I haven't seen anyone mention this review but The Pits gave CPR their
highest rating a V8.
You can read the review at http://www.theuspits.com/other.html
The Pits' CPR review sparks 3Dfx versus Riva war
A link to The Pits' top-rated CART Precision Racing review led to criticism of its recommendation of the Stealth II over 3Dfx. The thread became a long, heated argument between Greg Cisko and Randy Magruder over 3Dfx versus Riva 128 and Direct3D, including Longbow 2 support and Riva's market share. Joe McGinn and others backed 3Dfx while some Riva owners reported problems.
Automated summary.
>I haven't seen anyone mention this review but The Pits gave CPR their
>highest rating a V8.
>You can read the review at http://www.theuspits.com/other.html
I am confused by the following quote from the review:
"A few other niggling points...the full screen option (shown here),
which even though it has exceptional graphics, is almost useless for
driving, as at the speeds you are doing, it doesn't draw far enough
ahead to be really useful. The non-full screen mode is great, though,
and can be used quite readily."
The reviewer talks about the need for a good 3D card to run the game,
and he has a Stealth II S220, but I thought that if you run the game
in non-full screen mode that it is not in 3D acceleration mode. What
am I missing here?
Also, I am surprised that The Pits, being the excellent and long
running sim racing resource that it is, would fail to mention the lack
of full course yellows and tire temps in their review. Those omissions
definitely take away from the "sim' aspect of the game for some of us.
Don Chapman
Probably someone who knows what they are talking about. He
recommended the Stealth II S220 instead of 3dfx. HAHA. Oh boy.
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> Probably someone who knows what they are talking about. He
> recommended the Stealth II S220 instead of 3dfx. HAHA. Oh boy.
Granted, you can take my 3dfx card when you pry it from my cold, dead PCI
slot (umm...or Voodoo II comes out), but what's the problem here? CPR is a
D3D game, and 3dfx does NOT rule that roost! My Velocity 128 beats it out
pretty consistently in graphics and speed; the difference is slight, but
noticeable. If the S220 just sucks on general principles, forgive me; I'm
not that familiar with the card. My point is that there are better
alternatives than the 3dfx for D3D.
Sean
Quoted text (12 lines)
>I am confused by the following quote from the review: >"A few other niggling points...the full screen option (shown here), >which even though it has exceptional graphics, is almost useless for >driving, as at the speeds you are doing, it doesn't draw far enough >ahead to be really useful. The non-full screen mode is great, though, >and can be used quite readily." >The reviewer talks about the need for a good 3D card to run the game, >and he has a Stealth II S220, but I thought that if you run the game >in non-full screen mode that it is not in 3D acceleration mode. What >am I missing here?Hey, strange as it may sound there are actually people who like CPR! I
just can't figure out why this game is so hated in the group... It seems
like every time someone points out a good review it gets totally trashed,
then everyone has their fun insulting the reviewer, the magazine or web
site that had the AUDACITY to say something good about this sim, and
indirectly, everyone who is actually enjoying it! If you start fresh and
w/o bias, I think the hot sims out now are very comparable in quality,
playability, realism, etc; they each have their strengths and
weaknesses. Then, a few niggling complaints (some valid, some not) start
to tilt the group's opinions one way or the other... Then, it snowballs,
and bashing a certain product becomes downright fashionable and fun!
It's the only way I can figure a game like F1RS has become the darling
(of sorts) of the newsgroup and CPR is the red-headed stepchild!
I see CPR as a complete blast for a number of reasons I won't reiterate
here. I've been racing since World Circuit (F1GP) and have jumped back
and forth between all the latest sims, and I don't think there's a solo
racer out now that gives me such a feeling of being in the***pit! If
you include multiplayer experiences, I'd say it's second only to the
NROS. Now, I'm not saying my opinion is RIGHT, but when people say this
sim is a failure, that it's a complete waste of effort on behalf of TRI
and MS, when they start attacking reviewers and steering strangers away
from it in the stores, they're WRONG!
BTW, I'm in no way impugning the original poster... This is just a
little preemptive strike (or rant) against those about to toast The Pits.
Sean
Quoted text (10 lines)
>> Probably someone who knows what they are talking about. He >> recommended the Stealth II S220 instead of 3dfx. HAHA. Oh boy. >Granted, you can take my 3dfx card when you pry it from my cold, dead PCI >slot (umm...or Voodoo II comes out), but what's the problem here? CPR is a >D3D game, and 3dfx does NOT rule that roost! My Velocity 128 beats it out >pretty consistently in graphics and speed; the difference is slight, but >noticeable. If the S220 just sucks on general principles, forgive me; I'm >not that familiar with the card. My point is that there are better >alternatives than the 3dfx for D3D.>Greg is a pretty diehard 3DFX evangelist. You either own one or
>you're a blooming idiot, apparently. (I wonder if Greg knows that in
>one quarter alone nVidia Riva boards jumped to 21% marketshare-still
>less than the little over the slight majority of 3DFX boards out
>there, but in a single quarter for the million mark to be reached is a
>pretty high level of market penetration.
Says little for the _quality_ of the Riva and a hell of a lot for the
_marketing_ of the board. The vast majority of those sales were
bundled sales, with vendors building the card into pre-built systems
instead of a regular 2D card. In the UK at least that trend has been
reversed, and the majority of games machines are being sold with a
bundled 3dFX, as that's what the market is demanding.
No comment on the respective merits, demerits, just the facts ma'am :)
Cheers!
John
Any questions on this randy? And it is 'Greg 3DFX Cisko' not Cisco.
If you are going to try and ramrod me at least spell my freaking name
right :-)
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>I have to put my two cents worth in here. I own a Gateway 266 that came
>with a velocity 128, and I have yet to get a piece of software that I own
>other then Monster Truck Madness to use d3d acceleration without the game
>crashing, so I can't say that the card works better than 3dfx. I bought a
>Monster 3d a month ago and My computer absolutely blazes with the two cards
>working together.
>> >> Probably someone who knows what they are talking about. He
>> >> recommended the Stealth II S220 instead of 3dfx. HAHA. Oh boy.
>> >Granted, you can take my 3dfx card when you pry it from my cold, dead
>PCI
>> >slot (umm...or Voodoo II comes out), but what's the problem here? CPR
>is a
>> >D3D game, and 3dfx does NOT rule that roost! My Velocity 128 beats it
>out
>> >pretty consistently in graphics and speed; the difference is slight, but
>> >noticeable. If the S220 just sucks on general principles, forgive me;
>I'm
>> >not that familiar with the card. My point is that there are better
>> >alternatives than the 3dfx for D3D.
>> Greg is a pretty diehard 3DFX evangelist. You either own one or
>> you're a blooming idiot, apparently. (I wonder if Greg knows that in
>> one quarter alone nVidia Riva boards jumped to 21% marketshare-still
>> less than the little over the slight majority of 3DFX boards out
>> there, but in a single quarter for the million mark to be reached is a
>> pretty high level of market penetration. And yes, in D3D mode, the
>> Riva 128 beats the 3DFX, and the Stealth II does as well in many
>> instances. The main argument for 3DFX is that you can run Glide *and*
>> D3D games and get great performance. No argument there. But its
>> certainly not the only board out there, nor is it always the fastest.
>> But of course all of this will be lost on Greg 3DFX Cisco, because
>> he's ill-equipped to tolerate others who differ with him on their
>> choice of hardware and software.
>> Randy
>> Randy Magruder
>> Contributing Reviewer
>> Digital Sportspage
>> http://www.digitalsports.com
>Greg is a pretty diehard 3DFX evangelist. You either own one or
>you're a blooming idiot, apparently. (I wonder if Greg knows that in
>one quarter alone nVidia Riva boards jumped to 21% marketshare-still
>less than the little over the slight majority of 3DFX boards out
I wonder if greg cares about Riva? When Voodoo2 comes out you
can forget about it.
OK good phew... One thing you should understand is that I am a
flightsim person in addition to racing sims. 3dfx is the only choice
for flightsims too :-) Try running Longbow2 on a RIVA :-)
Oh I'm equipped to tolerate it. I just choose not to for a while. 3dfx
is the obvious choice and I am constantly amazed at the clueless
who cannot get it. Either they don't know what it means or they refuse
to understand it. It really is as simple as that. Sorry if it offends you.
Believe it or not that really is not my intent.
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I have to put my two cents worth in here. I own a Gateway 266 that came
with a velocity 128, and I have yet to get a piece of software that I own
other then Monster Truck Madness to use d3d acceleration without the game
crashing, so I can't say that the card works better than 3dfx. I bought a
Monster 3d a month ago and My computer absolutely blazes with the two cards
working together.
> >> Probably someone who knows what they are talking about. He
> >> recommended the Stealth II S220 instead of 3dfx. HAHA. Oh boy.
> >Granted, you can take my 3dfx card when you pry it from my cold, dead PCI
> >slot (umm...or Voodoo II comes out), but what's the problem here? CPR is a
> >D3D game, and 3dfx does NOT rule that roost! My Velocity 128 beats it out
> >pretty consistently in graphics and speed; the difference is slight, but
> >noticeable. If the S220 just sucks on general principles, forgive me; I'm
Quoted text (22 lines)
> >not that familiar with the card. My point is that there are better > >alternatives than the 3dfx for D3D. > Greg is a pretty diehard 3DFX evangelist. You either own one or > you're a blooming idiot, apparently. (I wonder if Greg knows that in > one quarter alone nVidia Riva boards jumped to 21% marketshare-still > less than the little over the slight majority of 3DFX boards out > there, but in a single quarter for the million mark to be reached is a > pretty high level of market penetration. And yes, in D3D mode, the > Riva 128 beats the 3DFX, and the Stealth II does as well in many > instances. The main argument for 3DFX is that you can run Glide *and* > D3D games and get great performance. No argument there. But its > certainly not the only board out there, nor is it always the fastest. > But of course all of this will be lost on Greg 3DFX Cisco, because > he's ill-equipped to tolerate others who differ with him on their > choice of hardware and software. > Randy > Randy Magruder > Contributing Reviewer > Digital Sportspage > http://www.digitalsports.comI agree with you. I love CPR for its graphics. I played Sony PlayStation's
F1RS as well as the PC demo. But CPR has a more sense of graphical realism
(cockpit view and beautiful textures) As we all know, CPR has problems
with framerate during a 12 cars race, "underskilled" AI, and.....that's the
only complain that I have about CPR.
> Oh I'm equipped to tolerate it. I just choose not to for a while. 3dfx
> is the obvious choice and I am constantly amazed at the clueless
> who cannot get it.
Some might draw the conclusion that YOU are the clueless one: you admit to
being deliberately intolerant and feel comfortable suggesting that one should
use a SLOWER card (not to mention the washed-out colors) for a D3D game?
You've done an excellent job confirming Randy's accusations...
Sean
Quoted text (9 lines)
> > Oh I'm equipped to tolerate it. I just choose not to for a while. 3dfx > > is the obvious choice and I am constantly amazed at the clueless > > who cannot get it. > Some might draw the conclusion that YOU are the clueless one: you admit to > being deliberately intolerant and feel comfortable suggesting that one should > use a SLOWER card (not to mention the washed-out colors) for a D3D game? > You've done an excellent job confirming Randy's accusations...Oh boy you are too funny. Yes I recommend the 3dfx card even for
Direct3D. Anyone who would recommend Direct3D over glide is
rather clueless too. I guess you don't know much about this stuff.
That is fine. Have you tried playing Longbow2 or Jetfighter3 with
a Riva card?
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>> Oh I'm equipped to tolerate it. I just choose not to for a while. 3dfx
>> is the obvious choice and I am constantly amazed at the clueless
>> who cannot get it.
>Some might draw the conclusion that YOU are the clueless one: you admit to
>being deliberately intolerant and feel comfortable suggesting that one
should
>use a SLOWER card (not to mention the washed-out colors) for a D3D game?
>You've done an excellent job confirming Randy's accusations...
>Sean
> Oh boy you are too funny. Yes I recommend the 3dfx card even for
> Direct3D. Anyone who would recommend Direct3D over glide is
> rather clueless too. I guess you don't know much about this stuff.
> That is fine.
If it makes you comfortable thinking I don't have a clue, go right on ahead
thinking that...
Do the words "non sequitur" mean anything to you? The group is
rec.autos.simulators; the game is CART Precision Racing. Furthermore, I know
you have enough clues left in your little bag to realize the two games you
mentioned have native 3dfx support. CPR does not... So, exactly what the hell
is your point?
Hold on, I think I know... I'll just say what you're dying to say, but you
don't realize it: If you can only buy one 3D card and you want it to run as
many sims as possible, as fast as possible, buy a 3dfx card! I completely
agree with this! Our views are not that divergent. The difference is that I
recognize that there are better cards for D3D games and I don't feel it
necessary to bash people who point this out! Similarly, if you want to attack
Microsoft for sticking with the D3D standard I would also be on your side. It
makes me ill that CPR is essentially a MS product which, I suspect, has no
chance of ever seeing 3dfx support, though it might happen when TRI's contract
expires. But, like it or not, it uses D3D, and when you bash people who
suggest a good D3D card to play this sim you just come across as a complete
3dfx sycophant.
Sean
>Says little for the _quality_ of the Riva and a hell of a lot for the
>_marketing_ of the board.
There's no denying nVidia did it right by getting major OEM's to sell
their board. Think about it. No matter how good or bad the board is
that you're introducing, if its not 3DFX , you're in trouble from day
one, so you have to do something to get noticed and ensure a great
deal of support, and among software developers, its marketshare that
ensures support. For example: Janes Combat Simulations, which
previously had been evangelizing themselves as 3DFX only because there
was no way they could do D3D without a big sacrifice in quality, has
now put a D3D patch on their web site which is OPTIMIZED FOR RIVA
CHIPSETS. Says something about the power of marketshare.
Besides, I've been following the whole argument of image quality, and
frankly, those arguments are old and worthless at this point. The
early problems observed with image quality on Riva boards were either
due to drivers or early versions of D3D games which didn't exploit its
capabilities. You can find a lot of 3DFX fans hooting that Riva
doesn't support transparency (wrong), fog tables (wrong), or that you
couldn't deactivate its auto-mip-map generation (wrong).
Well, it just demonstrates that what flies in the UK doesn't always
fly here. At any rate, its not so important how or why these cards
get into the machines, simply that they do, they are great cards, and
the software industry has taken notice.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
Hm, don't know what to tell you. I bought a Dell P300 rather than a
Gateway, and have had no such problems, and as a reviewer I get a lot
of games to run.
I could grab a used 3DFX for about a hundred bucks but I'm kind of
waiting around to see how long its going to take Voodoo2 to come out.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Any questions on this randy? And it is 'Greg 3DFX Cisko' not Cisco.
>If you are going to try and ramrod me at least spell my freaking name
>right :-)
ramrod? Well, at least we've now got a new term for the tone you've
been using here lately.
And read my reply on it. And by the way, if one user comes up and
responds that they can't get their 3DFX to work well in their machine,
do YOU automatically say "ah that must mean the 3DFX sucks"? Is that
what your implication is because one person said they couldn't get it
to work? Has it occurred to you that it could be his GATEWAY?
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>I wonder if greg cares about Riva? When Voodoo2 comes out you
>can forget about it.
Not so. The Voodoo 2 has already been announced to be a premium
priced item, expected to begin selling at about the same price the
original 3DFX boards did. That means about $250-300 smackers, and all
for a board which is an add-on to a current 2D board. That price
means it'll get a religious and small market for awhile, just as the
3DFX did. At whatever point the price of the thing dips below $200
the general public will start taking an interest and its marketshare
will increase rapidly. How quickly Voodoo2 captures the world is
going to be directly related to entry-price.
The reason that Riva and Rendition will continue to do well is because
they are both fast AND inexpensive.
Okay, I will. There is a Riva patch on the Janes web site right now.
Seems the people at Janes aren't as stubborn as many 3DFX fans think
they are. Shoulda checked their web site first, buddy.
This sounds a lot like. Islam is the obvious only true religion and I
am constantly amazed at the clueless who don't get it. Here's a tip
for you, Greg. Find out which direction 3DFX is from where you live
and bow down and pray in that direction 3 times a day :).
The Voodoo chipset has been surpassed by the current crop of video
accelerators. That's a fact. The voodoo 2 is NOT here yet. That's a
fact. When it DOES show up, it will be priced as expensively as the
original Voodoo was upon its release. Thats a fact. And many
software vendors who were previously 3DFX or bust are now doing D3D
versions of their stuff because simple market economics dictate that
3DFX's relative slice of the pie is nowhere near the monopoly guys
like you think it is.
Perhaps some people just prefer to make up their own mind about what
kind of board they want and how much they want to spend on it. About
the only downside to not having a 3DFX right NOW is that most of the
demos these days seem to be 3DFX-only at first, even if the finished
product will be both D3D and 3DFX.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Who cares about a few frames per second slower? Voodoo has three things:
>support, support and support!
So does D3D.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Oh boy you are too funny. Yes I recommend the 3dfx card even for
>Direct3D. Anyone who would recommend Direct3D over glide is
>rather clueless too. I guess you don't know much about this stuff.
>That is fine. Have you tried playing Longbow2 or Jetfighter3 with
>a Riva card?
Now that there is a Riva-targeted D3D patch from Janes, I might go
ahead and buy Longbow 2. I've seen it as cheap as $35 online.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>>Who cares about a few frames per second slower? Voodoo has three things:
>>support, support and support!
>So does D3D.
A foolish statement, but on-par with your religious anti-3dfx
evangelizing. As we all know, the only board that supports ALL of the
commonly used *** APIs (D3D, Glide, and OpenGL) is Voodoo.
Joe
>And read my reply on it. And by the way, if one user comes up and
>responds that they can't get their 3DFX to work well in their machine,
>do YOU automatically say "ah that must mean the 3DFX sucks"? Is that
>what your implication is because one person said they couldn't get it
>to work? Has it occurred to you that it could be his GATEWAY?
I don't even know what you are talking about with this. Do you?
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Quoted text (8 lines)
>>I wonder if greg cares about Riva? When Voodoo2 comes out you >>can forget about it. >Not so. The Voodoo 2 has already been announced to be a premium >priced item, expected to begin selling at about the same price the >original 3DFX boards did. That means about $250-300 smackers, and all >for a board which is an add-on to a current 2D board. That price >means it'll get a religious and small market for awhile, just as theQuoted text (8 lines)
>>>Who cares about a few frames per second slower? Voodoo has three things: >>>support, support and support! >>So does D3D. >A foolish statement, but on-par with your religious anti-3dfx >evangelizing. As we all know, the only board that supports ALL of the >commonly used *** APIs (D3D, Glide, and OpenGL) is Voodoo.>Why whould I check their web site for a Riva patch for LB2? I would
>be surprised if it worked as good as 3dfx does, but I hope it does.
It does not, Andy Hollis has been quite upfront about this. As well as
less graphical features, he says that the way Riva implements textures
you would have to set your draw-distance to half of the 3dfx distance
to achieve similar frame rates.
Joe
Questions anyone?
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>>Why whould I check their web site for a Riva patch for LB2? I would
>>be surprised if it worked as good as 3dfx does, but I hope it does.
>It does not, Andy Hollis has been quite upfront about this. As well as
>less graphical features, he says that the way Riva implements textures
>you would have to set your draw-distance to half of the 3dfx distance
>to achieve similar frame rates.
>Joe
>>Most of the Monster 3D owners will probably look into trading their
>>existing voodoo board into Diamond for a voodoo2 at a reduced
>>price. That is what I'll probably look into.
>Is it firm that there will be a trade-in? What price? I'd definitely
I believe it is a $100 credit toward a Voodoo2. Or something like
that.
Facts? I have probably forgotten more about flightsims than you know.
Andy Hollis has stated that the Riva version won't be up to the 3dfx
version in performance. What is available now is a Alpha patch which
does not use all of the features of the Riva, it is up in the air if it ever
will. It is not quite the back pedal you seem to want to believe. In other
words the Riva version is no where near the 3dfx version. Today that
is a fact.
Name a rendition app. Duh, like ICR2? N2 without bilinear filtering
or is it Z buffering which is lacking...
Well since you need a 2D card with 3dfx the Rendition + 3dfx combo
might get the most oomph.
I agree in principal. However the D3D versions of these games *ARE
NEVER* as fast or good as the 3dfx version. Sorry.
Try several developers. Flying Corps is supposedly D3D but only
sings with a 3dfx card.
It is.
up to the performance of the 3dfx version. Could
current popular opinion in this
Hey no problem at all. Any time I can help just let me know :-)
Uh oh.
No kidding. You mean like the black sky? I was getting this with my 3dfx
when I loaded a savegame.
Unless it affects framerate or other visuals which are key to the overall
immersion of the sim.
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Quoted text (8 lines)
>"(THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD. ITS NAME IS 3DFX. BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP >BEFORE THE 3DFX GODS. IF YOU DO NOT YOU WILL BE RIDICULED AS THE >CLUELESS HEATHEN THAT YOU ARE. EITHER ENDORSE 3DFX OR ENDURE OUR >WRATH. WE REFUSE TO EVEN CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT THERE IS >ANYTHING OTHER THAN 3DFX. TO SAY OTHERWISE IS HERESY. BEGONE, YE >DOGS OF RIVA AND RENDITION AND POWERVR. WE CAST YOU INTO THE FIERY >LAKE OF IGNORANCE AND CLUELESSNESS TO BURN FOR ALL ETERNITY. SHOW >YOUR FACE IN THE NEWSGROUPS NO MORE!).>>I don't even know what you are talking about with this. Do you?
>I guess I'll have to put it more simple terms for you. I say
Yes please, my prozac has not kicked in yet.
Sounds reasonable.
OK do it.
Does it? You just admitted the 3dfx doesn't suck.
But please keep em coming!
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Quoted text (7 lines)
>>It does not, Andy Hollis has been quite upfront about this. As well as >>less graphical features, he says that the way Riva implements textures >>you would have to set your draw-distance to half of the 3dfx distance >>to achieve similar frame rates. >That's pretty vague. Perhaps you could enlighten me with a more >technical description of the problem "the way Riva implementsThere's the RRedline patch of Myth which looks much better than the
Glide version.
--
Eric T. Busch
http://ebusch.akorn.net
>Name a rendition app. Duh, like ICR2? N2 without bilinear filtering
>or is it Z buffering which is lacking...
>I don't even know what you are talking about with this. Do you?
I guess I'll have to put it more simple terms for you. I say
something nice about the Riva. One user comes back and says they
can't get theirs to work with the Gateway they got, so they went out
and got a 3DFX and its solved the world's problems. You then quote
that message and send it back in my face as if it proves anything, to
which I respond that if that's your simplistic criteria, I can provide
many posts to demonstrate that the 3DFX sucks. Of course, the 3DFX
doesn't suck, but it demonstrates the lameness of your attempt at
rebuttal.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Most of the Monster 3D owners will probably look into trading their
>existing voodoo board into Diamond for a voodoo2 at a reduced
>price. That is what I'll probably look into.
Is it firm that there will be a trade-in? What price? I'd definitely
pick up a Monster 3D now second-hand if I knew I could trade it up for
a Voodoo 2 later. And as far as "most of the Monster 3D owners"?
Don't count on it. The early adopters will jump, but the mainstream
won't, at least not initially. If they do, it will be an amazing new
trend in expensive 3D board purchases.
No problems there.
Nice backpedal. First you want to claim that you can't play Longbow 2
on a Riva, and THIS is what you fall back on? Here's an idea. Why
not just admit you didn't have your facts straight when you posted
that?? I might enjoy LB2, but I'm really more interested in F-15 (not
that this has anything to do with rec.autos.simulators, where we sit
now). And by the way, the myth of inherent Glide/3DFX visual
superiority has been pretty well shattered. I can give you some sites
showing side-by-side screen compares of Glide v D3D/Riva on the
latest, greatest titles. They are indistinguishable.
No, by rather MORE than a few percentage points.
Well, something has got to give. You no longer have the fastest
possible speed with the 3DFX in D3D mode, and you have no support for
any Rendition-Readyt apps. As is most often the case, you can't have
it all. If you get a Rendition you can't run Glide apps and your D3D
won't be quite as fast as it will with a Riva. If you have a Riva you
have the fastest D3D preformance but no Glide or Rendition, and if you
have a 3DFX you get Glide and D3D but no Rendition and the D3D is not
the fastest. So it really comes down to support. Right now, the 3DFX
is ahead in some genres and in others its a wash. Since Jane's has
begun producing Direct3D patches to its sims, it looks like they
haven't ignored the fact that boards like Rendition's and NVidia's are
selling like hotcakes to a market that won't even look at Voodoo 2
until it drops under $200.
It says more about Ubisoft than it does about D3D. They did it for
3DFX first, and they still have to finish fixing problems with the D3D
version, but they aren't visual quality or frame rate problems. Heck
the D3D version of F1RS ran nicely even on my old P133 I had before I
upgraded to a P300. One developer producing a better version in Glide
than D3D does not your case make (though your trend here on Usenet is
trying to show that a single single example is good enough to prove
grand sweeping statements).
Nope.
Well, since you already have made up your mind about what I'll write,
I guess I don't need to write it. Thanks for saving me some time!
But if you're interested in the TRUTH, my comments about F1RS are
going to be primarily based upon its driving model and AI. Display
quirks might be worth mentioning, but since I know that they aren't
there in the 3DFX version, I'll note as such and let the reader decide
based upon what board they have. You make the mistake of assuming I'd
write a review with myself in mind, rather than my readers, and for
the record, the driving physics and AI are highly unlikely to be
affected by the video board.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>It does not, Andy Hollis has been quite upfront about this. As well as
>less graphical features, he says that the way Riva implements textures
>you would have to set your draw-distance to half of the 3dfx distance
>to achieve similar frame rates.
That's pretty vague. Perhaps you could enlighten me with a more
technical description of the problem "the way Riva implements
textures"? Have they talked to nVidia about this? Is this the
auto-mipmap generation? Do they know they can turn it OFF if they
don't like it?
You know its kind of interesting how when MS comes out and says that
Glide didn't offer any advantages for CPR when they tried it, they
were blasted as being incompetent programmers and that the hardware
was not the problem. When Andy Hollis of Janes comes out and says
something negative about the Riva version of Longbow, its suddenly the
hardware that's the problem (no possibility of it being that the
developers aren't as hot with D3D hardware as they are with Glide?).
I don't know who is right and who is wrong, but its certainly an
interesting trend among those who endorse the 3DFX as the only viable
3D card.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>And as far as your allegation that I'm engaging in "religious
>anti-3DFX evangelizing", I just have to laugh.
Since it's your own "argument" thrown back at you, that is pretty
funny, You are the one always mindlessly claiming that anyone who
thinks 3dfx is a superior solution is religious (even though that VAST
majority of serious gamers agree that 3dfx is superior) which is why I
wrote the same back to you in a post, to see if you'd recognize your
own silliness. The funny thing is, you DID recognize it as silly -
what's even funnier is you NOT recognizing it as your own pet
argument, and then you actually go on to use it *again* in the very
same post you claim it is such an offensive position (see below).
Incredible!
This is a straw-man argument of course, nothing of the sort has
happened. I and others here have pointed out again and again the
rational arguments why 3dfx is superior. You have been unable to
counter these arguments, so you just lash out with your mindless
ranting accusing everyone of being religious (in other words, you
avoid the argument altogether), e.g.:
There you go, in the very same post where you "just have to laugh" at
accusations of being religious, you mindlessly spout more of the same
accusations as if it has some meaning.
ROF,L! The next time you want to roast an argument, here's a couple of
clues: first, check to make sure it's not your own pet argument you're
roasting. Second, don't use that very same argument that you
supposedly despise IN THE VERY SAME POST (!).
Joe
>Is it firm that there will be a trade-in? What price? I'd definitely
>pick up a Monster 3D now second-hand if I knew I could trade it up for
>a Voodoo 2 later.
The details haven't been announced, but I know at least a couple
vendors announced there would be a trade-in plan (Diamond was one of
them).
This is just not so, from my reading of the 3dfx newsgroups. Voodoo2
is THE hot topic, everyone is talking about them, and I'd estimate at
least 90% of the users on the 3dfx groups are planning on upgrading
ASAP.
Not really, just a continuation of the current trend of using 3d
accelerators as a cheap way to get more performance out of your
current machine. 250$-$300 is not "expensive", BTW - that's in the
"impulse buy" range for most people interested in high performance
PCs.
Not. There are many capabilities of Glide just not available in D3D -
LB2 is a good example, Andy Hollis has said there are visual quality
compromises (as well as performance ones) in LB2 D3D.
So there are some games that don't take advantage of the more advanced
capabilities of Glide. This prooves nothing, obviously.
Joe
>It does not, Andy Hollis has been quite upfront about this. As well as
>less graphical features, he says that the way Riva implements textures
>you would have to set your draw-distance to half of the 3dfx distance
>to achieve similar frame rates.
You misquoted him. I looked at his comments in THEIR entirety and this
is what he said [I'll capitalize to emphasize what you missed]:
"And since Riva does not do 8-bit palletized textures, it needs twice
the space to represent the same amount of area.? So, FOR EQUIVALENT
TEXTURE MEMORY USAGE, you only get half as distant of a horizon with
D3D, if you want reasonable performance (better than software). "
That's a pretty big qualifier to omit there! Since Riva boards can
use system memory for textures, whereas 3DFX boards use only on-board
texture memory, it may not be entirely fair to limit the comparison to
using the same amount of memory. And why should NVidia explicitly
support 8-bit textures for space reasons if space is NOT an issue with
that board?!
Andy also said in a different message (again see all caps which I have
added to emphasize a key point):
"I can't say exactly until we know for sure. We have to wait for
possible driver fixes/enhancements from some card makers, and we also
have to weight the cost/benefit value of certain other bits of work we
could do. The latter is due to the fact that many 3D cards (Riva
included) do not support 8-bit paletized texturing. OUR ENTIRE SYSTEM
IS BASED ON THIS. "
So the problem is not so much the hardware as the fact that Hollis'
programmers built and optimized a 3D engine based upon THEIR design
decision to optimize for 8-bit textures, undoubtedly in targeting the
3DFX architecture (and possible texture memory limitations) squarely.
One must wonder if they were doing the Riva version from scratch
whether they would have made such a design decision, given the much
larger amount of texture memory a Riva board can handle (via system
RAM) and the resulting conclusion that there might not have been any
reason to limit the game to 8-bit textures.
Andy then says:
"We have done some clever things to make it work reasonably well on
these deficient cards, but any further speed imporvements will come at
significantly more time/dev cost. There must be reasonable return to
justisfy this time/expense."
So Andy's inclusion of Riva in a batch of "deficient" cards is (at
least from this post) based upon his finding that the Riva hardware
isn't compatible with the "system" that the Jane's programming team
implemented to support the 3DFX hardware and corresponding texture
memory limitations. I understand that he doesn't want to re-write
Longbow 2 for D3D...but at the same time, just because someone does
away with a hardware feature because it addressed something that's no
longer a limitation doesn't mean that this is BAD. Just that its not
something you could easily re-architect for.
Andy makes a compelling argument as to why Longbow 2, patched, won't
run as well on D3D/Riva as it does on a 3DFX. However, he fails to
convince me that a ground-up version of a game aimed at an
architecture like that in the Riva wouldn't be every bit as good as
one aimed at Glide/3DFX. Perhaps he could do so if his team attempted
to do a from-scratch Riva-optimized game.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
I seriously doubt it is my gateway, it uses a standard Intel 440lx
motherboard, there is nothing special inside, basically it is abunch of
other manufacturers parts that were all put together in one computer. You
could buy all the stuff yourself off the shelf to make it.
Quoted text (10 lines)
> >And read my reply on it. And by the way, if one user comes up and > >responds that they can't get their 3DFX to work well in their machine, > >do YOU automatically say "ah that must mean the 3DFX sucks"? Is that > >what your implication is because one person said they couldn't get it > >to work? Has it occurred to you that it could be his GATEWAY? > I don't even know what you are talking about with this. Do you? > -- > Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.>The details haven't been announced, but I know at least a couple
>vendors announced there would be a trade-in plan (Diamond was one of
>them).
I'll check into that. Might make me run out and get a Monster
second-hand. Thanks.
Do you ordinarily extrapolate the entire 3DFX user base from the
loyalists who are patrolling the 3DFX newsgroups? Or did you make an
exception in this case? The people on the newsgroups are generally
the most knowledgeable and fanatical about things like this, but they
aren't the mass-market -- they are the people who will say: "What?
Another $250 for another 20 fps in Falcon 4.0? SOLD!" Most of the
public isn't like that. If they were, the Sega Saturn would have sold
like hotcakes at $399. Instead, look what happened to Sega, while
Sony and Nintendo introduced at lower price points and won big.
As you would expect on Usenet!
And that's how many out of the current 3 million or so 3DFX owners?
I've already addressed these "visual quality compromises" in another
post and won't repeat them here. You didn't read carefully what Andy
said. You read into his comments what you wanted to.
Yeah, Jedi Knight and Turok obviously are programmed by losers.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>You are the one always mindlessly claiming that anyone who
>thinks 3dfx is a superior solution is religious
Wrong. Anyone who thinks 3DFX is the only board worth even
considering is religious. Anyone who calls another person names or
ridicules them publicly for having the guts to state their opinion,
even if its not pro-3DFX, is religious.
Please. You mean calling someone clueless is not a personal
cheapshot?
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Questions anyone?
I raised quite a few. Good ones actually. For starters, Joe omitted
anything from his paraphrasing of Andy Hollis' comments which might
cast doubt on what he wanted to read into it.
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
Quoted text (17 lines)
>-- >Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes. >>>Why whould I check their web site for a Riva patch for LB2? I would >>>be surprised if it worked as good as 3dfx does, but I hope it does. >>It does not, Andy Hollis has been quite upfront about this. As well as >>less graphical features, he says that the way Riva implements textures >>you would have to set your draw-distance to half of the 3dfx distance >>to achieve similar frame rates. >>Joe>Facts? I have probably forgotten more about flightsims than you know.
Since you know absolutely zilch about my background, I'd stay off of
this particularly dangerous quicksand if I were you. You don't know
what you're starting.
More avoidance of admitting the simple fact that you were wrong when
you made the case that Longbow was 3DFX only.
Whatever. YOU can't run it hardware accelerated. A Rendition owner
can. Nice dodge, but pinned again.
Maybe, but since the Rendition doesn't have an AGP version yet (unless
the Thriller 3D is AGP?!) I've got one of the fastest boards around
for that.
I know some people who have both boards who would say the two are
indistinguishable at worst, side by side.
Thanks for pointing that out. I might do that. I'll definitely note
any problems with either board. But as I said, gameplay is going to
be a lot more important to me than video board peculiarities.
Right. And since they don't on my machine, they are of little use
except as a side note.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Sorry. I just thought this needed repeating :- )
Thanks. Glad I could save you some composition time. :)
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Does it? You just admitted the 3dfx doesn't suck.
Only in your imagination have I criticized 3DFX. Merely pointing out
there are some other boards which do some things better doesn't mean I
think anything is wrong with 3DFX.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
> >[The 3dfx Mantra]
> Sorry. I just thought this needed repeating :- )
LOL! OK, you got me...that's hilarious! At least you're consistent, Greg! :)
Sean
>>You are the one always mindlessly claiming that anyone who
>>thinks 3dfx is a superior solution is religious
>Wrong.
How can you even say that? The very post I was replying to above was
full of your rediculous assertions that everyone who thinks 3dfx is
the best solution is "religious". This post I'm reoplying to now is
more of the same. These weird (paranoid?) claims of religiousity seem
to be all you have to say about 3d cards.
And yet, the only thing close to "name-calling" relating to these
matters has been by you, with your continuous content-free claims that
everyone who disagrees with you is religious.
You said it, not me. I just offered ya a couple clues, that's all.
Joe
>Do you ordinarily extrapolate the entire 3DFX user base from the
>loyalists who are patrolling the 3DFX newsgroups?
What would cause you to make such a bizarre assumption. Let me know if
you have any questions about what I actually wrote, I don't feel like
defending your strawman arguments at the moment.
Joe
>That's pretty vague. Perhaps you could enlighten me with a more
>technical description of the problem "the way Riva implements
>textures"? Have they talked to nVidia about this? Is this the
>auto-mipmap generation? Do they know they can turn it OFF if they
>don't like it?
I've attached two pposts from Andy where he describes the issue. The
specific description of this particular issue is in the fourth
paragraph from the bottom.
Yes it is interesting that those with a vested interest in saying
something (i.e., MS in this case) are less trusted than objective
sources (i.e., Janes). Funny thing, skepticism.
Here's Andy's posts:
Joe
>I raised quite a few. Good ones actually. For starters, Joe omitted
>anything from his paraphrasing of Andy Hollis' comments which might
>cast doubt on what he wanted to read into it.
Oh, please, give this catty, smugly superior kind of bullshit a rest,
why don't you.
Joe
Quoted text (51 lines)
> >>>Who cares about a few frames per second slower? Voodoo has three things: > >>>support, support and support! > >>So does D3D. > >A foolish statement, but on-par with your religious anti-3dfx > >evangelizing. As we all know, the only board that supports ALL of the > >commonly used *** APIs (D3D, Glide, and OpenGL) is Voodoo. > Really? Does it support RRedline and Speedy3D? NO? Ooops, there > goes SODA, NASCAR 2, and IndyCar II for starters. Also, OpenGL is > being supported by the Riva chipset as well as the Rendition chipset. > The drivers were later in coming, but they are usually there, if not > in final status, in pre-release beta status. > The only foolish statement here was the one you just made. > And as far as your allegation that I'm engaging in "religious > anti-3DFX evangelizing", I just have to laugh. Nothing like trying > to apply the reverse of your own motivations to other people. I'm not > anti-3DFX at all. I have no beef with anyone who wants to get one. > Its a great board and its advantages are well known. What *is* funny > is how anyone who even raises the possibility of another board being a > good purchase is ridiculed and mocked by people like you. I'm not > against 3DFX, but I'm also not against nVidia, Rendition, NEC, Matrox > or anyone else who produces a great board. Its people like YOU that > have a problem with anyone else even considering anything other than > 3DFX, and its people like YOU who are doing the religious evangelizing > "(THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD. ITS NAME IS 3DFX. BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP > BEFORE THE 3DFX GODS. IF YOU DO NOT YOU WILL BE RIDICULED AS THE > CLUELESS HEATHEN THAT YOU ARE. EITHER ENDORSE 3DFX OR ENDURE OUR > WRATH. WE REFUSE TO EVEN CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT THERE IS > ANYTHING OTHER THAN 3DFX. TO SAY OTHERWISE IS HERESY. BEGONE, YE > DOGS OF RIVA AND RENDITION AND POWERVR. WE CAST YOU INTO THE FIERY > LAKE OF IGNORANCE AND CLUELESSNESS TO BURN FOR ALL ETERNITY. SHOW > YOUR FACE IN THE NEWSGROUPS NO MORE!). The preceding is satirical > of course, but we're only a few notches away from hearing it from > people like you, given the scorn you've heaped on anyone who provides > anything less than religious single-minded loyalty to your favorite > brand. > So next time you have the urge to accuse me of religiously > evangelizing anti-3DFX, look in the mirror first and ask yourself if > the problem is simply that you are doing the exact opposite. > Randy > Randy Magruder > Contributing Reviewer > Digital Sportspage > [link lost in import]snip, snip, snip, call in the barber!
NAS 2 - Longbow 2 - Nas 2 - Longbow 2 - Nas 2 - Longbow 2 -
.........................
SEE?
PS - anyone got a bucket of water for these puppies chasing there
tails round in circles?
Quoted text (34 lines)
> >Says little for the _quality_ of the Riva and a hell of a lot for the > >_marketing_ of the board. > There's no denying nVidia did it right by getting major OEM's to sell > their board. Think about it. No matter how good or bad the board is > that you're introducing, if its not 3DFX , you're in trouble from day > one, so you have to do something to get noticed and ensure a great > deal of support, and among software developers, its marketshare that > ensures support. For example: Janes Combat Simulations, which > previously had been evangelizing themselves as 3DFX only because there > was no way they could do D3D without a big sacrifice in quality, has > now put a D3D patch on their web site which is OPTIMIZED FOR RIVA > CHIPSETS. Says something about the power of marketshare. > Besides, I've been following the whole argument of image quality, and > frankly, those arguments are old and worthless at this point. The > early problems observed with image quality on Riva boards were either > due to drivers or early versions of D3D games which didn't exploit its > capabilities. You can find a lot of 3DFX fans hooting that Riva > doesn't support transparency (wrong), fog tables (wrong), or that you > couldn't deactivate its auto-mip-map generation (wrong). > >The vast majority of those sales were > >bundled sales, with vendors building the card into pre-built systems > >instead of a regular 2D card. In the UK at least that trend has been > >reversed, and the majority of games machines are being sold with a > >bundled 3dFX, as that's what the market is demanding. > Well, it just demonstrates that what flies in the UK doesn't always > fly here. At any rate, its not so important how or why these cards > get into the machines, simply that they do, they are great cards, and > the software industry has taken notice. > >No comment on the respective merits, demerits, just the facts ma'am :)Quoted text (8 lines)
> How good is F1RS without 3dfx? F1RS has D3D and 3dfx support that > should prove your point. Anyone who reads about F1RS in this NG knows > that the D3D version is not up to the performance of the 3dfx version. Could > that have a little to do with your review of F1RS? You did give the > impression > that it would not be a review equal to the current popular opinion in this > NG. I > expect no less frankly.>>3DFX, and its people like YOU who are doing the religious evangelizing
>>"(THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD. ITS NAME IS 3DFX. BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP
>>BEFORE THE 3DFX GODS. IF YOU DO NOT YOU WILL BE RIDICULED AS THE
Wow, you guys are starting to get over the edge.
My $.02:
I did a lot of research before buying a 3D accelerator and there is only one
clear choice: 3DFX.
Bill
--------
"NASCAR is the Professional Wrestling of Motorsport."
-Me-
>How can you even say that? The very post I was replying to above was
>full of your rediculous assertions that everyone who thinks 3dfx is
>the best solution is "religious".
You are [deliberately?] misinterpreting what I wrote. I have no beef
with anyone who prefers 3DFX and thinks its the best....FOR THEM. I
*do* have a problem with the people who come online and try to shove
it down others' throats as if people are a bunch of blooming idiots if
it isn't as obvious to them that 3DFX is the ONLY way to go. If you
think the 3DFX is the best solution for what you do...GREAT! I have
no beef with that.
Then you're doing quite a bit of selective reading.
I repeat: you're doing quite a bit of selective reading.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>>Do you ordinarily extrapolate the entire 3DFX user base from the
>>loyalists who are patrolling the 3DFX newsgroups?
>What would cause you to make such a bizarre assumption.
Gee, could it be that you were projecting big immediate success for
the Voodoo 2 based your assessment of the attitudes of *** gamers
in the 3DFX newsgroups ???
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Yes it is interesting that those with a vested interest in saying
>something (i.e., MS in this case) are less trusted than objective
>sources (i.e., Janes). Funny thing, skepticism.
The people who were actually being insulted as incompetent were the
people at Terminal Reality, i.e. the people who actually coded the
sim.
Again, Longbow 2 was written and optimized for the 3DFX hardware
architecture. Its not a ground-up version written for D3D or the
Riva. Is it surprising that it doesn't look as good when running on
an alternate API on ANY hardware?! No.
Apparently not by being patched.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>>I raised quite a few. Good ones actually. For starters, Joe omitted
>>anything from his paraphrasing of Andy Hollis' comments which might
>>cast doubt on what he wanted to read into it.
>Oh, please, give this catty, smugly superior kind of bullshit a rest,
>why don't you.
Sure. Right about the time you start quoting what Andy actually says
instead of omitting things which shed doubt on what you're trying to
prove.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
Randy,
I guess you look at quantity and speed versus quality. The Riva can't
match the 3dfx for features and runs very fast. I don't want a board
that is deficient in quality. It sounds like Acer or Gateway bought a
bunch of em for the unwashed masses. When they see their friend's
games using 3dfx, they will see the difference.
Jeff Haas
Hi Randy,
I dont mean to change the subject but, the very point you bring up here has
always made me wonder about CPR. Seems like alot of folks with 3Dfx have
had very bad experiences with it. Then you have F1rs which I run on a STB
Velocity and it runs ok but I sure dont feel like its anything special. In
fact the graphics have always been cartoonish to me. Which is why yesterday
when you ( I think it was you) said you might just get a Monster to see if
F1rs is that much better, got me hoping you would and tell guys like me if
it was ;-)
Ok Aloha, Mike
P.S I still have total black in the tunnel at Monaco do you on your Riva?
----------
--
Remove-No-Spam to Reply
Quoted text (8 lines)
> Newsgroups: rec.autos.simulators > Subject: Re: Another good CPR review > Date: Tuesday, January 20, 1998 9:50 AM > Again, Longbow 2 was written and optimized for the 3DFX hardware > architecture. Its not a ground-up version written for D3D or the > Riva. Is it surprising that it doesn't look as good when running on > an alternate API on ANY hardware?! No.>You are [deliberately?] misinterpreting what I wrote. I have no beef
>with anyone who prefers 3DFX and thinks its the best....FOR THEM. I
>*do* have a problem with the people who come online and try to shove
>it down others' throats
Except that's not what people have done, people have merely presented
there opinions and backed them up with aaguments. YOU are the one
refusing to engage these arguments, preferring instead to avoid
argument alrogether by labeling those who disagree with you as
"religious". The funny thing is that even after criticizing this
technique when it's thrown back at you, you ignorantly blunder ahead
making the same mistake over and over again. Some people never learn.
Joe
> All I can say is hurry up MS and get D3D sorted right out so that all
>this ***can disappear from r.a.s., hehehehehehehe.
*sigh*. Might be a long wait. This may surprise some people to hear,
but I'm NOT a D3D advocate. I *am* for standard API's in general,
though. I'm not particularly finicky. If OpenGL is all John Carmack
says it is, go with that. If its D3D, go with that. If Glide could be
made non-hardware-specific, go with that. I don't care. I just hate
stuff that fragments the marketplace and turns a purchasing decision
into major support tradeoffs. I feel about RRedline the same way I do
about Glide - proprietary. I'm more or less hoping that D3D is fixed
the way you are, simply because it looks to be the common denominator
for the forseeable future so a lot of time should be spent dealing
with its problems and getting to take full advantage of every board
that's out there.
I also think that there should be a reference hardware platform of
"things thou must support". For instance, if Andy Hollis wants the
Riva to support 8-bit textures, the by golly, NVidia: SUPPORT 8-BIT
TEXTURES. The headache is not that the Riva is incapable of
outrunning a Voodoo, its that the hardware feature sets and software
API's are so disparate you STILL end up having to code everything from
the ground up for each board if you want optimal performance. Hollis
and his crew at Jane's did this for the 3DFX and now they are in a
situation where they would have to re-do their entire architecture if
they wanted a serious butt-kicking Longbow 2 on it. Its always the
developers that end up having to clean up the mess after hardware/API
developers don't standardize on something scalable, powerful, and
sharable.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
Quoted text (9 lines)
> snip, snip, snip, call in the barber! > NAS 2 - Longbow 2 - Nas 2 - Longbow 2 - Nas 2 - Longbow 2 - >......................... > SEE? > PS - anyone got a bucket of water for these puppies chasing there >tails round in circles?>Some people never learn.
Whoa!! ;)
Cheers!
Marc
--
Marc J. Nelson
Sim Racing News - http://www.simproject.com/simnews
<remove '*' before replying>
>>>Riva through D3D cannot do LB2 as well as Voodoo through Glide.
>Apparently not by being patched.
** Nor can it by being written directly for D3D. Cart proves that beyound a
doubt. I don't want to join this war but the above is an argument that is
just flat wrong. Being a patch has nothing to do with it.
John
Quoted text (7 lines)
>>You are [deliberately?] misinterpreting what I wrote. I have no beef >>with anyone who prefers 3DFX and thinks its the best....FOR THEM. I >>*do* have a problem with the people who come online and try to shove >>it down others' throats >Except that's not what people have done, people have merely presented >there opinions and backed them up with aaguments. YOU are the one> Randy,
>I guess you look at quantity and speed versus quality.
Not at all.
Who says? What is it that Riva is missing that makes it
feature-deficient in your opinion?
The Riva boards have been selling since Q3 of last year, during which
time they racked up over a million sales. The drivers for these
boards are still VERY new. Please don't tell me that the first batch
of 3DFX drivers compares to what you can get NOW for that board. In
lifespan terms, Riva is still a baby. A baby with a lot of promise
and some teething pains, perhaps, but a baby nonetheless. A lot of
peoples' perceived "hardware faults" have already gone away as newer
drivers have been released, and more still will go away as new drivers
are released, newer versions of D3D come out with better support for
advanced 3D features, and developers begin architecting more with
boards like Riva in mind.
And by the way, I can point you at a bunch of screen grabs comparing
Glide 3DFX versions of games with those done with a Riva. They are
virtually indistinguishable. And I have to say when I had a
Hercules Stingray, I didn't see that it was all that special in visual
appearance running the various Glide demos.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Except that's not what people have done, people have merely presented
>there opinions and backed them up with aaguments.
Uh huh. So its just "presenting arguments" when you tell someone they
are "clueless" or "ignorant" if they don't endorse 3DFX, and that its
"obvious" that the 3DFX is the only 3D board worth thinking about.
Those aren't arguments. Personal cheapshots and articles of faith?
Yes. Arguments? Not quite.
My exact thought when reading your post. You will never learn. So
by all means, continue "presenting arguments" as you put it. Since
common sense indicates that belittling someone for failing to adopt
the 'only obvious' choice in 3D cards is not merely "presenting
arguments", and most people on Usenet *do* have some common sense, its
a waste of time for me to continue to argue this with you, since you
simply cannot (or will not) see it, though most others do.
Any further headings from you will be deleted unread, so don't bother
replying. I've wasted enough brain cells trying to make you listen
to reason.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>>Facts? I have probably forgotten more about flightsims than you know.
>Since you know absolutely zilch about my background, I'd stay off of
>this particularly dangerous quicksand if I were you. You don't know
>what you're starting.
Why is that?
OK I admit I was wrong. I freely am telling the world that there is indeed
an Alpha Riva version of LB2 which does not work anywhere near as
well as the 3dfx version. Phew...
Dodge? How so?
Congrats.
Great it should be a awesome review then.
I guess I am not sure what to make of this...
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
>No single game "proves" anything.
*Whatever you say Bud .... you want I should list all the crappy D3D games?
If I go out and get a crappy 3DFX
*Can you show me a game that looks worse through Glide? ..... didn't think
so
Of course not. Andy admitted
*This I find hard to believe due to the fact software company's have the
Hardware long before the public. I know that's gonna confuse you, but I
couldn't find smaller words :)
how much texture
**You see, this is what gets me. You spew about wanting technical details
and then you stick your head straight up your arse with the above kind of
tripe. Number 1, texture memory *should* benifit D3D and Riva because of the
way Riva offloads to system memory and the way D3D takes advantage of it.
Number 2, even with this apparent "one up" on the Voodoo it still runs like
crap. Why don't *you* provide me with technical info on why this is? Maybe
with newer versions of D3D drivers it will get better, but I highly doubt
it.
Unless you can provide some TECHNICAL
*I have a case, you have no ears. I'm not gonna sit here blabbing to you
until I'm blue in the face about "TECHNICAL" issues when it is readily
apparent you won't listen. But just to twist the thumb up your ass please
take notice of F22 and it's D3D acceleration versus it's Glide acceleration.
If it is not apparent to you then I don't know what anyone else could tell
you.
I could give a frogs water tight ass about your rejections. I provided the
above for your need of substance although I *know* that it just wont sink
in.
You see I really didn't want to get into a discussion with you for this very
reason. You never listen. You took the stance that the LB2 D3D issue was due
to it being a patch. I disagreed. You took exception to that and started
with your normal ***about wanting this that and the other thing. I'm not
gonna play this game with you. That dog ain't gonna hunt so to speak. As
much as I have enjoyed talking with you, and oh it's been fun, I feel I
should just end it here.
Take care Mr Mugruder ....
Outlaw
snip
Geez, don't you see that MS has quite some interest in pushing D3D, but
what interest should Hollis have in pushing Glide, except technical
reasons?
What else could MS say? D3D stinks? Yeah, right!
l8er
ronny
--
|\ _,,,---,,_ I want to die like my Grandfather,
ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ in his sleep.
|,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Not like the people in his car,
'---''(_/--' `-'\_) screaming their heads off!
Quoted text (10 lines)
> You know its kind of interesting how when MS comes out and says that > Glide didn't offer any advantages for CPR when they tried it, they > were blasted as being incompetent programmers and that the hardware > was not the problem. When Andy Hollis of Janes comes out and says > something negative about the Riva version of Longbow, its suddenly the > hardware that's the problem (no possibility of it being that the > developers aren't as hot with D3D hardware as they are with Glide?). > I don't know who is right and who is wrong, but its certainly an > interesting trend among those who endorse the 3DFX as the only viable > 3D card.>>>>Riva through D3D cannot do LB2 as well as Voodoo through Glide.
>>Apparently not by being patched.
>** Nor can it by being written directly for D3D. Cart proves that beyound a
>doubt.
No single game "proves" anything. If I go out and get a crappy 3DFX
game or one that looks worse than its D3D counterpart would you buy
that this PROVES that Glide is worse? Of course not. Andy admitted
that their entire architecture is based upon certain assumptions which
were made about the hardware it was going to run on, how much texture
memory would be available, etc. Unless you can provide some TECHNICAL
details as to why a Riva-optimized game wouldn't run as well or look
as good as a Glide version, with each side getting a game written for
it from the ground-up, then you have no case.
Flat wrong, huh? I reject your conclusions because you have provided
no substance to back them up.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Uh huh. So its just "presenting arguments" when you tell someone they
>are "clueless" or "ignorant" if they don't endorse 3DFX,
Nope. You're revising what happened (again). A few weeks ago there
were some *rational* arguments regarding 3dfx and other graphics chips
going on here. Your response to that was avoid argument altogether by
laebeling various people "religious". Predictably, this insult has
caused things to degenerate into firefights.
Thank goodness, I'm tired of your purely emotional, ranting posts.
Joe
> *Can you show me a game that looks worse through Glide? ..... didn't
> think so
Uh, how about X-Car?
Cheers!
Marc
--
(please remove '*' when replying)
Sim Racing News - http://www.simnews.com
The Sim Project - http://www.simproject.com
* No animals were harmed in the making of this e-mail *
>*Can you show me a game that looks worse through Glide? ..... didn't think
>so
Okay. G-Police. Looks easily best on a Riva board.
Believe what you like. I've been talking to Andy and reading what he
wrote on the newsgroups. He's made it very clear that they made
design decisions based upon assumptions about the most common hardware
they expected to run on, including the amount of texture memory
available on the card. I know that's gonna confuse you, but I
couldn't find smaller words.
It does, but if you're going to artificially cripple it by hacking in
8-bit textures, you're not going to see the board shine in its
visuals.
Give me a break. The Riva doesn't run like ***even in your most
vivid dreams.
Yeah. We all know that drivers are always best when they are first
released, and they just get slower as time goes on.
Real mature.
Okay, fine. I won't miss your insults and your childish attitude.
Bye.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
Quoted text (9 lines)
> Not so. The Voodoo 2 has already been announced to be a premium > priced item, expected to begin selling at about the same price the > original 3DFX boards did. That means about $250-300 smackers, and all > for a board which is an add-on to a current 2D board. That price > means it'll get a religious and small market for awhile, just as the > 3DFX did. At whatever point the price of the thing dips below $200 > the general public will start taking an interest and its marketshare > will increase rapidly. How quickly Voodoo2 captures the world is > going to be directly related to entry-price.Quoted text (11 lines)
> Hi Randy, > I dont mean to change the subject but, the very point you bring up here has > always made me wonder about CPR. Seems like alot of folks with 3Dfx have > had very bad experiences with it. Then you have F1rs which I run on a STB > Velocity and it runs ok but I sure dont feel like its anything special. In > fact the graphics have always been cartoonish to me. Which is why yesterday > when you ( I think it was you) said you might just get a Monster to see if > F1rs is that much better, got me hoping you would and tell guys like me if > it was ;-) > Ok Aloha, Mike > P.S I still have total black in the tunnel at Monaco do you on your Riva?>Right now I'm also considering replacing my STB LS 128 with a Velocity
>128, that way I get great 2D plus direct 3D perf, when run in tandem
>with 2 V2 cards, I should have the best overall video perf. In my case
>price is not an issue, performance is :).
I think this is what Randy is missing. CGW had an article recently where
something like 15% of total gamers were ***. These same 15%
*** gamers also accounted for something like 56% of total sales.
We do make a difference. Coincidently this 15% firgure is close to the
figure Randy gave for 3dfx market share. I wonder why that is :-)
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
My humble apologies mr flightsim guru :-)
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
>Because I've got a pretty hefty history with flight sims, dating back
>to the original Flight Sim on the original IBM PC, continuing through
>Gunship (on the Atari ST no less), Falcon (ST/PC), Falcon 3.0 (and its
>add-ons), F-15 Strike Eagle, F-14 Fleet Defender, the Dynamix sims,
>Janes combats sims, etc right up through FS98 and its unbelievably
>difficult helicopter model (!!) and a bunch of others that are mostly
>packed in my closet. I've spent more hours than I have admitted to my
>spouse both playing against the computer and dogfighting online (yeah
>I was one of those guys doing head-to-head Falcon 3.0 on Compuserve,
>of all places). I could write a lot more about what I've done and the
>hours I've logged or the books I've read or whatever, but the point
>is, don't assume that someone knows nothing just because they haven't
>gotten into it with you. If you want to argue about flight sims, then
>lets go off the rec.autos.simulators newsgroup and argue flight sims.
>I'm perfectly game...(although I'm not sure what it is you want to
>argue about -- simply that you claim, without any knowledge of my
>background, that you have "probably forgotten more about flightsims
>than you [I] know.") I didn't ask for a pissing contest, but it
>looks like you're trying to start one.
>There's no denying nVidia did it right by getting major OEM's to sell
>their board.
Undoubtedly, although they did have the inherent advantage that they
weren't asking PC companies to include an additional (and
"unneccesary") board like 3dFX, merely to put a different 2D board in.
That's a much easier decision to make, from logistical, marketing and
cost viewpoints.
It exists - that alone is enough to put people off the RIVA cards. The
extent of that misinformation could well have a huge impact (such as
the classic and oft trotted out Betamax VHS shindig). There's nothing
at all wrong with a RIVA board, and I too would have bought one if it
wouldn't mean I have to get rid of my Rendition board (SODA, N2 and
ICR2 gone - waaaa).
Perhaps, but that's not the point I was making. What I'm saying is
that sales cannot be used as a basis to persuade people of the
_quality_ of a product. They serve as a guideline, but they tell far
more about the marketing skill of the company than about the product.
By that reckoning Windows 95 would be the best OS in the world
_by_far_, and a fair percentage of even those who use Win95 would
argue against that.
As it should be. D3D is a great concept but thus far flawed in
implementation. Only by supporting it will it get better.
Cheers!
John
>Really? Does it support RRedline and Speedy3D? NO? Ooops, there
>goes SODA, NASCAR 2, and IndyCar II for starters.
Yup, although you could just as easily have skipped the "for
starters", since I am unaware of any other games worth having that are
supported only by 3dFX. That makes the buying decision a lot easier.
Cheers!
John
PS - Is it just me, or has this whole thread got well out of control?
I was away in Germany on business for a couple of days and couldn't
believe the number of headers downloading when I got back - ouch!
>I think this is what Randy is missing. CGW had an article recently where
>something like 15% of total gamers were ***. These same 15%
>*** gamers also accounted for something like 56% of total sales.
>We do make a difference. Coincidently this 15% firgure is close to the
>figure Randy gave for 3dfx market share. I wonder why that is :-)
I think you have your facts wrong. I didn't claim that 3dfx
marketshare was 15%. I don't know WHERE you got that. 3DFX has over
50% of the market last time I checked.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>It exists - that alone is enough to put people off the RIVA cards. The
>extent of that misinformation could well have a huge impact (such as
>the classic and oft trotted out Betamax VHS shindig).
No doubt. The misinformation is being fought pretty hard. There are
sites now where you can go and compare head-to-head full-size screen
grabs of the latest games to see for yourself, but there are still a
lot of VoodooZealots (I wish I'd come up with this name, but someone
else did) who are only too happy to continue singing this old song,
and you have to wonder whether they know they are full of it or just
figure no one will challenge them on it (I.e. if you repeat a lie
often enough and for long enough, people believe it).
Well, I have a Stealth II sitting upstairs in my computer. It *was*
going to be the new board until I got the new Dell XPS 300 with the
Riva board pre-installed. On a P300 I can run NASCAR 2 with
everything on at 30 fps, even for NROS, and aside from pixellation of
up-close objects, the thing flows, moves and looks like the Rendition
version. I swear, you'd have to come up and look up close to notice
that its not 3d accelerated.
This is true to a point, but those OEM's sell several boards with
their systems, including Matrox Millenia boards, and if the Velocity
had a reputation for sucking, I would expect most people would tell
Dell to send them the Millenia and then they'd buy something else for
3D later. In any event, the sales are a measure of support. When you
grab 21% of the 3D board marketshare in a single quarter, it makes
developers sit up and take notice when they look at their potential
customer-base.
Probably true. I may get a Monster 3D anyway while I wait for the
Riva drivers to get better and faster. Right now they are having
teething pains.
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>>Really? Does it support RRedline and Speedy3D? NO? Ooops, there
>>goes SODA, NASCAR 2, and IndyCar II for starters.
>Yup, although you could just as easily have skipped the "for
>starters", since I am unaware of any other games worth having that are
>supported only by 3dFX. That makes the buying decision a lot easier.
There are more, but I'd have to dig a bit.
Yup. Outta hand. Completely :)
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
>Yup, although you could just as easily have skipped the "for
>starters", since I am unaware of any other games worth having that are
>supported only by 3dFX. That makes the buying decision a lot easier.
Games in general or just auto simulations? Any Direct3D game will
run in the 3dfx just fine. In the flightsimulator genere, there really is
no other option other than 3dfx. Today. In the future who knows?
But if you are buying a 3D card today and your intrest is flightsimulators
also, there is only one choice.
Way out. But the end result is the we will all learn from this discussion.
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
Quoted text (9 lines)
>>I think this is what Randy is missing. CGW had an article recently where >>something like 15% of total gamers were ***. These same 15% >>*** gamers also accounted for something like 56% of total sales. >>We do make a difference. Coincidently this 15% firgure is close to the >>figure Randy gave for 3dfx market share. I wonder why that is :-) >I think you have your facts wrong. I didn't claim that 3dfx >marketshare was 15%. I don't know WHERE you got that. 3DFX has over >50% of the market last time I checked.>Now this is where it gets dicey. Little over slight majority is 56%?
>There are many 3D boards out and 3dfx has 56% of the market
>share? IMHO it is a huge share and your vague way of wording it
>minumized as much as possible. I had to read it again to realize
>what the heck you were saying :-)
Sorry . The reason I used the wording I did is that I didn't know
exactly what percent of the market 3DFX had. I recalled reading it
was 50-something. Rather than state an inaccurate amount, I said
"over slight majority". A simple majority is anything over 50%, so by
saying "over slight majority" I hoped to convey accurately that the
3DFX share was over 50% but less than 60, 70 or 80%. I would not
call 56% (assuming your # is right) a "huge" share, but I would call
it the largest share. A "huge share" is Windows 95 to Macintosh :).
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
Quoted text (10 lines)
>>Now this is where it gets dicey. Little over slight majority is 56%? >>There are many 3D boards out and 3dfx has 56% of the market >>share? IMHO it is a huge share and your vague way of wording it >>minumized as much as possible. I had to read it again to realize >>what the heck you were saying :-) >Sorry . The reason I used the wording I did is that I didn't know >exactly what percent of the market 3DFX had. I recalled reading it >was 50-something. Rather than state an inaccurate amount, I said >"over slight majority". A simple majority is anything over 50%, so by>competitors eating up the votes. You think there are more than 3 or 3 3D
I meant 2 or 3 chipsets not 3 or 3...
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
Quoted text (7 lines)
>>"over slight majority". A simple majority is anything over 50%, so by >Excuse me but no it isn't. Think about political elections where there are >more than 2 people. A majority can easily be 21% if there are enough >players (5) to split up the vote. 56% is huge if there are more than 2 >strong >competitors eating up the votes. You think there are more than 3 or 3 3DBoy, has this turkey strayed from the topic! Anyway:
plurality:
4.a. In a contest of more than two choices, the number of votes cast for
the winning choice if this number is not more than one half of the total
votes cast. b. The number by which the vote of the winning choice in
such a contest exceeds that of the closest opponent.
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998 17:55:08 -0500, Barton Spencer Brown
Try another few dictionaries and I think you'll find that the
definitions vary depending upon which dictionary you use. The precise
meaning of words becomes adapted according to usage as the years go
on, and it is this which makes it impossible to quote one "definitive"
definition (if you'l pardon the contradiction in terms).
Cheers!
John
Quoted text (7 lines)
>Boy, has this turkey strayed from the topic! Anyway: >plurality: >4.a. In a contest of more than two choices, the number of votes cast for >the winning choice if this number is not more than one half of the total >votes cast. b. The number by which the vote of the winning choice in >such a contest exceeds that of the closest opponent.>No doubt. The misinformation is being fought pretty hard. There are
>sites now where you can go and compare head-to-head full-size screen
>grabs of the latest games to see for yourself, but there are still a
>lot of VoodooZealots (I wish I'd come up with this name, but someone
>else did) who are only too happy to continue singing this old song,
People want to believe that what they have is the best, it's human
nature. RIVA is a pretty good product now and will be better with
further matured drivers. If you put a gun to my head and forced me to
buy a 3D card today I'd still get a 3dFX though, for the simple reason
that it runs anything that the RIVA will and Glide specific products
on top.
What's your screen name on NROS? I'll look out for you :-)
It's pretty easy to grab market share in an expanding market, again
you can't read much into that. Taking market share _away_ from someone
else in an established market is far more difficult, and all the
numbers I have seen on that show that all those offers from other 3D
card manufacturers asking 3dFX to "trade in" were pretty much ignored.
I'd guess (and hope) they will be well supported though. As a first
foray into the 3D market this will be watched carefully, and a failure
to support a product now could be the death knell for future releases.
I was actually toying with the idea of a RIVA myself, and if N2 3dFX
and SODA 3dFX were on the market now I probably would have got one and
replaced my Rendition board, but as it is it looks like I'll be
waiting for Voodoo II to be supported and then buy one of those. I'm
pretty happy with "standard" 3dFX at the moment.
Cheers!
John
>People want to believe that what they have is the best, it's human
>nature.
Well, I have a Stealth II S220, and the only reason I have the STB
Velocity is that Dell refused to ship me a system WITHOUT a video
board, so it sort of came and I didn't know anything about Riva at the
time. As a direct result of the quality of the Riva board, the
Stealth II is now in my wife's computer :). I really have had no
agenda with Riva, except that it bugs me to see some of the inaccurate
dissing of it that has gone on here.
If you put a gun to my head I'd get 3DFX right now, too. But not a
Rush chipset. I'd get a M3D as an add-on to the Riva board. The two
complement each other nicely. I was thinking last night while doing
some airline adventures in Flight Sim 98 that considering Greg's
comments that 3DFX ruled the flight sim world, he couldn't run FS98 in
the resolution I was, and after switching back to lower resolutions
(640x480) to see how it looked, I was quite glad for higher resolution
support.
RMagruder. I don't drive pick-up races. I'm in the OSCAR league,
Outlaw division 5. (Came in 4th in a 200 lapper at Marty..one of my
better finishes).
Its a million units in a single quarter John. That's not chickenfeed.
Randy
> I was thinking last night while doing
>some airline adventures in Flight Sim 98 that considering Greg's
>comments that 3DFX ruled the flight sim world, he couldn't run FS98 in
>the resolution I was, and after switching back to lower resolutions
>(640x480) to see how it looked, I was quite glad for higher resolution
>support.
While I agree the 3dfx has some disadvantages, especially in FS98, note that
you can run FS98 at 800x600 with the 3dfx. It is only limited to 640x480 in
games that use z-buffering. As to the rest of the flight sim world, currently
Greg is correct. The overwhelming support is for the 3dfx. If you want to
play the bleeding edge sims, including first releases of betas/demos, you
really want to have a 3dfx in your machine. F/A-18 Korea, Longbow2, JF3 are
three games with only 3dfx support. I believe EF2000 v2 only supports 3dfx
and Verite. The first test of WC:P was 3dfx-only (the release covered most).
iF16 3D enhancement is in beta-test as 3dfx only. The long-waited Falcon4 was
released as an early demo with 3dfx only. Lots of other demos were also
released as 3dfx only (F1: Racing Sim, for example, right?).
>If you put a gun to my head I'd get 3DFX right now, too. But not a
>Rush chipset. I'd get a M3D as an add-on to the Riva board. The two
I guess you are not that bad after all :-)
You are right I wouldn't be able to go to higher resolutions. I also
would not be able to use any of the "windowing " features of FS98.
But I can live with that.
--
Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
>While I agree the 3dfx has some disadvantages, especially in FS98, note that
>you can run FS98 at 800x600 with the 3dfx. It is only limited to 640x480 in
>games that use z-buffering.
Oh. no such limitation here :). I did run FS98 at 1024x768 and it
was pretty cool on my P300, but because my monitor still has lousy
refresh rates at that res I switched back rather than tolerate 60 Hz.
I don't disagree.
Randy
Byron Forbes wrote
Sorry to put my 0.02$ CAN into this but I just have a question about F1RS. I
have the same problem with my STB Velocity 128 AGP. Especially during rain.
There is black outlines everywhere. Anyone know how to fix this ?? I have
the STB driver 3.0 (the last one) with an utility (great one) called NV3
tweak v2.0a I have eliminated the glitch in Cart:PR and F1RS with this
utility btw...
Anyone knows how to fix that ? It's my only problem if we take out the
freezes I have each 30mins. I can't play F1RS, Quake2, Quake1, JediKnight,
all those games without that my PC freezes. It's kinda funny 'cause it's an
out-of-the-box DELL fresh and new. The 3last games are for my bro (sheesh
non-racing game <g>...). Btw this may helps but I only get the freezes when
I am in the***pit view in F1RS. Btw JediKnight in D3D is one of the best
looking game I ever saw.
I hope "somebody" will help...
* Fran?ois Mnard
* With great respect,
* May the downforce be with you,
* Good race at the Brickyard, (-o-)
* <ymenard> on NROS, sponsored by
* [link lost in import]
* SimRacing director, AWPSS
* Official Mentally retarded guy of r.a.s.
* Excuse me for my English (I'm French speaking)
* Excuse me for my provocative posts and reply's <g>
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Quoted text (7 lines)
>Byron Forbes wrote >> F1RS looks a little cartoonish with my Viper mainly due to the black >>outlines around trees and distant buildings. You can see from >>screenshots how much better (realer) it looks without the ugly outlines. >Sorry to put my 0.02$ CAN into this but I just have a question about F1RS.Quoted text (8 lines)
>There is black outlines everywhere. Anyone know how to fix this ?? I have >the STB driver 3.0 (the last one) with an utility (great one) called NV3 >tweak v2.0a I have eliminated the glitch in Cart:PR and F1RS with this >utility btw... >Anyone knows how to fix that ? It's my only problem if we take out the >freezes I have each 30mins. I can't play F1RS, Quake2, Quake1, JediKnight, >all those games without that my PC freezes. It's kinda funny 'cause it'sWith the exception of Longbow2, which had its Riva-specific patch
released last christmas. It's not a final version yet. Last version's
dated January 7th '98. Dl it from this location:
http://www.janes.ea.com/demos.html
"An alternate display driver providing Direct 3D support for Longbow 2
specifically for the Riva 128 chipset and the features it provides.
Again, this is only an alpha test, and the final version is forthcoming."
---
Antti Markus Peteri
"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Polite Conversation, Dialogue I
snip
Isn't it strange, how often a D3D port is announced with a specific 3D
card
being supported (XvT). Hmm, hardware independent APIs are fun...
l8er
ronny
--
|\ _,,,---,,_ I want to die like my Grandfather,
ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ in his sleep.
|,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Not like the people in his car,
'---''(_/--' `-'\_) screaming their heads off!
Quoted text (9 lines)
> With the exception of Longbow2, which had its Riva-specific patch > released last christmas. It's not a final version yet. Last version's > dated January 7th '98. Dl it from this location: > http://www.janes.ea.com/demos.html > "An alternate display driver providing Direct 3D support for Longbow 2 > specifically for the Riva 128 chipset and the features it provides. > Again, this is only an alpha test, and the final version is forthcoming."Definitely fun. At least for RIVA owners, with D3D being RIVA's native
API. But seriously, I don't think it's that strange. Otoh, the patch may
work with other D3D cards (as they said) but they can't promise it'd work
with all of them. Maybe we'll have more detailed information with the
upcoming final release.
Anyways, they couldn't have settled down with just RIVA patch unless this
would already address a relatively large segment of the D3D market. Fun.
---
Antti Markus Peteri
"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Polite Conversation, Dialogue I
>>It's pretty easy to grab market share in an expanding market, again
>>you can't read much into that.
>Its a million units in a single quarter John. That's not chickenfeed.
It is if your competitors are selling three oe four million. The point
I was making is that _unit_ sales in a new and expanding market are
meaningless, and even market share is misleading since the consumers
have no prior experience to base buying decisions upon and it is
easier for an inferior product to buy market share and sales without
the ramifications being understood.
A million units may well be chickenfeed in the long term if all you do
is***off a million potential future customers. I don't think that's
what RIVA did, I'm simply using it as an example to explode the
theory.
Cheers!
John
>>Its a million units in a single quarter John. That's not chickenfeed.
>It is if your competitors are selling three oe four million.
No. Chickenfeed would be a lot less than 21% marketshare. To capture
that much marketshare in a single quarter is a success no matter what
you think of the hardware.
How did they do that?
Randy
Randy Magruder
Contributing Reviewer
Digital Sportspage
http://www.digitalsports.com
Quoted text (7 lines)
>>>Its a million units in a single quarter John. That's not chickenfeed. >>It is if your competitors are selling three oe four million. >No. Chickenfeed would be a lot less than 21% marketshare. To capture >that much marketshare in a single quarter is a success no matter what >you think of the hardware.>buyers have little product knowledge. Capturing that much market share
>is of course a success, but you can't extrapolate that to determine
>that the product itself was of good quality as you were doing - you
I agree. Imagine all those pissed off Riva owners who will probably
be buying 3dfx anyway. Most likely they have a Riva because they
got it new in a Gateway 2000. It isn't like they went to CompUSA
and picked the card.
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Header address intentionally scrambled to ward off the spamming hordes.
Hi Greg,
Actually I was one of those pissed off Riva guys. In fact I
really got into it with a Tech service manager at Dell when I told him I
wanted to exchange + pay if necessary to upgrade to any other card. He had
the nerve to tell me no way as I voided my warranty by trying to run a 3d
type program on it and its not for that! Hehehe man was I surprised. I went
on to tell him whaaaaaaa? Then I told him he should read up on what they
are selling as obviously he didn't know what he was talking about. But I
must say after installing STBs new 1.32 drivers I am more than happy with
the 30+fps I get with all detail on in CPR. As far as 3dfx goes I always
intended to get a Canopus but with the V2 due out so soon I thought I would
wait. Canopus told me when I called them their V2 is coming out in May 98.
I am still tempted to try their Pure 3d as its back in stock Feb2 but what
they say about V2 means I would only want to change again in May. BTW this
was my only bad experience with Dell as they are usually on the ball. Cya,
Mike
Yes, you certainly need imagination to come up with that.
---
Antti Markus Peteri
"He was a bold man that first ate an oyster."
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Polite Conversation, Dialogue I
