rec.autos.simulators

by **Shawn Frale** » Fri, 20 Mar 1998 04:00:00

I originally posted this for Greg Cisco, but perhaps everyone should
know.

Somebody said..

To all 4 meg 3dfx owners.
I don't think that you've so far considered the full ramifications of
the fact that N2 was designed for Rendition cards. It's well known
that Voodoo1 cards render faster than V1000 cards, But V1000 has some
other charecteristics which make it better for N2.

1. Dynamic memory allocation. The Voodoo1 cards always have exactly
2mb of framebuffer/ 2mb texture. N2 is 640x480, triple buffered, and
not Z buffered, so on a V1000, 2.9Mb of the 4MB is dedicated to
textures.

2. Better texture management. V1000 uses DMA busmastering (the same
capability that makes ULTRA DMA harddrives so fast) to load textures
from system memory to card memory.

3. Optional 4-bit mode. V1000 can load textures as 4-bit images (this
only aplies to the indivdiual textures, the game of course still runs in
16 bit mode) 4-bit textures effectivly double the ammount of textures
loaded in card memory, with a very negligible loss in picture quality.

It has been noted before that finding a way to accomodate the 2mb
texture memory problem was the main factor which delayed the N2 3dfx for
so long. Try using the environment variable options to reduce texture
resolution.

I think there may be a few people who think VooDoo cards are
infallable. They are not.

Kevin G.

by **Greg Cisk** » Fri, 20 Mar 1998 04:00:00

Actually this explains the situation quite well. Thanks for the
info, I do appreciate it...

--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.

>I originally posted this for Greg Cisco, but perhaps everyone should
>know.

>Somebody said..
>> >Yes, this is a port of a rendition game. They didn't start from scratch
to
>> >reprogram the whole thing to use just 3dfx for free. Can't understand
why,
>> >maybe they want to stay in business. How old is this game? Where on the
box
>> >does it claim 3dfx support?

>To all 4 meg 3dfx owners.
>I don't think that you've so far considered the full ramifications of
>the fact that N2 was designed for Rendition cards. It's well known
>that Voodoo1 cards render faster than V1000 cards, But V1000 has some
>other charecteristics which make it better for N2.

>1. Dynamic memory allocation. The Voodoo1 cards always have exactly
>2mb of framebuffer/ 2mb texture. N2 is 640x480, triple buffered, and
>not Z buffered, so on a V1000, 2.9Mb of the 4MB is dedicated to
>textures.

>2. Better texture management. V1000 uses DMA busmastering (the same
>capability that makes ULTRA DMA harddrives so fast) to load textures
>from system memory to card memory.

>3. Optional 4-bit mode. V1000 can load textures as 4-bit images (this
>only aplies to the indivdiual textures, the game of course still runs in
>16 bit mode) 4-bit textures effectivly double the ammount of textures
>loaded in card memory, with a very negligible loss in picture quality.

>It has been noted before that finding a way to accomodate the 2mb
>texture memory problem was the main factor which delayed the N2 3dfx for
>so long. Try using the environment variable options to reduce texture
>resolution.

>I think there may be a few people who think VooDoo cards are
>infallable. They are not.

>Kevin G.

by **Richard Walk** » Sat, 21 Mar 1998 04:00:00

And boy do they get upset when they find out! Guess it must be hard to
spend so much time writing posts about how 3dfx beats everything else
under the sun and then come across a situation in which it isn't the
case.

Cheers,
Richard (who is quite happy with his 3dfx despite it not ALWAYS being the
best <g>)

by **cunni..** » Sat, 21 Mar 1998 04:00:00

>>I think there may be a few people who think VooDoo cards are
>>infallable.

>And boy do they get upset when they find out! Guess it must be hard to
>spend so much time writing posts about how 3dfx beats everything else
>under the sun and then come across a situation in which it isn't the
>case.

>Cheers,
>Richard (who is quite happy with his 3dfx despite it not ALWAYS being the
>best <g>)

I don't think it's the Voodoo card as much as the game. I can't claim
to be an authority on the subject but I remember when Moto Racer first
came out it performed rather poorly on 3dfx cards. Then they released
a patch that increased performance dramatically. The readme.txt file
in the patch said that the game originally contained 2D graphics
combined with the 3D textures. The patch converted the entire game to
3D polygon textures. This leads me to believe the 3dfx chipset
probably has a difficult time with 2D graphics. I also believe that
the interior of the***pit on N2 3D is still 2D graphics. In fact I
believe that the strange lines across the top and bottom edges of the
windshield probably seperate 2D and 3D regions. If I am correct I
further believe that if the entire game were converted to 3D polygon
textures the framerate would improve, perhaps dramatically. Anyone
else with thoughts on the subject. Just my two cents worth.

JD

rec.autos.simulators

Why N2 3dfx worse than Rendtion.

Why N2 3dfx worse than Rendtion.

Why N2 3dfx worse than Rendtion.

Why N2 3dfx worse than Rendtion.

Why N2 3dfx worse than Rendtion.