VistaPro is 3D

scenery generator A scenery generator is software used to create landscape images, 3D model, 3D models, and Animation, animations. These programs often use procedural generation to generate the landscapes. If not using procedural generation to create the landsca ...

for the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

, and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It was written by John Hinkley as the follow-up to the initial version, Vista. The

about box In computing, a dialog box (also simply dialog) is a graphical control element in the form of a small window that communicates information to the user and prompts them for a response. Dialog boxes are classified as "Modal window, modal" or "mo ...

describes it as "a 3-D landscape generator and projector capable of accurately displaying real-world and

fractal landscapes In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as i ...

." It was published by ''Virtual Reality Labs'' and developed by ''Hypercube Engineering''. The latest versions were published and developed by ''Monkey Byte Development''.

Graphics Generation

Vista operates similarly to a

ray tracer Ray or RAY may refer to: Fish * Ray (fish), any cartilaginous fish of the superorder Batoidea * Ray (fish fin anatomy), the bony or horny spine on ray-finned fish Science and mathematics * Half-line (geometry) or ray, half of a line split at an ...

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 Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can b ...

. The ground itself may either be generated from a random (or user inputted) number, or it may use

DEM DEM was the ISO 4217 currency code for the Deutsche Mark, former currency of Germany Computing * Digital elevation model, a digital representation of ground-surface topography or terrain ** .dem, a common extension for USGS DEM files * Discrete ...

landscape files for real-world views, the software having come with a number of maps of

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

and

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. Vista can load and save output images in

PCX PCX, standing for ''PiCture eXchange'', is an image file format developed by the now-defunct ZSoft Corporation of Marietta, Georgia, United States. It was the native file format for PC Paintbrush and became one of the first widely accepted DOS i ...

, BMP,

JPG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

and

Targa Targa or TARGA may refer to: Car racing events *Targa Adelaide, in Australia * Targa Canada West, in British Columbia *Targa Florio, in Sicily, Italy, 1906–1977 * Targa Florio Rally, in Sicily, Italy, from 1978 * Targa High Country, in Victoria ...

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.

Releases

For

: *Vista v1.00 *Vista v1.20 (1990, reviewed by Amiga Format issue 15, released on cover disk of Amiga Format issue 33) *Vista v1.21 (PAL, 1991) *VistaPro v1.0 (released in 1991) *VistaPro v1.022 PAL (1991-07-09) *VistaPro v2.02 (released in 1992) *VistaPro v3.0 (released in 1993 with

AGA Aga or AGA may refer to: Business * Architectural Glass and Aluminum (AGA), a glazing contractor, established in 1970 * AGA (automobile), , 1920s German car company * AGA AB, , a Swedish company, the originator of the AGA cooker * AGA Rangemaster ...

support) *VistaLite v3.01 (version for smaller memory Amiga computers) *VistaPro v3.3b *VistaPro v3.04b *VistaPro v3.05 *VistaPro v3.10o (unreleased) For

and

: *VistaPro v1.0 (released in 1992, MS-DOS) *VistaPro v3.0 (released in 1993, MS-DOS) *VistaPro v3.05 (released in 1993, MS-DOS) *VistaPro v3.12 (released in 1994, Windows) *VistaPro v4.00 (released in 1997) *VistaPro v4.11 *VistaPro v4.2.4 (released in 2004) *VistaPro Renderer v4.2 (released in 2004) For

: *VistaPro v1.08 (released in 1991) *VistaPro v3.00 (1995) *VistaPro v4.00 (2005)

Compatibility

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 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

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

for the earlier versions, and from 4.00 onwards it runs on all versions of 32-bit

Popular culture

Its most famous use was for the landscape used in the opening credits of ''

The Chart Show ''The Chart Show'' (also known as ''The ITV Chart Show'' between 1989 and 1998) is a weekly syndicated music video programme, which ran in the United Kingdom from April 1986 until August 1998, with revivals in 2003 and 2008–2009. ''The Char ...

.'' 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 Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. Clarke co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A ...

called ''The Snows of Olympus'', a picture book about terraforming Mars. The 1994 album ''Landscapes'' by

Susumu Hirasawa is a Japanese musician and composer. He is well known for his work for the films of director Satoshi Kon and the animated adaptations of the Berserk (manga), ''Berserk'' manga series, alongside his work as a solo artist and as a member of P-Mode ...

's experimental group Shun was inspired by and used images created in the software.

Notes and references

External links

VistaPro 4.11 Review

Review
in

Shadis ''Shadis'' is an independent gaming magazine that was published in 1990–1998 by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG). It initially focused on role-playing games. Publication history Shadis was conceived and started by Jolly Blackburn as an inde ...