Picked up a Creative Labs TNT card last night. The big
question for me after reading many mixed reviews was whether
the 1600x1200 2D output would be acceptable (it is); I knew
the game 3D would be great.
Well, except for GPL. Grabbed the second OpenGL beta from
www.papy.com and read the readme. Downloaded the latest
reference drivers. (I already had DX6.) Started up GPL,
selected OpenGL, exited and entered. Crash. Dropped to
16-bit color and tried again. Worked. Watched some replays
at 1024x768. Gorgeous. Tried to drive at 1024x768.
Completely black screen (but with working sound and controls,
basically Stevie Wonder Driving School). Crash on exit.
Tried again and got a frozen mouse pointer on the intro screen.
Rebooted, fiddled with app.ini to use my Voodoo 1 card so that
I could navigate the menus, and reset the game res to 640x480.
Reselected OpenGL. The game was playable in 640x480. 15 fps,
though, due to the known mirror problem. Edited core.ini
to refresh the mirrors only every 4 frames and tried again.
That got about 30 fps and some really ugly mirrors. (Raising
it to 6 or so should yield 36 fps, and I guess I could get used
to the mirrors.)
There's something weird about the track surface in the OpenGL
version of GPL running on a TNT. It's kind of, er, shiny.
Otherwise, it looked fine. But my Voodoo 1 is also fine for
640x480, with good mirrors and easy setup. For me, the whole
point of buying a TNT is being able to run games at 1024x768.
A Dejanews search on GPL and TNT yielded about 400 posts,
mostly juvenile garbage. Lots of TNT owners talking about how
their card was so much better than a Voodoo 2 because it could
theoretically run GPL at 1280x1024; nobody actually showing how
to do it.
Anyway, would any TNT owners like to recommend a particular
driver or trick that allows working 1024x768 GPL? The readme
says that STB's driver has a problem. My experience (plus a
couple of corroborating posts) say that the reference drivers
work but only for 640x480. Saw a couple of posts from people
with Creative Labs TNTs who couldn't get it to work at all,
and the answer was to use the reference drivers.
Thanks.
--
spamgard(tm): To email me, put "geek" in your Subject line.
Quoted text (14 lines)
> I could navigate the menus, and reset the game res to 640x480. > Reselected OpenGL. The game was playable in 640x480. 15 fps, > though, due to the known mirror problem. Edited core.ini > to refresh the mirrors only every 4 frames and tried again. > That got about 30 fps and some really ugly mirrors. (Raising > it to 6 or so should yield 36 fps, and I guess I could get used > to the mirrors.) > [...] For me, the whole > point of buying a TNT is being able to run games at 1024x768. > Anyway, would any TNT owners like to recommend a particular > driver or trick that allows working 1024x768 GPL? The readme > says that STB's driver has a problem. My experience (plus a > couple of corroborating posts) say that the reference drivers > work but only for 640x480.>I have the Diamond Viper 550 (Riva TNT) and OpenGL beta 2. Basically, I
>have the same problems as you: the driver only works reliably at
>640x480. But I've found a way to set it higher that works for me. Do
Using the Nvidia reference drivers, or Diamond's? After failing to get
better than 640x480 with the reference drivers, I gave Creative's
drivers a shot. They put the screen in the correct mode, but only
showed the top left corner (about 640x480 worth), and left the rest
black.
Thanks.
--
spamgard(tm): To email me, put "geek" in your Subject line.
Hey, hope this helps....
Don't believe the bit about the reference drivers not working. I have
the laser, (41) and I use the same card as you have. I just now went
into GPL to make sure, and guess what? You definitely CAN run at 1024
x 768 in GPL using the CL TNT with the reference drivers. As an added
bonus, the reference drivers do seem to improve the framerate in other
games compared to the drivers offered by CL. In the "above car" mode,
you should stay close to 36 fps, but it will drop considerably in the
***pit view. I just posted a question about where to find opponents
on line for GPL, and a question about an economical steering wheel.
If you can help on either, it would be appreciated.
BASH
