rec.autos.simulators

by **David Spark** » Sat, 05 Oct 1996 04:00:00

>> >Let me get this straight. If I bought a Rendition card now to play N2,
>> >ICR2
>> >and other Rendition Ready games, and then bought a Voodoo based
>> add-on,
>> >I would have the best of both worlds, right?

>> REPLY:

>> Correct. I'm possibly looking at that scenario myself. But if we had
>> D3D versions only the Vodoo would be necessary.

>> Q.B.M.

>Hello. Is indycar2 made for the verite now, or will it be ported in the
>future ?
>I bought ICR2 about a month ago, and I can't find anything in the manual
>about the verite. So if I get a verite based board ( who makes them ? )
>will it do anything with the ICR2 I have now ?
>As to adding a Voodoo in the future, how will the software figure out
>which 3D board it sould kick in. I mean the verite would activate it's
>3D functions and pass that signal to the Voodoo. the Voodoo, already
>activated, would then.....
>This is getting very complicated
>It was a lot simpler when I played Moon Patrol on my old XT.

Papyrus has announced that both Indycar 2 and NASCAR 2 will support the
Verite' boards. A special version of Indycar 2 with Verite' support will be
bundled with both the Intergraph and Sierra-Online Verite' boards. NASCAR 2
will support Verite' out of the box.

Dave (davids) Sparks
Late Night League
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

by **David Spark** » Sat, 05 Oct 1996 04:00:00

>[snip]
>: This was the plan I was going to take, but I think perhaps I'll just
>going
>: to get the Voodoo. The only reason I really wanted a Rendition card was
>: for the Quake port (and Nascar2 I guess), and now it's been announced
>that
>: the Voodoo will be the reference platform for the Direct3D Win95 version.

>: Not quite a native port, but it will do for me. With questionable 2D
>: Windows performance, I would like to see one in action before I make my
>: final decision.
>:

>Having seen the Win95 version of ICRII, I am not impressed yet with
>Win95 as a sim platform. The Voodoo will really have to live up to its
>name and create some mighty magic before I am willing to suffer Win95
>for the smoothness a racing or dogfighting sim requires. This means for
>"real" performance we may still have to rely on the game being coded for
>a specific chip. This I believe is the reasoning behind Sierra's plunge
>into the hardware biz. Actually it's a re-plunge. They did the same
>thing because they felt the Ad-Lib was the way to go for a soundcard
>standard. However, Sierra wasn't able to make that one fly.

>--
>**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
> Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I don't agree. Sierra was the largest retailer of Roland MT-32's. When the
Sound Blaster came out with digital sound, the whole complexion of audio
changed. Then Microsoft came along with the MPC standard, and Sierra wisely
got out of the hardware business. We're faced with a similar situation
today, and Sierra is probably hoping to jump-start the market again by
offering hardware. Once the 3D market stabilizes, they will probably quit
the business again. This is the same philosophy that has served Microsoft
with the mouse.

Dave (davids) Sparks
Late Night League
http://www.sequoia-dev.com/Hawaii/latenite.html

by **TOBY BRANFO** » Sat, 05 Oct 1996 04:00:00

EB> Not to start anything here (I respect your opinion) but OS/2 is
EB> superior to Win95 in a number of ways =)

To right!!!

EB> Most obviously the fact that it is a true 32-bit operating system
EB> like NT (Win95 is a mix of 16 and 32-bit code). Secondly, it is no
EB> secret that is multitasks more effectively than does Win95.

And with Merlin (out now in the US, in the UK we're waiting.....!) I'll
be launching GP2, ICR2 & Nascar by voice command.....now if Papyrus
built in the applets to use OS/2 speech recognition in their
menus so I could tell my engineer what setup I wanted...... B-)

Cheers!

---
* RM 1.3 U0414 * OS/2 has done since '92 what Win95 still cannot in '96.

by **TOBY BRANFO** » Sat, 05 Oct 1996 04:00:00

EB> True, but the fact is just because something is "state of the art"
EB> doesn't automatically make it the industry leader.

Too true!

EB> I shouldn't even bring up the fact that OS/2 Warp is a superior
EB> operating system than Win95.

Why not???

The fact that Micro$oft have a great lead with the hype companies (eg
the press) promoting their goods as THE ONE AND ONLY doesn't make them
any better, or other stuff any worse.

OS/2 is a damn good OS.....it's not for everone OK, nor is Unix, Win95,
NT4.0.....but as far as this conference is concerned, OS/2 allows you to
launch our favourite games (eg GP2, ICR2, Nascar) and their add-ons
(paintkits, editors, track converters, etc) all from our desktops,
without boot disks, mutiple-setups, "dropping into DOS", etc. It's
"overheads" seem irrelevant to game performance (for me anyhow).

The fact that the hype-zines don't rave about it doesn't make it less
good or less worthwhile. So why so coy, secretive, or evasive???

Cheers!

---
* RM 1.3 U0414 * I'm a fugitive from the law of averages.

by **Hen** » Sun, 06 Oct 1996 04:00:00

> No, this isn't playing *through* Win'95, it's an actual Win'95 application.
> I'd like to hear from anybody who is satisifed with the performance of the
> Win'95 version of ICR2.

Well, the frame rate sucks compared to DOS version (I have a Millennium
and DDraw2 drivers) but I have never experienced any 'lagged' controls.
I don't play it because of the frame rate, but I could play a D3D-ready
version with a 3D chip ...

--
Henrikki (Hena) Hakkanen Tel. +358-(9)0-345 5538

--------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are mine and do not
necessarily reflect those of my employer

by **Todd Benz** » Mon, 07 Oct 1996 04:00:00

Hey Eric,

What is your read on how CPU performance will affect the performance of the 3D
cards. Will it affect it at all, and if it does, by how much?

l8r

Todd

>Subject: Re: Rendition Chip
>Date: 6 Oct 1996 16:26:33 GMT
>There will be no DOS standard. Like it our not, Win95 and Direct3D is the
>future.
>--

>Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
>Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

>> When will companies find out that the users want a standard!
>> Instead of buying 8 3d cards for every game they play.
>> Please VESA make a new standard so every game will use the same chip.

by **Todd Benz** » Mon, 07 Oct 1996 04:00:00

So what about Nascar 2?

Thanks 4 the info Eric.

>Subject: Re: Rendition Chip
>Date: 7 Oct 1996 05:08:52 GMT
>Some people in the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video group have posted that
>the framerates of the Voodoo port of Decent2 doesn't scale with CPU speed
>as would be expected (a P100 reportedly gets close to the same framerates
>as a P166 gets). It was explained by one of the 3Dfx designers that
>Descent2 draws very few polygons (and the ones it does draw are quite
>large). Polygon/sec is more dependent on the processor, as it's the CPU
>that is responsible for the bulk of the math (geometry calculations). For
>the less polygon intensive games like Descent2, the speed is actually more
>heavily dependent on the fill rate, which is mostly determined by the 3D
>card being used. So for high polygon count games, the CPU speed will
>likely be the main bottle-neck in performance. As for how much, it will
>really depend on the individual game.
>--

>Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
>Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

>> What is your read on how CPU performance will affect the performance of
>the 3D
>> cards. Will it affect it at all, and if it does, by how much?

by **Theo Nieuwstrat** » Mon, 07 Oct 1996 04:00:00

>> There is one point that you forget in this argument and is the MAIN
>reason why VHS and
>> another important one.

>> 1. Recording time was the big deal at the time. This is why VHS won.

>> 2. There was more saturation of VHS on the market.

>> Beta had slightly better picture quality, slightly. To a afficinado
>that's important to
>> Aunt Bess and Uncle Bob, they could careless. They wanted to record
>everything, later
>> found out they couldn't operate the time record option, doooh!. :)

>I know the reasons why Beta didn't become the standard. The fact still
>remains it was the superior format, however small the advantage was.
>That's all my argument was: the fact that the sometimes an inferior product
>can become the industry standard. The reasons for this decision really
>don't matter.

There are 2 reasons VHS won the battle:
1) There were more ***o movies at VHS
2) Companies didn't have to pay neither Philips(v2000) or Sony
(BETAMAX) for the vhs standard

Theo Nieuwstraten

by **Theo Nieuwstrat** » Mon, 07 Oct 1996 04:00:00

When will companies find out that the users want a standard!
Instead of buying 8 3d cards for every game they play.
Please VESA make a new standard so every game will use the same chip.

Theo Nieuwstraten

by **Eric T. Busc** » Mon, 07 Oct 1996 04:00:00

There will be no DOS standard. Like it our not, Win95 and Direct3D is the
future.

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

by **Eric T. Busc** » Tue, 08 Oct 1996 04:00:00

Some people in the comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video group have posted that
the framerates of the Voodoo port of Decent2 doesn't scale with CPU speed
as would be expected (a P100 reportedly gets close to the same framerates
as a P166 gets). It was explained by one of the 3Dfx designers that
Descent2 draws very few polygons (and the ones it does draw are quite
large). Polygon/sec is more dependent on the processor, as it's the CPU
that is responsible for the bulk of the math (geometry calculations). For
the less polygon intensive games like Descent2, the speed is actually more
heavily dependent on the fill rate, which is mostly determined by the 3D
card being used. So for high polygon count games, the CPU speed will
likely be the main bottle-neck in performance. As for how much, it will
really depend on the individual game.

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

by **Eric T. Busc** » Tue, 08 Oct 1996 04:00:00

Keep in mind this is all speculation, I could be totally wrong.

Because Nascar2 appears to be a high polygon-count game, it should be CPU
dependent. Intergraph claims full detailed 30fps for Indycar2 on a
something like P90 or P100 (I think I remember seeing this on their web
page someplace, but I can't get to it at the moment to check). With
Nascar2 being a little more graphically complicated (each car is made of
more polygons), I would guess a slightly faster CPU (like a P120 or 133)
would give similar framerates.

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

by **Julian Anderso** » Tue, 08 Oct 1996 04:00:00

I wonder if they have written for the Nvida chipset this
time ??

I surpose I find out in 6MB time..........

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Park Group,
Southend, Essex. UK
-----------------------------------------------------------------

by **Eric T. Busc** » Tue, 08 Oct 1996 04:00:00

The EDGE is a first generation 3D card and as such it just can't hope to
compete with the newly released second generation cards (Verite and
Voodoo). Even if Direct3D was supported (I don't think it is yet), I
wouldn't expect it to provide much of a real framerate improvement. If
anything you would probably get higher image quality but at the cost of
framerate. Quoting John Carmack, "The sad thing is that all of the other
current accelerator cards have such large setup overhead that they will
actually be slower than software, which is why I am refusing to port to s3,
ati, etc."

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/