rec.autos.simulators

  I've seen poeple talk about the need for better faster PCs to run the
latest race simulators. But what bugs me is that the hardware most of us
already have isn't exploited to it's full potential.
  At least that's what i beleive: I assume most of us have video cards that
have graphics acceleration functions built in hardware (like BitBlt,
polygonfill, etc.). Those cards were designed with operating system performance
in mind (windows, OS/2, etc..). But what if game creators whould use those
'accelerators' to the benefit of games ? Sure they would have to build
drivers to be compatible with most of the different chips out there
(S3,Tseng,Mach32,etc.) but it whould sure speed things up!

:   I've seen poeple talk about the need for better faster PCs to run the
: latest race simulators. But what bugs me is that the hardware most of us
: already have isn't exploited to it's full potential.
:   At least that's what i beleive: I assume most of us have video cards that
: have graphics acceleration functions built in hardware (like BitBlt,
: polygonfill, etc.). Those cards were designed with operating system performance
: in mind (windows, OS/2, etc..). But what if game creators whould use those
: 'accelerators' to the benefit of games ? Sure they would have to build
: drivers to be compatible with most of the different chips out there
: (S3,Tseng,Mach32,etc.) but it whould sure speed things up!

Write drivers?  How about they write the games for windows!  Then everyone's
obscure brand of video and sound cards are supported by drivers.  The game
writer calls the windows API and spends more time developing good games
instead of developing drivers.  Maybe I'm naive and everyone will respond
with 'windoze' poor performance, but I've written Visual Basic programs that
display graphics faster than the eye can follow.
--
Brian R. Mayer                               Product & Manufacturing Systems

I can't believe I am agreeing with a Ford guy, but it would make life alot easier.
Microsoft has gotten their act together when they licensed OpenGL from
Silicon Graphics. If anyone has seen some of the screen savers with WindowNT 3.5
you would know what I am talking about. Shading and smooth animation. Okay you may
be able get that from a 286 running native assembly code... but was it also acting as a
server downloading files to a CNC machine, and creating 3-D CNC surfaces in the
background (foreground?)