Re: What's a good steering wheel for DOS/early Windows games?

Posted on 2016-07-31, 14:52

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've always really liked the Microsoft Sidewinder force feedback ones: You can get them either in 15-pin analog or USB versions. USB is recommended for newer systems, but I don't know if they can be used in DOS.

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Re: Quake ported to Vulkan

Posted on 2016-07-30, 21:37

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

a game as old as 3d itself ported to some wild api that noone can use, except rich geeks? i dont get it? Just like when GLQuake was released :) I quote the GLQuake readme: Theoretically, glquake will run on any compliant OpenGL that supports the texture objects extensions, but unless it is very …

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Re: Edge antialising before FSAA

Posted on 2016-07-30, 12:29

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But the edge antialising working only in some places and not other, could not be considered a sort of MSAA too? I don't know how it works in the 3dfx implementation. MSAA works by rendering the zbuffer at a higher resolution, and using this to detect polygon edges. For 4xMSAA you have 4 z-values …

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Re: Edge antialising before FSAA

Posted on 2016-07-30, 10:10

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

386SX wrote: Impressive if we consider that was a feature quiet older than the SSAA. It remembers me the FAA of the Parhelia that if I remember correctly was great but sometimes was off in some places. Parhelia's FAA was an early form of MSAA I believe.

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Re: Edge antialising before FSAA

Posted on 2016-07-30, 09:46

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Fun to see that the pit crew are clearly 'sprites' and not polygon-models, so the AA doesn't work on their edges.

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Re: DirectX/hardware downgrade

Posted on 2016-07-29, 21:49

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I meant that even IF it is installed (DX9), you won't be able to run DirectX9 native programs. Sure you would, that's my point. Half-Life 2 and Far Cry are DirectX9 'native' programs (I hate that 'native' term, gets used for all kinds of nonsense these days). That is, the only API they support is …

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Re: DirectX/hardware downgrade

Posted on 2016-07-29, 19:20

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What driver did you use for graphics card ? GeForce 3 doesn't support DirectX 9, only DirectX 8.1 (SM1.1). I wish this confusion between API and feature levels would stop. GeForce 3 supports the DX9 API just fine, and many games written for DX9 will work just fine on it (eg Half-Life 2, Far Cry). …

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Re: Any Win10 Fermi users?

Posted on 2016-07-29, 07:38

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

Also, GPU-z has an error in detecting DirectX support for Fermi : LINK Weird... I wonder how they try to detect it. I would just try to create a DX12 device on it, and see the highest feature level at which it succeeds. That's how my DX9/10/11 engine currently works as well. I have a loader which …

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Re: Any Win10 Fermi users?

Posted on 2016-07-29, 06:46

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

They didn't lie about Vulkan, they changed their minds. They made a statement about it: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-fermi-geforce-400-500-vulkan-api-support/ Not sure if they made a statement about DX12, but it seems the same applies there. If they were going to support DX12 on Fermi, we should have …

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Re: Any Win10 Fermi users?

Posted on 2016-07-28, 09:09

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

FFXIhealer wrote: My 2010 PC is running Windows 10 Home 64-bit and has a GTX480. Drivers work perfectly fine. Can you run DXDiag and DXCapsViewer and see if it supports DX12?

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Re: Edge antialising before FSAA

Posted on 2016-07-28, 09:08

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yea, FSAA in the sense of "full screen anti-aliasing" was often implemented as SSAA, "supersampling anti-aliasing". Which could basically be implemented as a driver-feature or engine-feature on any videocard that supported render-to-texture. You'd just create a texture that is 2x or 4x the size of …

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Re: SiS Xabre & friends

Posted on 2016-07-27, 14:15

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, it reports DX8.1 and VS1.1/PS1.3, so it should be capable of running the DX8 and DX9 APIs and using shaders. Might not actually work very well because of driver bugs, but hey 😀

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Re: Edge antialising before FSAA

Posted on 2016-07-27, 13:16

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The only common type of edge antialiasing I know is MSAA, but FSAA predates that technology. FSAA became a standard feature around the DX7 era I suppose (GeForce, Radeon etc), where MSAA became commonplace with DX9 (Radeon 9700, GeForce FX). I know there have also been some weird hacks by …

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Re: Any Win10 Fermi users?

Posted on 2016-07-26, 21:23

by

by Scali

in Milliways

in Milliways

*Until you try to run DirectX 12 only program :) Did nVidia ever release DX12-compatible drivers for Fermi? I still have a Win7 system with a GTX460 in it, but not sure if I should upgrade it to Win10. If there's no DX12, there's little reason to bother. I know they recently said they wouldn't …

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Re: AMD DX2 vs Intel DX2 66mhz

Posted on 2016-07-26, 16:39

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's more like Intel always being a generation ahead of the consumer in those times. ;) The 486 came out in 1989 and Pentium in 1993, but they were as good as paper launches to the public until years later. Back then you didn't have a Xeon range for servers/workstations. So new architectures …

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Re: AMD DX2 vs Intel DX2 66mhz

Posted on 2016-07-26, 10:48

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There are WB and WT dx2-66's as well Yea, apparently there was one very late Intel 486DX2WB model, according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486 Seems to be a spin-off of the DX4, which had WB as well. Same with AMD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am486 That one is even later, …

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Re: AMD DX2 vs Intel DX2 66mhz

Posted on 2016-07-26, 07:47

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also Moraff had obnoxiously shilled AMD 286-486 cpus in the day as being faster so that might also have something to do with it :P The whole thing is a bit weird anyway, since AMD was always a generation behind. By the time fast 286s came around, Intel had already abandoned them, and moved to 386. …

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Re: Floating point vs. integer math, 486 vs. Pentium

Posted on 2016-07-26, 07:31

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The question is this: how much faster is integer math than floating point on a 486, and likewise with a Pentium? And how much speed can I gain on each processor by converting as many key variables as I can to long integers instead of single or double precision jobs? Integer math can easily be 3 to …

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Re: AMD DX2 vs Intel DX2 66mhz

Posted on 2016-07-25, 21:57

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But DX4s come in various flavours... 8K cache or 16K cache, and can be either WT or WB cache. Afaik the DX2 chips are all the same, and AMD and Intel perform exactly the same (others, such as IBM/Cyrix are different though).

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Re: AMD DX2 vs Intel DX2 66mhz

Posted on 2016-07-25, 19:20

by

by Scali

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Afaik that's not true. I had an Am486DX2-66 back in the day. It died, and I replaced it with an Intel 486DX2-66. My benchmark figures were 100% the same. As far as I can tell, the Am486 is a carbon-copy of the Intel chip. There's one minimal flaw however, that I cannot explain. For some reason, I …

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