Xenon's Shorts Any of you who have ever read BYTE magazine have probably observed Jerry Pournelle's irritating column, where he yaks on about yet another 6-platter CD-ROM or multi-Terabyte hard disk thingy some obscure 'vendor' has sent him gratis in the hope of getting a cheap endorsement. The bad news is that this article (and perhaps some more in the future) adopts a similar informal style, where Xenon lets you rummage around in his 'shorts' (ooh no missus, no!) and share some of his experiences with recent Falcon stuff. The good news is that the piece doesn't emanate from Chaos Manor, Xenon's wife isn't called Roberta, and he is not currently advising any top-level NASA council on the correct way to install Windows For Workgroups in a zero-gravity environment. Anyway, that's enough ranting for the moment, here's the 'stuff' hinted at earlier. P'd Off If, like me, you are at the point where the lack of Atari support for the Falcon is really peeing you off, take heart. Like you, I am fed up with being told of products which are eternally on the horizon but which consistently fail to materialise. Although the manufacturer has clearly no intention to promote the machine now or at any other time, one of the Falcon's innate strengths has won through yet again. I'm talking about software compatibility, of course. Now you may think that there isn't much use in running old ST software on a Falcon, but think again. As long-established ST titles are upgraded, many are being enhanced for newer machines. This means that most new (non-games) releases have something extra for Falcon owners. A good example of this is ImageCopy 3, one of the best graphic utilities on the ST, now with enough features to blow most of its rivals out of the water. You will probably have seen ImageCopy at some stage, and may even have read full views in the glossies. Most of these rightly praise the performance of the package on the ST. But the benefits to Falcon owners are also considerable, if you dig a little deeper. First of all, the file formats supported have been expanded to handle JPG. This feature, combined with the use of the Brainstorm JPEG Decoder (JPEGD.PRG), means that you can load and display these super-compressed True Colour images using the DSP chip, at speeds rivalling a 486/66 PC. Thus, if you have lots of True Colour TIF and TGA images taking up space on your hard drive, you can batch-convert the lot into JPG format files which occupy 20% of the space of the originals at 100% quality. Greater compression can be achieved, but this does degrade the image somewhat. It appears that ImageCopy 3 is unusual in supporting this level of quality, as most utilities seem to insist on some loss of detail. The manual suggests that this is achieved by only using part of the JFIF compression process, missing out the final 'quantisation' which reduces the detail in some areas of the picture. It should be remembered, though, that photo-realistic images such as scanned pictures and video grabs benefit most from JPG conversion, others such as cartoon and hand-drawn images do not come out so well. One problem with True Colour images on the Falcon is the limited size of the screen in 16-bit modes. This is a greater problem with VGA, the maximum size (of my setup) being 512 x 384 using the screen expander BlowUp030. JPGs at this resolution fall slightly short of good, as do most other True Colour pictures. Luckily, ImageCopy does such a good job of dithering and adapting the image on a 256-colour display, you might never need to use the 16-bit screen again! I'm not exaggerating here, it really is that good. Even without any dithering, the quality of the display is awesome, and with various dither options combined with the 'adaptive' palette setting, it's almost impossible to see any colour flaws at all, assuming you can wait a bit longer for the final image. Using a 256-colour mode means that you can also use much higher resolutions, 800 x 600 being a good bet for all but the largest of pictures. TV & RGB monitor display is also enhanced, going automatically into overscan mode when displaying a full-screen image. This gives you a 16-bit screen sized at 768 x 480 (I think!), and is probably the quickest configuration of all in terms of sheer speed of display. Now all that blurb about screen modes and colour depths may only appeal to hard-core image freaks, but what does it mean to you? Well, ImageCopy 3 now also has a slideshow facility, which you just point at a directory of pictures and let loose. It will display all images regardless of type, with a variable delay and keyboard lock option. On the Falcon, this feature will rip through a bunch of JPGs at lightning speed, transforming your machine into a self-running image album. This feature is a great way of setting up a self-running display in much the same way as a Kodak Photo CD machine runs through your holiday snaps. It's also one of the best performing picture printers I have seen on any platform, supports enough image formats to be the only conversion utility you need, and comes with an excellent quality manual. And no, I don't work for the ST Club. Backward Bother If, like me, you've had problems getting Populous II to run on the Falcon, panic ye not missus. The latest version of Backward, the ST emulator, does the job a lot better than its predecessors. Previous versions appeared to run it, but I found that certain sound effects (the Whirlpool for instance), caused the whole thing to crash. But v2.70B appears to cure that problem. To get this mega-game running on your bird, just use the settings below. You can even install Pop II onto the hard disk for ultra-fast loading, and use the Backward MiniDesk to start POP2.TOS. The only drawback (if you can call it that) is that the whole game motors along at an increased speed, but you soon get used to it. Enjoy! Backward 2.70B Settings for Populous II Frequency: 16mhz Blitter Freq: 8MHz Caches: None Errors: STmode Exceptions Table: Moved DMA Sound Excep: Timer A TOS Patches: On Memory: 3 Meg Internal Speaker: Off Hard Disk: On GEM: Off What Else? There are quite a few exciting products on the horizon, and a couple of real stormers. Keep your eyes open for APEXMedia, which appears to be the long-awaited ChromaStudio 24 in a new form and, if the spec sheet floating around the Bulletin Boards is anything to go by, is even better than its ancestor. Games players will no doubt be cheered by the imminent arrival of Zero-5, a space combat game which features Falcon enhancements, and a Falcon-only version of the rather weird-sounding Robinson's Requiem. There are even a couple of freebies to be had in the shape of the Black Scorpion FLI/FLC/FLH player APEXFLC.TTP and the German MPEG player MPEGDSP.TTP, both of which are the best yet for playing industry-standard animations and digitised video sequences. Little by little, these products are elevating the Falcon's prospects to new heights. Well, that's it for this issue. Next time, Xenon will be back with a clean pair of 'shorts' (ooh gawd, vicar), and hopefully even more good news for dedicated followers of Falcon. If this really were Chaos Manor, I would end the piece by outlining Xenon's plans for the next month, which would invariably involve numerous trips round the USA carrying 3 or more 'portable' PCs, progressing novel- collaborations with everyone from Umberto Eco to James Herbert, trudging round dozens of propeller- head science conventions in a pair of vinyl flip-flops and telling NASA what shape their rockets should be. Back in the real world, Xenon will be out of the country for a spell, chairing a National Security Council Committee seminar on the alleged abduction of Whitley Streiber's guinea pig by extra-terrestrial beings. The Goodies ImageCopy3, FaST Club 01602-455250, £29.99 inc. BlowUp030, System Solutions 01753-832212, £14.99. APEXMedia, Titan Designs 0121-414-1630, £119.99 inc. Zero-5, Caspian Software, Block 1A, Lee Valley Technopark, Ashley Road, London N17 5LN £24.99 Robinsons Requiem 030, Daze Marketing 0171-372-7453, £32.99 Backward 2.70B is Shareware. APEXFLC.TTP and MPEGDSP.TTP are freely available on most Falcon BBS Disclaimer Any evidence of Frankie Howerd-esque asides within this article simply reflects Xenon's admiration for the late genius, and in no way indicates that he sometimes writes for ST Format. Well, not on a regular basis, anyway. [1,401 Words]