keropi wrote:

actually Unreal's software mode is quite good if you have a cpu to back it up...

Absolutely. It's a fairly amazing software renderer. But it's not that amazing compared to a Voodoo1 😁.

<3 UTGLR. I used various version of Chris' drivers with Deus Ex, makes the game look really nice.

I would argue that the TNT (which I realize you didn't mention) is better for Half-Life 1 than a Voodoo 1/2:

- 3dfx cards were only supported by way of the "OpenGL ICD/miniport driver" or whatever it was called, which was probably just an OpenGL->Glide wrapper.

- the TNT could do 32-bit color (woot, no stupid dithering - 3dfx was 16-bit only IIRC) with decent performance.

I never regretted buying a TNT instead of a 3dfx card. 3dfx reached its peak around then though, as I don't think many (if any) Glide-only games were made from that point on. Unreal and Half-Life proved that Direct3D and OpenGL were viable for hardware-accelerated 3D games, and developers realized that Glide was just a stupid vendor lock-in hook (just like EAX and PhysX :p).

Edit: I see you edited your post. I think you're probably right about Glide being the seemingly best choice for Epic at the time they were making Unreal, and I think they did realize that they needed a viable D3D and/or OGL driver in the engine as soon as it was released and legitimate non-3dfx competitors were in the market.

TNT took a major hit at 32-bit. 640x480 or 800x600 were probably what you'd run with 32-bit on a TNT. I had one myself but it has been a long time. I remember 800x600 being what I ran it at.

3dfx's problem wasn't color depth though IMO. It was the muddy filtering of Voodoo1 that sucked most. Voodoo3 has fantastic image quality, maybe better than TNT, regardless of color depth. 3dfx cards also usually were the only cards that rendered the games properly, likely because they were the Roland of the 3D cards of the time (games were developed on and for their cards).

3dfx's 16-bit color mode is also a bit different than on other cards. They do some post-processing in the RAMDAC that screenshots won't show that makes the output look a bit better. It's fast and it looks nice for those games of the time.

OpenGL to Glide wrapping wasn't as ugly as it may sound because Glide is apparently rather similar to OpenGL in various ways. 3dfx guys being ex-SGI and all, the company that came up with OpenGL.

yeah IMHO a voodoo3 was OK... Even a voodoo2/sli setup would match a tnt2/m64 card, which is not bad at all... 16/32 bit rendering for those old games was just a BIG fudge IMHO. I see it now ... run 32bit unreal.... to gain what? some dithering in shooting? bah...
those games of the era where made for 16bit displays in the mind...

Maybe nVidia's dithering sucked in 16-bit mode, but 32-bit looked much clearer in Half-Life 1.

NV did quickly build a superb OpenGL ICD. They became the clear leaders there. So I wouldn't be surprised if NV TNT became the card of choice in OpenGL games. I just can't remember the differences between Voodoo and NV cards for those games. Been too long.

I can tell you that you do not want to use a Riva 128 or Verite V2200 card for Half Life. 😁

Unreal started development in 1995 (pre-3dcard era) and its engine was almost already feature filled then (lightmaps, fake bilinear filter in software) and it only had a software renderer for a while until sometime in 1997 when the Glide AND SGL support kicked in. These two APIs were much more hyped than Direct3D and OpenGL at the time (even more than rredline), mainly because those two didn't get a marketing budget so Epic probably considered the more egotory ones first priority.

The real "house cleaning" came around Quake3's test release. Since then, the mediocre chipsets suddenly fell out of the market. Totally. The PCX2 can handle Half-Life, Unreal and Quake2 just fine at competent framerates and substituted blending, but Quake3 is the first premier chipset slaughterhouse.

PowerVR's dithering was excellent since the frames were all in a 32-bit buffer.

If you're arguing about the earliest complete OpenGL ICD card - intergraph realizm is for you 😀 1994, OpenGL 1.0 compliant, fast as Voodoo2, and big as hell. Have fun locating one!

Damn, it's cards like these that make appreciate 3dfx so much more.
Can't believe how crappy most of these games looks. Blurry as hell and it's not that kind of blur you get when running on software mode, that one is kinda sweet, but it's a really weird one!
Leileilol can you also provide screenshots of Tomb Raider 1 running on a PCX2? I would be interested in that.

What's really crazy to me is how much things changed in only a few years. Those cards that became laughable in 1998 were actually considered very nice in 1996/7. In 1996 we had DirectX 3 and Virge, in 2000 we had DirectX 7 and GeForce 2!!

It's nothing like today. I use video cards from 6 years ago today and they can still play some recent games fine! We keep getting faster and faster stuff but performance doesn't jump 10x and blow you away like it did back then.

I'm spoiled, I know. Holodeck plz. Actually, Quark's Holosuites had some more interesting programs methinks. 😁 😉

@F2bnp:

I have tried TR1 on a PCX2 , it looks OK (the game has low-res textures after all) but it's framerate sucks on a p200mmx... in the same machine with a voodoo1 is just fluid. PCX2 was like 15-20fps

Hmm sounds like those pcx2 cards were really cpu demanding.
So it's getting 20 fps maximum with low res? Damn that sucks hard. Voodoo 1 ran the game at 640x480 ( hi-res) at 30 fps at all the times on my p200 mmx.

to be fair, all powervr cards demand a strong floating point unit. it's death if you mix powervr and a non-pentium

I remember Tomb Raider looking and running nice on PCX2 but it's a DOS game, so I doubt capturing screenshots would work.

Testing GL Doom ports:

GZDoom - can not initialize
Prboom+ - can not initialize
Vavoom - very slow, white textures, 16-bit textures only

Will test Legacy and Doomsday

i have PowerVR PCX2 (Matrox M3d).

this Card is Add-in Card. (diffrent add-on card, like voodoo1/2)

PowerVR PCX2 have native API, named PowerVR SGL.

It support some games.

Virtual-on for PowerVR,

Resident Evil for PowerVR,

Purevex for PowerVR,

Enigma by KOEI,

Nirgenshultz by NEC.

it's games runs only on PowerVR Chipset. (Maybe PCX2 only)

I'm playing Virtual-on for PowerVR and PureVex for PowerVR Demo. it's Cooool. 😀

Accelated Vitrual-on Games only PowerVR Version.

and, Some Old OpenGL Games(Quake1,2...) and Unreal Engine Games Support too. but, Quality is no good. 😢

and PowerVR PCX2 Drivers is not continue.

Win9X only, Latest Refrence driver Supports Directx5, maybe.

and... Kyro 1/2 is 2d+3d VGA Card. like Voodoo3/4/5.

so, maybe it's not same PowerPCX2.

leileilol wrote:

Quake3 is the first premier chipset slaughterhouse.

That was the first game that made me realise my voodoo2 was getting old
bought a geforce 256

really? I had a voodoo sli setup with a p3/550 machine.... Q3 was ultra-fine IIRC

zrciel wrote:

Virtual-on for PowerVR,

Resident Evil for PowerVR,

unfortunately these are separate special editions of those games sold in tight places, as the original games don't have out-of-the-box support for pvr sgl (i've tried both really)

@ keropi yep @ 800x600 it was unplayable and still stuttery @ 640x480

It played fine at 800x600 with Medium Details and a P3 500. I tried it a year ago!

what? no I remember it was ultra smooth on medium and 1024x768... that was a sli setup, maybe 1x voodoo2 was slow indeed

Even 1 Voodoo2 is good enough for a smooth q3, with a k6-2 or pentium II it'll be fine as mmx is used with the driver to speed things up a bit as well, and on the k6-2's side they get 3dnow! to kick it up a bit. 😀

openarena on the other hand... it doesn't support the voodoo2 at all. damn sdl 🙁