which i do not have by the way) was anygood. Anyone have this board or remember using it, and if so is it worth keeping in this A4000 or should i sell it??? Cheers :-D :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[Brian]

Since it's not an RTG card I'd say it's worth very little.

[Amiduffer]

Here's a review, if you can locate the software to go with it. Link (http://www.cucug.org/amiga/amiinfo/reviews/OpalVision.txt)

and the ubiquitous BBOH Link (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=485)

For a short time, I had one in my A2000 and it was quite a change! I had a beautiful screen wallpaper for once, and the paint program was pretty good. It affected the workbench colors in a weird way so that icons were difficult to see (when I had the old OS2.4).

Not sure how much benefit you would get in an A4000.

[amigakid]

Thanks. Guess I will just play wit it for a few and try to find d/l of the software it originally came with. As for keeping it... not sure really. Oh well lets try to have fun with it:) :-D :-D

[amigadave]

Never used the paint program myself, but some users have stated that Opal-Paint was the best, or one of the best Amiga paint programs ever written at the time.

I think there might be some later drivers for it to make it compatible with CyberGraphX or Picasso96 as an RTG, but I am not sure about this. Even if true, I doubt that it would make a very good RTG card.

Not worth much. (unless you could come across one of the elusive, and maybe non-existant, Opal Roaster Chips that could supposedly do "Real Time" special effects without having to wait for rendered frames. I knew of a guy near me that claimed to have one, but I never saw it and he made some other claims that sounded a bit far fetched, so I never believed that he actually had the "Roaster".

[McVenco]

Here's another OpalVision (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160129703610)

I think the seller is rating it a bit too valuable... :-)

[countzero]

BAH ! that seller doesn't know what he's selling. I sold these boards for cheese and cakes.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150120763062

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150122797554

[cecilia]

Opal Vision has quite a lovely paint program - i had lots of fun playing around with it.

and it worked with IFX in that I could make something in IFX and Render it out to the Opal Card.

I had that in one of my 2000's and I considered it an improvement.

[T3000]

Opal Paint rocked. Also ImageMaster could retarget and draw directly to the opalcard. A lot of paint and 3d programs benifited from a 24bit frame buffer. Had one in my A2000 with a gvp030 16 meg ram, 2mg chip and a vlab card. Nice paint box.
The Opal video system was suppose to give the Toaster some competition, but Centar Development never really got going.

[amigakid]

Thanks for the replies you ll, guess I will play with it for a bit anyways. Cheers

[murple]

Ive got the full disk set for OpalVision including any drivers, the paint program, and some multi-disk karate game for it. I use it as the primary display output on my A2000 and it looks fine. I havent used many of its special features yet though, so I can't comment on it as anything other than an RGB display card.

[T3000]

Opal paint was, at the time, the best you could get for a paint package. Several graphic programs could draw directly to the Opal buffer. Imagemaster works well with it. Had one in my A2000/030/16ram/2chip. Also had a V-Lab card in the same system. Then came RTG cards which made the OpalVision card obsolete. Still, a good card for 24bit paint/video frame graphics. Kinda reminded me of DCTV in a way, 'cept inside the case and not a dangling box. I believe the entire OpalVision software (http://aminet.net/search?query=opal) drivers/paint package and oodles of other progs/scripts for Opal can be found on Aminet.

[murple]

Cool. Hadnt looked for Opal stuff on there... maybe I'll play with some of these before deciding if I want to keep or sell the card since I just got a flicker fixer board that goes in the same slot.