To the rescue!
Yes, the card has a VGA core, albeit a slow one.
Yes it has very fast (about Matrox speed) on-board VESA 2.0 SVGA modes,
thus SciTech's Display Doctor or other type of UniVBE driver is no
longer needed (a savings of $34.95).
Yes, Nascar2 is being designed to be 'Rendition Ready'. If you don't
know what this means (I'd like to thank Jay Eisenlohr of Rendition for
this):
"Rendition Ready is program designed for the consumer like yourself.
The RR logo was designed to be reproduced inexpensively and placed on
retail hardware and software packages to aid the consumer in matching
logo's indicating products capable of an expected high quality 3D
*** experience. They're are currently 4 minimum requirements for a
Rendition Ready Logo for a sw package:
1. Texture Mapping
2. Perspective Correct Textures.
3. Bi-Linear Filtering
4. Greater than 25 fps on a Pentium 166mhz processor
Any supported API may be used. The hardware, of course, must contain a
Rendition graphics processor."
The Creative Labs 3D Blaster PCI has Win3.1 drivers. The Reactor is
identical in hardware, so you should be able to get the default 640x480
16-color VGA working. Intergraph has chosen not to develop drivers due
to the low demand.
Yes Win95 is fully supported with DirectDraw and Direct3D. As with any
video card, drivers are continually updated. Even the mighty Matrox
Millennium shipped with poor initial drivers. The NRL basically is a
means to connect to the server that will be running the multi-player
races. You will still need Nascar2, much like Hawaii still needs
Nascar1. Nascar2 will be accelerated on the Rendition boards, even
running in a Win95 DOS Box.
Well I wouldn't say vastly. IMO Monster Truck Madness and Hellbender
are not very well coded games. Neither is a very good demonstration of
Direct3Ds potential. Even the ultra fast 3Dfx Voodoo cards (a 3D only
add-on card) slow down to 10-15fps in MTM.
I don't have any hard dates, but NT 4.00 drivers are currently in
development.
I have no idea.
No, these cards (unlike the Voodoo cards) are 2D/3D and as such replace
your current video card. They currently are a good general purpose
card (though the DOS VGA core is quite slow). Full screen MPEG
playback is reportedly very good (I haven't tested this myself). DOS
SVGA VESA 2.0 modes are very fast. Windows 2D acceleration is about
the same as an ATI Mach64 or Diamond Stealth64, and this will improve
as the drivers progress. There are only 3 companies currently
marketing Rendition cards (Intergraph, CL, and Sierra), and I believe
all 3 are shipping (I'm not sure about Sierra though). The 3D Blaster
has been available at CompUSA for a few days now. The market for these
cards is DOS and Win95, thus no one is really waiting for other
drivers.
--
Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://www.racesimcentral.net/~ebusch/
