Yup. Glide was definitely the best choice to get the most pretty+speed until maybe D3D6? Then we needed that proprietary stuff to go away.

I've been "inspired" by all this talk about Virge. I stuck my Virge GX card into my P3 1GHz and got Jedi Knight going. I am amazed that not only is it rather playable at 640x480, but it also appears to be completely intact.

Here is a slideshow of some quick captures I did. They are lossless PNGs so this is exactly what the game looks like. Virge has some rather nasty filtering/dithering going on but it works ok.

I also tried Turok and Shadows of the Empire but those didn't go so well. Turok doesn't work and SotE complains about missing effects and doesn't render properly.

It would be really neat to see a page comparing screenshots of the same games running on different cards. Especially for the early days of 3D cards, which I never had.

swaaye wrote:

Maybe you should explore the Cirrus Logic Laguna 3D if you're a sucker for barely functional 3D accelerators. 😉

I benched a Laguna 3D some months ago and was quite surprised that there were no graphical errors and speed was also ok. (3DMark 99)
I haven't tried alot of games, but it looked for me quite polished, compareable to a Riva128.

Hater Depot wrote:

It would be really neat to see a page comparing screenshots of the same games running on different cards. Especially for the early days of 3D cards, which I never had.

It would be interesting. It's a lot of work though.... 😀

elianda wrote:

I benched a Laguna 3D some months ago and was quite surprised that there were no graphical errors and speed was also ok. (3DMark 99)
I haven't tried alot of games, but it looked for me quite polished, compareable to a Riva128.

I think you aren't giving Riva 128 nearly enough credit there. That would make Laguna 3D competitive with Voodoo Graphics and that's incorrect. 😁

swaaye wrote:

Hater Depot wrote:

It would be really neat to see a page comparing screenshots of the same games running on different cards. Especially for the early days of 3D cards, which I never had.

It would be interesting. It's a lot of work though.... 😀

I did this a couple years ago, complete benchmark scores of said pics from Turok, MDK and Quake. All I have to do is throw them up, may take a little time.

I don't even know where my card is. With a name like Stealth3D it has to be hiding in a cardboard box somewhere.

moved
Retro 3D Accelerator Screenshot Collection

@leileilol: too bad... 🙁 ok, thanks anyway! If you someday ever find that CD, remember to let me know! 😉

@swaaye: Thanks for your suggestion on the Laguna 3D, i'll be looking for it.
Question: which program did you use to took those screen captures ? -> forget it, don't know why but I was thinking those were s3d shots, 😖 so I got surprised. It's D3D, so anything like FRAPS will work.

Here is a list of D3D games that supposedly run "ok" on the ViRGE, if anyone's interested:
Attached to the end of the post is CommandDMA tool, an essential tool for the ViRGE user to improve performance of D3D games. But it works only in some S3 drivers (no MS ones) which unfortunately I don't remember.

• Direct3D Games
  
  Actua Soccer 2
  Runs pretty well at 320x240, with no noticeable glitches apart from a possible transparency problem. Reasonably smooth, although the replays jerk and stutter all over the place (on the 3DFX, it slows to ~15fps). A worthwhile buy, I think! CheckUV recommended
  
  
  
  Forsaken Demo
  Wow. This game runs pretty much constantly >30fps @ 320x240 on a DX upwards - a triumphant piece of Direct3D coding, with gorgeous coloured lighting. Even 325 owners will be able to enjoy if they turn off the bi-linear filtering and perspective correction. Smart!
  
  
  
  G-Police
  This game worked fine, apart from the places where additive alpha is used. The game doesn't run too fast on a ViRGE, even at 320x200. It didn't run that quick on the 3DFX either, which probably means a P166 isn't enough to cope with this game. This is a bad sign...
  
  
  
  HellBender Demo v1.01
  This is a game that I used to enjoy playing unaccelerated at 320x240. Note that version 1.00 won't work accelerated on an S3 ViRGE due to a bug in the Direct3D code. The framerate sucks, big time. 325 owners, best avoid this one...
  
  
  
  Jedi Knight Demo
  This game amazed me when I tried it on the ViRGE. The smoothness at 320x200 is almost unbelieveable for a standard ViRGE. If I knew for certain that the full game worked on a 2Mb card, I'd be very tempted to buy it! The gameplay is pretty damn good as well! CheckUV recommended
  
  
  
  MDK Direct3D Demo
  The first Direct3D I came across that was actually playable on a 325! Even without overclocking it runs ~20fps, and a 325 rates similar to an unaccelerated P166 on the performance test. Unfortunately, MDK looks great unaccelerated anyway...
  
  
  
  Monster Truck Madness Demo
  On a 325, it's just not really playable via the D3D HAL without putting it on automatic detail and overclocking to the max. So if you own a 325, and your memory is 50ns, forget it. Otherwise, it's not a bad game...
  
  
  
  Moto Racer Demo
  This game runs superbly in 400x300 and the bike is very responsive, even when playing on keyboard. One of the few games that plays okay on a 325. The bike smoke is a bit dodgy, but apart from that, it looks great!
  
  
  
  Mysteries of the Sith Demo (Jedi Knight)
  This demo of the new data disk for Jedi Knight is very impressive, not to mention gigantic! The coloured lighting works very well, and with a good DX it should be just about playable at 640x400, though you will need a fast CPU! (P200+)
  
  
  
  New Moto Racer Demo
  Two new tracks for you to zoom around, and also the smoke has been improved over the first demo. The 'sea of sand' track is great fun with loads of opportunities for daft stunts! CheckUV may be needed for the Fun Fair track
  
  
  
  Pod Direct3D Demo
  Well, it certainly looks prettier than the S3d version due to the bilinear filtering, but it runs much slower! Even with all the detail turned down, it still wasn't running very quickly. Graphics were glitch-free apart from the lack of additive blending on the car's shadow.
  
  
  
  Precision CART Racing
  If Monster Truck madness was slow on your setup, you won't want to be trying this one out! Didn't notice any glitches, but MS's insistence that 3D accelerated games should run at 640x480 didn't do the ViRGE-family any favours in this instance...
  
  
  
  Quake
  Yes, GLQuake will run on the ViRGE by using either the S3Quake wrapper or the S3MESA driver. A ViRGE/DX is minimum for playable performance @ 320x240, and with the new version of the wrapper, there's no filtering.... but, it's Quake!
  
  
  
  Resident Evil
  Although none of us at S3 Planet have played this game, we've been told by Patrick Durmiendo that the game works great on his 4Mb ViRGE/DX, but only when he uses the ViRGE/GX2 drivers! Once into the game, select a V1000-based card for best results (3D Blaster, Total 3D, Reactor, etc.)
  
  
  
  Shadows of the Empire Demo
  Set the resolution to 320x240 by running 'shadows', and the speed is pretty good. Unfortunately, the text font is garbled which makes it difficult to see what you have to do. Alpha seems to be fine, with the shadow of the ship appearing correctly.
  
  
  
  Take No Prisoners Demo
  This game claims it doesn't support the ViRGE via D3D, but it will work (without the alpha). Runs fairly smoothly at 320x200, and if it wasn't for the completely stupid camera angles I'd probably like this game.CheckUV required
  
  
  
  Team 47 GoMan Demo
  This game is meant to support Stretch-Blit operation on S3 cards, but I couldn't find a way to enable it. Still, there were no visible graphical glitches, although for some strange reason, texture filtering wasn't enabled. Not too bad, but I'd rather play MechWarrior 2!
  
  
  
  TOCA Touring Car Championship Demo
  This game impressed by actually having an S3 Chipset option to reduce the glitches. On the bad side, this game is rather slow - anything less than a ViRGE/DX probably won't be very playable. Handling of the cars seems a bit awkward - not one to played on keyboard...
  
  
  
  Tomb Raider 2 Demo
  This game supports 24-bit colour Direct3D, so say goodbye horrible dithering! 320x200 doesn't run all that well on a 325, but its playable (just!). I've been told by Terry Steeper that 'To stop intermittent crash bugs (near water, at the start of level 1). try: Z-Buffer ON, Dither ON, Persp. Correct ON, Bilinear Filter OFF, Triple Buffer OFF, and in advanced, tick: Don't sort transparent polys, and Texel Adjust Always.' Alternatively, you could just try turning CheckUV on...
  
  
  
  Turok Demo
  The first time I tried this demo, I was very disappointed by the multitude of glitches when trying to run it on any ViRGE-based card. I discovered that the reason for a large number of the glitches was enabling the mip-mapping, and most of the graphics were okay when this was turned off. CheckUV required
  
  
  
  Ultim@te Race Pro Demo
  Well, I finally got it working, and was quite impressed by the graphics, even though the framerates weren't anything to get excited about. The sky is wrong sometimes, but there is fully working lens flare, smoke, dirt, etc, etc. You can run it at 800x600 w/ a 4Mb card - though I wouldn't advise it!
  
  
  
  Wing Commander Prophecy
  This is what flemsha said - 'You don't get all the enhanced effects, but you get transparent surfaces, texture maps, coloured lighting and some other effects. The frame rate is fairly poor but still playable (the virge isn't listed by origin as being supported though)'
  
  
  
  Wipeout 2097 Demo
  For some weird reason, this game refuses to work above 320x200, even on 4Mb cards. At 320x200, the poor dithering is clearly evident, yet this doesn't detract from the game too much. The track is sooo dark!
  
  
  
  Virtua Squad 2 Demo
  There were some textures missing when running on the 2Mb 325, but it was still very playable at 320x240. Mind you, it looks pretty good in software rendering as well! I'd highly recommend this game to 4Mb ViRGE or ViRGE/DX owners.

You know, I'd be very interested on seeing Quake running on this thing.
Virge was also probably my first card, on my old Pentium 133. For some reason though I remember that PC running MDK 2 and Oni when they shouldn't have run at all. The fps was something like 1 fps, but I do remember that they run, which doesn't make any sense because they required proper OpenGL support. Another card probably?

swaaye wrote:

I dug out my Graphics Blaster 3D (Laguna 5464 4MB PCI). After some digging I finally found some drivers from 1998 on Driverguide. Version 1.70c. Windows 98SE has drivers but MS tends to strip their in-the-box drivers down.

It appears to have perspective correction problems like a PSX. Textures warp. Texture filtering and dithering are "different" than the Virge. Not really better. It's unstable. It crashes JK when I enter the bar (which is about 20 feet from where you start in the first mission). The bar has some alpha textures in the windows so that could be the cause of the crashing. Also, Windows GUI is clearly much slower than the Virge GX. 3D speed is similar to the Virge GX, however.

I believe that warping is due to affine texture mapping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_mapping

Looking at those screenshots I'm not sure what those early 3D accelerators buy you in JK, as it has a decent software renderer (as did most games up through Unreal 1 and Half-Life 1, although by then 3D acceleration was clearly better). Maybe it would have been worth it at the time if they enabled you to run at 640x480 or higher with a decent framerate?

To those who are wondering how I made the JK captures, all I did was hit F12. The game has its own built-in screenshot taking.

Otherwise you'd probably have to get Hypersnap DX. I tried FRAPS but it doesn't support 9x.

HunterZ wrote:

I believe that warping is due to affine texture mapping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_mapping

Looking at those screenshots I'm not sure what those early 3D accelerators buy you in JK, as it has a decent software renderer (as did most games up through Unreal 1 and Half-Life 1, although by then 3D acceleration was clearly better). Maybe it would have been worth it at the time if they enabled you to run at 640x480 or higher with a decent framerate?

3D acceleration provides a better overall image and higher color depth. Software mode is 256-colors. Assuming your 3D card isn't junk, it is quite a bit nicer. 😀 And yeah it is surely faster at higher resolution, too.

But yeah the game isn't exactly loaded with advanced features. That's why these barely functional chips / drivers can sort of run it.

But I don't think JK's software renderer uses crappy affine texture mapping... I could be wrong though, I wasn't looking for it when I tried it a couple months ago.

@ unmei220 regarding JK, yes the Virge GX ran it pretty well. Even 640x480 was playable IMO. The Virge does seem to have some rather grainy texture filtering and relatively low quality dithering however. I think they probably used approximated algorithms in the name of speed and simplified hardware. It's not too bad though.

It's interesting how Shadows of the Empire asks too much of these chips. It's older than JK but it uses some effects that JK does not. It runs but it doesn't look even close to correct.

HunterZ wrote:

But I don't think JK's software renderer uses crappy affine texture mapping... I could be wrong though, I wasn't looking for it when I tried it a couple months ago.

I've never seen texture warping like that before with a PC 3D chip. This seems to be a trait of the Laguna chip. Even the Virge was fine.

I do recall in previews that the JK software mode was touted as having better graphics than Quake software mode and that is definitely true. They weren't even considering 3D hardware at the time though. There was no GLQuake yet.

swaaye wrote:

I tried FRAPS but it doesn't support 9x.

You want FRAPS version 1.9D for Win9x! 😀 If you run it, and you find that the FPS value is missing on screen, try toggling the V-Sync setting in your video card's control panel settings.

retro games 100 wrote:

You want FRAPS version 1.9D for Win9x! 😀 If you run it, and you find that the FPS value is missing on screen, try toggling the V-Sync setting in your video card's control panel settings.

Oooooo. 😁 I was wondering if there was an old version of FRAPS. I am a registered FRAPS user, is there a way to get that old version in registered form? I don't remember seeing a download for old versions.

Re: old FRAPS, the blurb on the net seems to be: "This [FRAPS 1.9D] is the last version of FREE Fraps before it became a thing where you have to buy it." To get this free version, I think you can simply google for it and grab it from the nearest DL site. MajorGeeks has a copy, I just tried redownloading it from their website.

Just bumping this in case someone missed the thread... what I doubt... it's just that I don't want to lose hope... 🙁

@leileilol: if there's ANYTHING I can do that can make you start searching for that CD, PLEASE let me know... (yeah, i'm sounding desperate, because I am)

swaaye wrote:

I do recall in previews that the JK software mode was touted as having better graphics than Quake software mode and that is definitely true. They weren't even considering 3D hardware at the time though. There was no GLQuake yet.

True...ish. One edge JK had than Quake's software was the area tinting to simulate colored lighting in certain areas, it's more like Duke3D/SW style in that rather. Vertex lighting however was a step back from lightmaps. There's also alpha-mapped windows and water. Jedi Knight also had better model precision with the whole skeletal mesh thing. Some things are virtually matched (particle system and sprites). I recall the intense babbling between the graphics of Q2Test and the JK Demo 😁

Quake had affine texture mapping in software.

I should know a bit from this since i'm trying to juice up Quake's software renderer. 😜

unmei220 wrote:

@leileilol: if there's ANYTHING I can do that can make you start searching for that CD, PLEASE let me know... (yeah, i'm sounding desperate, because I am)

when i come across it again i'll try. my cds are literally all over the place.

Just posting the updates on my "quest", if anyone's still interested:
I tried contacting Charles Kendrick, who originally posted a review about the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000, where he says the CD came with the accelerated versions of D2 and Destruction Derby. Unfortunately, he seems he doesn't still use that e-mail address, and the webpage seems to not have been updated in decades. No reply from him yet...
Source: http://www.myrkul.org/virge.html

Also, I saw a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 card selling in eBay, with the installation CD-ROM. Unfortunately, when I asked the seller if he knows if that CD came with those two games, he replied that no, he couldn't find any games on that CD, but who knows ?
leileilol: Do you by any chance remember if that CD with the games was part of that Installation CD-ROM ? or it was another CD, apart from that one ?
Source: http://cgi.ebay.com/Diamond-Stealth-3D-Video- … =item5883d9798c There's a photo of the CD.

So, summarizing, my quest continues... 🙁

Seems there's also a S3 ViRGE patch for "Fatal Racing" game. If anyone have that patch, please let me know. I searched and searched without luck.