rec.autos.simulators

It *may* run *slightly* faster.  Of course, since F1 2000 seems to be so
poorly programmed w.r.t. graphics, who says they could produce a good Glide
rasterizer?!  They could make one which is worse than the D3D one!  :-)

Technically, Glide will be slightly faster, simply because of the way the
APIs work:

  |-------------------|--------------------|--------------------|
  |                   |                    |                    |
  |    Direct3D       |       OpenGL       |                    |
  |                   |                    |                    |
  |-------------------|--------------------|       Glide        |
  |                                        |                    |
  |  Microsoft DirectX abstraction layer   |                    |
  |                                        |                    |
  |----------------------------------------|--------------------|
  |                                                             |
  |                     The 3D hardware                         |
  |                                                             |
  |-------------------------------------------------------------|

Glide goes through less hardware abstraction code than Direct3D or OpenGL,
hence the possibility of a slight speed advantage.  Of course, as Direct3D
software *and* hardware improves, this is reduced.  Don't the NVidia boards
out-perform 3dfx ones with D3D?  Wouldn't that make the difference?

Absolutely.

Bot they are not turning their backs on you.  Your Voodoo cards will run
the Direct3D version without problems.

As far as a developer will see things, yes, you are.

They can have 100% compatibility with Direct3D, since any graphics card on
the market today supports Direct3D.

With Glide, and to a lesser extent OpenGL, the figures are not 100%, so why
should they pour all this extra effort in?

*If* 3dfx cards were Glide-only (no Direct3D) and they shared the market,
say, 50% with all the D3D-cards (NVidia, Matrox, ATI...) then a developer
would certainly have to produce Glide and D3D versions, but at the moment,
they can just do a D3D version, and catch 100% of the market.

--
Richard.

"I'm back in the U.S.S.R. You don't know how lucky you are boy."

HE IS talking about the Voodoo 3 - 1000

Which IS a combo card

Ash

| > That leaves it as just a plain old mistake, since the V1000's 2D
| > performance was lousy (especially VGA), and the 3D performance was
| > mediocre.
|
| V1000? 2D?  The V1000 had no 2D!!!  Just like the V2, it was a drop-in
card
| that sat next to your old video card!  My guess is you must be thinking
| about that POS combo card they made for a while, sorta like the
| Banshee...what was it, the Rush?  That reeked to high heaven.  The first
| good combo Voodoo card was the Voodoo3.
|
| --
| Kirk Lane

| ICQ: 28171652
| AIM: Kirker64
|
| "The time has come for me to kill this game
| Now open wide and say my name"
| - "Space Lord", Monster Magnet


|
|

Hehe.  I'm not going there! ;-)

Thank you.

Maybe.  More likely any performance gain would be due to D3D being one
of NVidia's main focuses.  Glide is 3dfx's main focus, with D3D
compatibility also tacked on.  Since Glide does work so much better,
they rightfully focus in more on that.  Small wonder there could be a
performance gap there.(D3D) ;-)

Technically correct.  But I have yet to see, in any of my games that
have both D3D & Glide versions, any instances of D3D either performing
or appearing better than it's Glide counterpart.  And usually it's not
even close.  So, yes we'll be able to run it.  But it'll likely be a lot
slower & uglier than it has to be.

Sorry.  Definitely gotta disagree here.  Almost seems related to Michael
Carver's posting of yesterday which was something on the order of: "Papy
made the right decision.  The buying public made the mistake."  Somehow,
that just seems all too backwards.  Any company, in order to get the
Consumers to part with their Money, has to decide what this target
Buying Public group has/wants.  The better they provide to this, the
more likely they are to make sales/the more successful their product is
likely to be.  Well, in this instance, after GPL, N3 & NL, there is a
large crowd out there that Papy has the attention of.  And the vast
majority of them have V3's, and many of them will soon have V5's.  So
now they (Papy) wanna forego a *little* extra effort to help them along
here and instead just give their product enough support that it'll just
run on their card instead?  Of course, they can.  They're the
manufacturer.  But some of us are trying to point out, while maybe
there's still time, that this is a shortsighted move on their part.
Smells of either arrogance, or of some suits that don't know any better
making some decisions in areas they should have left alone.

Just my .02, although it's only worth what you paid for it! ;-)

--
Chuck Kandler  #70
K&S Racing
http://www.fortunecity.com/silverstone/thepits/195

Competitor in the TopGear MGPRS2 league at:
http://topgear.dhs.org/  Come on & join the fun!

They'll call you names
And spit in your face,
But legends never die.   --Gene Simmons

Like someone stated in another thread, it's a joke carried over from
N3.discussion...

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"Team Mirage" http://www.teammirage.com/
"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

* Spam is for losers who can't get business any other way *
"Spamkiller"    http://www.spamkiller.com

Good retort!!! :)

Marc.

  Going back to the Longbow Days of flightsimming.  Origin had to make
separate D3d .exe files for several different video cards. (after the
patch process, not the out of the box original)
  Just because a card supports D3D does not mean it can use the exact
bunch of code another card uses.  

  They have been criticized in the past for ignoring the "other" part of
the
market, users of ATI, Matrox, and to some extent Nvidia have all had
problems
running Papy sims.  So now they have made the effort to reach out to
these
other systems and we give'm hell.  Why?  Perhaps the last product best
shows
the frustration of 3dfx owners.
    N3 does both D3d AND Glide.  The users who
have access to both almost unanimously agree the 3dfx version looks &
runs
better.  And the Nvidia users have reported HUGE 33% frame-rate losses
when
using features like the F2-enter realtime track position pit board.  Now
you
could argue just don't use that particular feature, but it really helps
out
in situations after a crash where you are going slow.  You can keep an
eye
out for fastmovers approaching and not be suprised and/or forced into
a desperate maneuver.
  So you have the old Beta/VHS thing all over again.  3dfx users feel
they have
a superior product based on previous versions of N99/N3.  They would
like
to be able to continue to use that superiority into the future.  What
they are
probably overlooking is the new(improved?) features that D3D and perhaps
OpenGl
will bring to N4.  The winners are those who have never purchased a
separate 3d
card in the past, using whatever came in thier systems.  The LOSERS are
those,
especially GPL users, who have customized their systems to run Papyrus
Products
at maximum efficiency.  Some of these users now face the 3rd "forced"
change of
Video products to continue getting maximum from their purchase of a
Papyrus program.
  N99 and GPL kept the Rendition option, N3 dropped that.  Now N4
abandons Glide.

  I suspect by N6, OpenGL will also be dropped.
dave henrie

I just read that thread, but that was about a day too late for me to not
post this one <G>

--
Ian Parker

==

LOL, still a good one....

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"Team Mirage" http://www.teammirage.com/
"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

* Spam is for losers who can't get business any other way *
"Spamkiller"    http://www.spamkiller.com

Did you do anything special to get your Voodoo 2 to work well in
NR1999?  I find that I get a very choppy frame rate when going
round corners?  I actually get a better frame rate in software
mode.

Any ideas for getting this fixed?

Chris

* Sent from RemarQ http://www.racesimcentral.net/ The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!

Because Glide was designed specifically for 3dfx cards, and likewise for the
Rendition API.  Also there's bugs in most OpenGL drivers.  Anyway, I was
talking about their similarities from a programming perspective, which has
nothing to do with performance.