Graphics in VGA?

CannibalRobotics

Are there any vector graphics objects for VGA mode.
Looks like everything in VGA is limited to charactors. I want to draw arcs, lines and light up pixels in color·on a on a 640x480 VGA display.

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VIRAND

I think the question may really be: "Is there a VGA tile driver object equivalent to the TV driver object?"
(which would be compatible with the vector GRAPHICS object)
and if so then I will ask the same thing.

The HUB RAM can only barely hold up to around 512x384 bitmap,
which I CAN display on a high quality TV video monitor,
by using TV driver and
by tweaking the GRAPHICS driver parameters.
This requires combining the onscreen and offscreen buffer memory,
and using 2-color bitmap within each tile,
meaning that more colors are available as long as
they appear in different tiles.

Now there is another trick that has been used in some 1980's computer games,
where the tiles are used like characters and bitmaps at the same time, and when
there is nothing on the screen, all the tiles are "spacebar" characters. And then
when you plot something, you put a new tile under it first UNLESS that has already been done.
That way, you can get high resolution as long as you don't need to plot too many pixels,
which would quickly use up all the available memory.
(This trick is NOT supported by the GRAPHICS object.)
I think this trick has been used here before to get really high resolution VGA graphics.
I think one example may be an "ACARS" (The GUI from the Star Trek NG Enterprise) that someone made here:
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=715508

Beau Schwabe

CannibalRobotics,

Check this thread out...

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=606957

...This was more of a learning curve for me, so it's never made it to the OBEX.

There is another VGA graphics driver I can't remember the name of that allows you use the standard NTSC/PAL graphics object as a "picture in picture" sort of view.

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Beau Schwabe

IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.

Marc Gebauer

This is the VGA driver with picture in picture graphics using standard graphics driver

http://forums.parallax.com/forums/default.aspx?f=25&m=154758&p=1&ord=a

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mpark

Also see RossH's work on VGA SpaceWar and BattleZone:
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=739206

I believe he's doing the trick that VIRAND described.