Beam Racing - VGA from Scratch - Part 5

This video is a little different, I introduce the concept of beam racing as a technique to do more interesting things with video hardware. This ended up being more of a show and tell with only a little bit of circuit building to make the functionality more suitable.

I wonder if watching this video will realign some peoples expectations for what a basic display circuit is capable of. I’ll revisit some these techniques and demos as we add new hardware to see how far we can take them.

0:00 Introduction
1:22 Demo: WibbleX
2:22 Demo: Pseudo Parallax
5:17 Tweaking the Circuit
7:58 Demo: WibbleY
9:05 Demo: Cylinder
10:35 Demo: Candle Flame
12:26 Demo: Race Track
13:58 Outro

[UsagiElectric]

Dude, the race track demo at the end is absolutely stunning! You're an absolute wizard, very excellent work!

[Sovvyy]

There's something primally human about starting from tabula rasa, and seeing a vision come into being is very satisfying (even as a spectator). I get a similar sense for 8-bit games and how they can be made with so little (by today's standards anyway?), but being able to trace it back to basic components on a breadboard is just... nuts. Enjoying the epic. Great work!

[protonjinx]

To bitmap is human, to beam race is divine.

[genxtech]

Very nice, It's amazing what you can do with so little, it's obvious your coding history has served you well here! Can't wait to see how this progresses

[mcg]

Now all you need is a TTL blitter with line drawing capabilities and a beam racing co-processor, maybe call it copper! Amazing build and video!

[bobfish]

Wow James. That parallax effect blew mw away - And then I you showed the bendy road. Top marks. I remember trying to code similar effect (although without the bends) on the Acorn Electron back in the day in BBC Basic just by swapping the colour pallets between frames of the chunks of the kerbs. I was quite proud I could get a effect of sorts, but it was quite chunky and limited what I could do with the rest of the screen. Looking forward to the next steps in this series.

[TheRealBobHickman]

Fantastic stuff, James. Takes me right back to my demoscene days.

[your_utube]

If there is such a thing as the Sharman effect, then it is quite clearly visible here. I see the tint of a smile and the glee in your eye, and then I know that this is someone who is enjoying every second of what he is doing to the nth degree.
Writing those assembly routines is something though. As a high-level developer doing my bit in Javascript, I am absolutely spoiled by not having to think down that deep, and the last time I had to worry about things down to the bare metal (well, almost) was in the '80s with my ZX SPectrum 48k, which you as Brits grew up with, of course. James, thanks for your kind nature and sense of community, and your ingenuity. I agree with LysisofPie below, and add that watching you is poetry in motion (is that a pun?)

[thorstenwestheiderphotogra]

I share the coding experience, having written programs in 6502 and 68000 in assembly language myself, but never fully understood the hardware side of things. Your series is filling that gap and I feel inspired to go and try to build something like this myself. Thanks for the inspiration, you're doing an outstanding job

[fabianmerki]

omg. your video serie is just phenomenal! and the result in hardware is truely outstanding. Congrats
hopefully way more people will find you / this. you deserved it.

[movaxh]

Amazing. Knowing how the hardware works, shines a lot of light into why the 16-bit era computers games, looked the way they did. They used scrolling techniques to achieve all these nice graphics, as CPU was not fast enough to recalculate entire frame on each frame. Really cool. Trick to code, but once done, is cool, and very smooth. The second to last demo with the race track was amazing. Once we have full VGA resolution and full 24-bit outputs, this is going to be really good.

[dioneto]

each demo blew me away, when i thought i couldn't get any more surprised, you completely destroyed my expectations, the race track demo got me flabbergasted. When i started the series i could never imagine we could see such amazing demos in the fifth episode, great work, you are very skillful.

[junebug]

Wow! These videos are stellar. I wound up here while trying to learn assembly for the c64 lol, and someday I hope to write such killer demos and have such a deep knowledge of hardware to do something similar on various systems.

[andymouse]

Fantastic stuff, first screen you showed looked exactly like mains hum ! such silky smooth animation I can't wait for the next upload....cheers.

[GodmanchesterGoblin]

"I wonder if watching this video will realign some peoples expectations for what a basic display circuit is capable of." Yes! This was fascinating. At the start of the VGA project I said I would probably learn something new. This was it! Thanks for such an interesting episode. I can at last start to understand how so much was possible with relatively simple processors 40 or more years ago.

[bknesheim]

This brought back some old C64 memories, :-)

[MaxintRD]

Amazing work James! Thank you for sharing.
In every single one of your videos there is something I didn't know yet. I'd like to say I learn something new each time, but even if I follow your videos frame by frame, I wouldn't even be able to reproduce some of the magic you're showing off here.... Still they are very inspiring and I definitely want to make my own simple VGA module. Some day...

[cskilbeck]

Outstanding, love the Pole Position clone - once the multiple playfields are in you're nearly there

[ZacCrawforth]

James, I've just caught up to 'real' time - having started from CPU vid 1 a few weeks back. This project is truly epic and I applaud your persistence. It's been both delightful and educational watching this all come together. Kudos!

[peterwilson]

This video turned good at the 6min mark when you had diagrams on screen. Love it. Very inspiring.