3Dfx N2 patch.

I'll put money on it that it still wont have AA.Since the Voodoo doesnt support it,They probly wont take the time to include it. Brian

Well the only couple of titles I can think of quickly that support both Voodoo and Rendition are Tomb Raider and Ef2k. There is AA in both of the Rendition titles, but I don't think either Voodoo version has it...So if your expecting AA just because your finally getting a voodoo patch...I wouldn't hold my breath. Dave Henrie #99 The Pits Touring Car Championship

Yep,Even though the 3Dfx boxes say Anti Aliasing as a feature...Ther Voodoo has no AA support.It has to do it through glide(Software based AA)Which is MUCH slower. Brian

But the end result is MUCH faster! I know, I have both.

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>> Well the only couple of titles I can think of quickly that support >>both Voodoo and Rendition are Tomb Raider and Ef2k. There is AA in >>both of the Rendition titles, but I don't think either Voodoo version >>has it...So if your expecting AA just because your finally getting a >>voodoo patch...I wouldn't hold my breath. >Yep,Even though the 3Dfx boxes say Anti Aliasing as a feature...Ther Voodoo has > no AA support.It has to do it through glide(Software based AA)Which is MUCH > slower.

But the voodoo DOES have bilenear filtering, with no performance cost and no programming time cost (you just have to turn it on). And for most ganmes bilinear filtering offers a pretty similar effect to anti-aliasing. Joe

Hi Aaron, AA is short for Anti-Aliasing. Which is a color technique that smooths the jaggies on most images. For indycar Racing 2 the cars look sharp and smooth, but the Rendition version of N2 does not have AA and so the cars keep that shifting blurry look. AA btw, was developed for desktop publishing to smooth out the letters on the newfangled fonts on GUI based systems(ha! another bunch of initials!)

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>What exactly is an "AA" version of a patch? >Aaron >>>I'll put money on it that it still wont have AA.Since the Voodoo doesnt >support >>> it,They probly wont take the time to include it. >>>Brian >> Well the only couple of titles I can think of quickly that support >>both Voodoo and Rendition are Tomb Raider and Ef2k. There is AA in >>both of the Rendition titles, but I don't think either Voodoo version >>has it...So if your expecting AA just because your finally getting a >>voodoo patch...I wouldn't hold my breath. >>Dave Henrie >>#99 The Pits Touring Car Championship

Dave Henrie #99 The Pits Touring Car Championship

O I believe I read here that the N2 team took out the AA to meet specifications for a minimun system requirement that had already been decided. AA was there, but to include it would have forced the team to accept higher min. standards...(I don't know if Papyrus or Sierra set the limits) Dave Henrie #99 The Pits Touring Car Championship

>I really don't know why N2 doesn't have AA yet since it was already >implemented in the engine. All I know is Rendition/Sierra have not been >able to deliver on the promise their hardware. Jim Sokoloff mentioned on this newsgroup a while back that AA had to be removed from the graphics engine with some effort before the release of N2 because the marketing guys felt that it raised the memory requirements too high for the average Joe. :-----( Mike Radler Hawaii Ace League http://www.dithots.org/hal

If this is true, then I would have to wonder, if it was coded already (or at least partially), why didn't they offer it as an option that could be turned on or off depending on the system it was used on? If this wasn't possible, then why not offer a patch that would add it at a later time? IMO, and speaking from ignorance, I'd have to think that it was never started in the first place. ChrisP

>If this is true, then I would have to wonder, if it was coded already (or at > least partially), why didn't they offer it as an option that could be turned > on or off depending on the system it was used on? If this wasn't possible, > then why not offer a patch that would add it at a later time? IMO, and > speaking from ignorance, I'd have to think that it was never started in the > first place. AA was already in the graphics engine. They used it in ICR2. Maybe Jim could shed some light on why it was not made an option instead being totally yanked to save memory. I am not familiar with what's involved so I can't even speculate as to whether or not it would have been easy to set it up so that it could be switched on and off. Here's a quote from Jim's post, Jim Sokoloff (Former Papyrus employee) wrote on 9/5/97: Mike Radler Hawaii Ace League http://www.dithots.org/hal

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> >If this is true, then I would have to wonder, if it was coded already (or at > > least partially), why didn't they offer it as an option that could be turned > > on or off depending on the system it was used on? If this wasn't possible, > > then why not offer a patch that would add it at a later time? IMO, and > > speaking from ignorance, I'd have to think that it was never started in the > > first place. > AA was already in the graphics engine. They used it in ICR2. Maybe > Jim could shed some light on why it was not made an option instead > being totally yanked to save memory. I am not familiar with what's > involved so I can't even speculate as to whether or not it would have > been easy to set it up so that it could be switched on and off.

Three reasons: 1. The game barely fit in the minimum machine spec. (Can't remember if the real problem was DOS or Win95; if the memory spec was the same, you can bet it was Win95.) Having the code lying around unused still takes up space, though not near as much as having the anti-aliasing data being actively kept track of. 2. The anti-aliasing in ICR2 was wrong. While it offered an improvement to the look of the screen, that improvement came at the cost of degrading some scenes. Making it work "right" was not in the schedule, for reasons of engineering time and #1 above. 3. The graphics engine for N2 was a total re-write, though it was free to draw on code from the ICR2 engine which did support anti-aliasing, even in a slightly broken fashion. Sierra marketing or other business folks decided what would go on the minimum machine spec sticker and Papyrus wrote a game which barely conformed to that sticker. ---Jim

much snipped away And there is the rub, the suits have dictated the engineering of the project. I suppose quite a few people got fairly rich with the buyout (as witnessed by the exodus of fairly high players), but the product has suffered IMHO with Ken Williams and company (is he really as much of an SOB as he looks in all his pictures?). The Papyrus sims always were a bit ahead of the hardware curve so I don't see the point. The minimum requirements are marketing crap. The only specs that mean anything are the recommended requirements. Once a person with the minimum requirement machine buys a game to fit that spec he/she will be disappointed and will see right through it (as well as scream ***y ripoff). If a sim is GOOD ENOUGH, people will buy the hardware to support it. Falcon 3.0 sold more upgraded machines than any other title, I'm willing to bet. Jeff Haas