--- Seth Galbraith <sgalbrai@...>
wrote:
> On Wed, 9 May 2001, Steven Rokiski wrote:
>
> > The reason Glide is important is that Voodoo
> series cards
> > (particularly Voodoo3's in GAteway and Dell
> "gaming" computers circa
> > 1998-1999) are a very cult-followed choice.
>
> I have a Voodoo3 and many Glide games (designed for
> Voodoo1/2) simply do
> not work with it - somewhat of a disappointment
> because the only reason I
> bought the stupid thing was because I was hoping to
> see what those games
> looked like (although not supporting the industry
> standard OpenGL API
> knocks a game's score down about 99% in my book :-)
The oldest games that were written only supported
Glide 2.0.1 or similar. The Voodoo2 choked on these
even. Not to mention that a lot of games were
rewritten for the Voodoo Rush, which effectively
breaks all the other Voodoo cards (some famously
checked to see if the card had 2d capabilities; this
broke the Banshee on up, and I bet that is what
happened to you). By this time, the games in question
were so old that it was no longer an issue.
> On the other hand I have had almost nothing but good
> experiences with the
> Voodoo3 and OpenGL games. (Obviously the 16 bit
> color limitation means
> certain effects like subtle fog in a dimly lit area
> are extra cheesy.)
> The Voodoo3 is fast compared to other cards that
> appeared at about the
> same time and it was pretty cheap.
This is why those cards were commonly shipped with PCs
for a year. Cheaper and seemingly faster than the
TNT/TNT2 family.
> (I use the Voodoo3 on my 166 Mhz Pentium on the
> theory that it's
> reasonable speed will keep that slow CPU working for
> a while longer.)
This could be a reason that some of the games didn't
work. Glide 2 and 3 windows drivers depend on knowing
the motherboard chipsets capabilities to some degree;
the Voodoo2 for instance would run on a Pentium, but
it wouldn't reach its full capabilities (triangle rate
not high enough on Pentium) until you had a PII 300.
Voodoo3 was the same.
> So just based on my small personal experiences, I
> would assume that the
> main reason to support Glide would be for the older
> Voodoo1 and Voodoo2
> 3D add-on cards.
Voodoo Banshee as well. And since BeOS is supported
by Glide, I think that is important (if it doesn't
slip under, I think BeOS has a chance in the market).
> I would also assume that people for whom the Voodoo1
> and Voodoo2 are
> better than software rendering (ignoring small
> differences like the
> pixelated textures in software and the texture size
> limitation of those
> cards.) are people who have slower computers. (i.e.
> if you have a 400 Mhz
> Pentium II and a Voodoo1, you may be better off with
> software rendering.)
The fill rate of the original Voodoo even outstrips
what would be capable on a PII 400. Not to mention
texture filtering, etc. The Voodoo2 is really what we
want to support-it has multitexturing in a single
pass, high fill rate (particularly in SLI). Its not
the best choice of the market, but its a legacy worth
supporting. The Banshee is still a viable card as
well- despite being a Voodoo2 stripped of its second
texturing unit, its higher clock speed boosts fill
rate to TNT2 levels (particularly on a card with fast
RAM).
> There's a world of difference between Voodoo3 and
> the older Voodoos.
Voodoo2 comes close enough...
> > Why not? I'm not a particularly great programmer,
> I'm rather
> > mediocre. I'm not sure you want me other parts of
> CS.
>
> Since I personally would not use Glide, I would
> rather see you on any
> other part of CS than the Glide renderer. (If your
> code is so bad it
> breaks everything, CVS allows it to be rolled back
> by other developers :-)
Well, I am working on a game-specific scripting
language too- but I am waiting until all the plugins
are finalized and 1.0 is out before I do too muh on
that.
> But your decision will be based on what you decide
> is important. Your
> experience may convince you that Glide is important
> for Windows and/or
> Linux and/or Beos, etc. By going with what you
> know, you make the
> software better for people in similar situations.
I am a member of a LUG (Linux Users Group). And the
number of people there with Voodoo cards (all of them,
sense they want good manufacturer support, and they
can't afford NVidia because most of the attendees go
to/are professors at the college I go to) is
staggering. They have a hard time playing games under
linux because of Mesa. I would like to change that
(so I can beat them at games other than Quake and
Alpha Centauri).
> I've got to do a little political moralizing here:
(snip)
I agree with you.
-Steven Rokiski
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