rec.autos.simulators

On Tue, 9 May 2000 13:07:47 -0500, "Tracey Miller"

same here

Havent yall heard Glide is DEAD!!!!!

With upcoming graphics cards Direct 3d and opengl are going to be far
superior than glide. Glide is gone, they made the right choice, Especially
since the geforce blows away the voodoo 5 6 on the benchmarks

  Your Voodoo3 will work, but it will not use all that N4 is capable of
showing.  Just like with N3 when Payrus chose the A3d sound format.
Those with A3d compatible cards got nifty 3d sound and reflections of
the sound.  Those who had just sunk a big pile of cash into the SB Live
cards..(very very good cards but no A3d) were left with MOST of the 3d
sounds but not the reflections.
  So soon N4 is comming out.  Your V3 will run N4, but only in 16 bit
color.  AND what everyone has missed in this thread so far....N4 will
support Transform and Lighting(t&l) which "should" reduce the workload
on the main cpu.  Unfortunately, your V3 does not have T&L as a hardware
accelerated feature.  It can do some of that in software, but that just
adds to the system's workload again.  
  Furthmore, N4 will feature 32 bit color in addition to T&L.  So once
again your V3 will be shortchanging you.  The new V5 5500's can do 32bit
color, but still will be without t&l.  The V5's have the nifty
fullscreen Anti-Alias(fsaa) feature that will really clean up the
screen.  But looking at N4's graphics...they don't seem to 'need' much
cleaning up.
  Where does that leave you and your V3?  Well probably the biggest
question will be...where does that leave you and your CPU?  If you are
running a slower cpu now...no video card in existence is gonna speed up
N4.  
  If you have plenty of other D3d games then any of the GEForce cards
will probably do quite nicely...BUT don't run out tomorrow and buy one.
The GEforce2 is just becomming available...we need to see just how well
that runs.  The V5 6000 may be such a brute we won't NEED t&l to speed
up N4.  But if your a Papy fan....you also may drive GPL.  The perfect
card for gpl, bar none, is a V3 3500.  The only card that could supplant
that is the V5's.  The newest GeForce can be made to run gpl very well,
but that takes work and a few compromises.  
  So here's the deal...WAIT.  Save your money..be prepared spend lots
but don't run out now for a product that is still 6 months away.  We
could see 2 different memory types shakout, and cpu's should take a huge
jump in performance before the year is out.  
dave hath spoken..
dave henrie ...spokane wa.

Supporting Glide as well as D3D and OpenGL isn't as much work as you might
think.  All three API's are quite similar.

Of course it supports D3D, and OpenGL !!!   :)

ditto

Rendition was the greatest card I ever had!!!!
I only bought my V3 because Rendition couldn't run N3 , and some other games.
I miss Rendition.

Even if N3 supported Rendition, I would not own one.

I like to play other games as well :)

That's what I had my V2's for...

"Cliff Roman" wrote

Then why not use the V2s for Nascar 3?

I agree...it's the jumping back and forth that is the biggest problem.

Marc.

For GPL?  I can't afford a separate computer to run GPL and another one for
N4.  And GPL is useless without 98th percentile or higher frame rates.  N4
very well may be the same.

Marc.

: > Or...
: >
: > Does my new Voodoo 3 card also support Direct3D?
: > I see that my DirectX Diagnosis program says that my Direct3D is showing "No
: > problems".
: >
: > Pops...

: No.  Your Voodoo3 will do D3D also.  But, as F1 2000 shows, D3D is not
: as good as Glide.  I can see where they wouldn't want to tie themselves
: down with just one rasterizer.  BUT, it should at least be one of the
: options available.  With all the Voodoo cards out there in people's
: machines, it's not as though they would be putting in support for some
: dinosaur card.  Big, BIG mistake, Papy.....

Actually, Voodoo IS a dinosaur card.  No support for textures larger than 256x256, no
hardware support for compressed textures, no hardware T&L, ....  They cannot compete
graphically if they continue to target their games for the Voodoo archictecture.  

Whether or not you see D3D not as good as Glide varies on the revision of D3D.  Direct3D 8
will support shading at the pixel level, a feature which will be hardware supported in the
Geforce2 GTS and the ATI Radeon.  This is something Voodoo5 will not have.  Therefore, Glide
will not support this.  Therefore, Glide is technically inferior than D3D.

GM

32bit colour....

Well ya know.. I used to own a TNT card, and oops there are alot of
games that support 32bit colour, but I could not see the difference in
game enough to justify the performance hit.  I'd be willing to bet alot
of you will resort to good old 16 bit colour to increase your frame
rates.

Md

LOL!

Interesting, I didn't realize it was possible to be funny without
being offensive.