leileilol wrote:

If the slow UT and Q3A ports on the Dreamcast are any indication... 😀

The PS2 ports of Resident Evil: Code Veronica and Grandia 2 were absolute garbage, so that cuts both ways. 😉

the Q3 PS2 port is full detail and 60fps, also supports widescreen so 😀

Even the KYRO II has shortcomings that wouldn't make much difference to the Dreamcast. and I do remember a very character driven marketing blitz for DC around launch. PS2/PS3 on the other hand was too dadaist for that, but somehow did not backfire massively. then again Sony never had a 32X biting their ass

leileilol wrote:

the Q3 PS2 port is full detail and 60fps, also supports widescreen so 😀

Even the KYRO II has shortcomings that wouldn't make much difference to the Dreamcast. and I do remember a very character driven marketing blitz for DC around launch. PS2/PS3 on the other hand was too dadaist for that, but somehow did not backfire massively. then again Sony never had a 32X biting their ass

Oh yeah, shipping sega cd/32X, then quietly dropping them an stealth launching the Saturn earned them much deserved ill will .

Still, I've got tons of favorite, odd-ball games on the DC that just didn't seem to fit Sony or Microsofts "image". The saving grace on Xbox was Sega using their AM departments (mainly Smilebit) to make games for it. There's a reason the Xbox was nicknamed "dreamcast 2" by fans. 😁

ElectricMonk wrote:

leileilol wrote:

And yes, 3dfx's rise is something that needs context to understand. When Voodoo launched, the 3d accelerator market did not quite live up to the name 'accelerator' 😀

Yup, Verite and RRedline really slowed down 3D opertions.

RRedline came quite late in 1997, till then Rendition was using Speedy3d. It is still mystery to me how 3dfx achieved such low CPU usage with Voodoo Graphics, but if there was a contender in this regard it should be V1000. It is one of the tests I would like to see.

leileilol wrote:

The Dreamcast/Naomi/etc systems owe a lot of performance to the crazy SH-4 assembly though. PowerVR CLX2 itself is quite weak IMO. A 3dfx Dreamcast would've just been as awesome, or maybe more capable since it's not held back by tile refresh techniques, could've had a longer life that way since texture buffer effects would be more supported (you know, the kind of effects PS2 allowed from it)

I am skeptical here. Shouldn't the graphics for Dreamcast be technologically at Voodoo2 level? Plus consoles usually use minimalistic memory capacities. Texture buffer effects, being just glorified render to texture and crossfade it with frame buffer, would eat too much fillrate and memory for questionable "effects". I just don't see it beating cell shading for example. IMHO only advantage SEGA would gain from that would be praise from 3dfx fans.

Putas wrote:

It is still mystery to me how 3dfx achieved such low CPU usage with Voodoo Graphics, but if there was a contender in this regard it should be V1000. It is one of the tests I would like to see.

Like I posted a page or two back, 3DFX (made up of former SGI engineers) looked at IRIS GL (before it became OpenGL), and took the real-time operation portions of GL that ended up being small enough to implement in their ASIC (and exposed in GLide). Having those commands run in hardware is always faster than in software, which a lot of the previous 3d "decelerators" did. That's why the Voodoo was lighter on the CPU than their contemporaries.

That same setup is also what let to later limitations of the chipset (16 bit color depth limit, small texture sizes, etc...)

Putas wrote:

leileilol wrote:

The Dreamcast/Naomi/etc systems owe a lot of performance to the crazy SH-4 assembly though. PowerVR CLX2 itself is quite weak IMO. A 3dfx Dreamcast would've just been as awesome, or maybe more capable since it's not held back by tile refresh techniques, could've had a longer life that way since texture buffer effects would be more supported (you know, the kind of effects PS2 allowed from it)

I am skeptical here. Shouldn't the graphics for Dreamcast be technologically at Voodoo2 level? Plus consoles usually use minimalistic memory capacities. Texture buffer effects, being just glorified render to texture and crossfade it with frame buffer, would eat too much fillrate and memory for questionable "effects". I just don't see it beating cell shading for example. IMHO only advantage SEGA would gain from that would be praise from 3dfx fans.

Had they gone with the 3DFX Black belt system, SEGA of Japan would've faced a revolt from their R&D teams. I need to dig up the relevant quotes from whichever issue of Retrogamer it was in (Tom Kalinski and some of the SOA nd SOJ guys did an interview about the subject), but that contest between Katana and Blackbelt got incredibly ugly. It came to a head when 3dfx leaked information about the project in an SEC filing, which pissed SOJ off something fierce. It also led to a lawsuit that 3dfx won, but that's another story.

And like I previously mentioned, maybe it's nostalgia and rose-colored glasses, but Dreamcast graphics looked cleaner, seemed to have better than 16bit color depth, and supported larger texture sizes than the Voodoo2, as well as much fast z-depth calcs, and didn;t have that persistant blur Voodoo games had. It's nowhere near as bad as what the N64s Reality Signal Processor pumped out, though. That's the gold standard for suck.

As long as I have nothing to do tomorrow (supposed to get another 4-5 inches of rain. Ugh.), I'll start finding high quality pics of arcade games running on naomi/naomi2/hikaru vs the arcade boards that used 3dfx (main Atari, I think).

Somebody mind show me how to do a preview of an imgur link, so I don;t get lambasted for posting 5000x3000 sized pictures, like in the last thread? Sorry again about that... *sheepish*

"Large Thumbnail" is your best bet. Or at least my personal favorite bet. 😁

Here's a list I compiled in the last 15 minutes. i'll post screen caps later, when I can find higher quality pics then 320x400. Hopefully tomorrow, but it'll depened on how my day plays out.

Arcade games that used 3dfx Voodoo tech (not all used Quantum3D equipment)

ICE Home Run Derby (first one to feature 3dfx)
Atari Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey
Atari San Francisco Rush
San Francisco Rush : Extreme Racing
San Francisco Rush The Rock : Alcatraz Edition
Midway's NFL Blitz
Mace the Dark Age
Atari's Gauntlet Dark Legacy
Psychic Force 2012- A TAITO "WOLF SYSTEM" powered Mortal Kombat style game
Midway's Sportstation
Konami Viper system with Voodoo 3 chipset, at least 12 different arcade games are known to run on this hardware.
The two most well known uses of a Quicksilver II system is in Midways Hydro Thunder and Offroad Thunder arcade consoles
the third entry in Midways Thunder series was Artic Thunder, which was powered by a Quantum3D Graphite system

Naomi

Alien Front
Charge'N' blast
cosmic smash
death Crimson
guilty gear X
Border Down
Chaos Field
Guilty gear XX
Ikaruga
Karous
F335 Challenge
outtrigger
samba de amigo
Cannon Spike
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Trigger Heart Exelica
Under Defeat
Sega Strike Fighter
Psyvariar 2
Trizeal
Mobile Suit Gundam : Federation Vs. Jion Deluxe
Project Cerberus

Hikaru

Starwars racer arcade
planet harriers
nascar arcade

Midway

Cannon Spike / Gunspike

Midway Quicksilver II

Hydro Thunder
Offroad Thunder

Midway Vegas

Cart Fury

Midway Graphite

Arctic Thunder
Arctic Thunder SE

Naomi 2

Virtual Fighter 4
Beach Spikers
Initial D:
Soul Surfer
Wild riders

F355 Challenge is much better than anything a Voodoo2 based solution could ever do pps and IQ wise and it still runs at 60 frames per second.

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

F355 Challenge is much better than anything a Voodoo2 based solution could ever do pps and IQ wise and it still runs at 60 frames per second.

It was even better with three arcade boards, each slaved to a monitor. That was an awesom atwe

/Still looking for HQ pics. All the one's im seeing top out 320x400//

ElectricMonk wrote:

Putas wrote:

It is still mystery to me how 3dfx achieved such low CPU usage with Voodoo Graphics, but if there was a contender in this regard it should be V1000. It is one of the tests I would like to see.

Like I posted a page or two back, 3DFX (made up of former SGI engineers) looked at IRIS GL (before it became OpenGL), and took the real-time operation portions of GL that ended up being small enough to implement in their ASIC (and exposed in GLide). Having those commands run in hardware is always faster than in software, which a lot of the previous 3d "decelerators" did. That's why the Voodoo was lighter on the CPU than their contemporaries.

That same setup is also what let to later limitations of the chipset (16 bit color depth limit, small texture sizes, etc...)

That answer is a bit too ambiguous. Many people came from companies like SGI, following the proven path, not just 3dfx engineers. Also I haven't met yet actual decelerator. The features are in the hardware, just made weaker. Problem was many developers cranked up the hardware accelerated resolution all the way to 640x480, probably with Voodoo in mind. Should they kept support for few smaller resolutions, low end 3d accelerators would still be useful.

It seems unlikely that a multi-chip solution like Voodoo2 would have been cost competitive with PowerVR CLX2. I suppose 3dfx would've created a custom design similar to Voodoo3.

Regardless though, PowerVR CLX2 was pretty sweet. It's actually a bit more advanced than the Neon 250 card. There were a lot of 30-60fps, very good looking DC games. It was an astonishing improvement over N64.

The problems with ports like UT and Quake3 being simplified were probably caused by system RAM limitations. The UT port and appears to have custom, simplified versions of the standard maps. It ran well enough and is fun if you can stand the terrible DC gamepad....

It wasn't necessarily the Voodoo 2 that would be going in the Dreamcast. It is probable though. But, probably a custom design like the Banshee/Voodoo3 (Avenger) like swaaye said in the above post. I can't say the console would have been better off with a 3Dfx chip, SEGA was a sinking ship and nothing could prevent them from failing hard.

Honestly, I think the Dreamcast would have had a better chance had it been released a year later, with better hardware. Releasing that early and dumping the Saturn pissed off pretty much everyone.
But at least the DC had Sanik Adventurez 🤣

Putas wrote:

That answer is a bit too ambiguous. Many people came from companies like SGI, following the proven path, not just 3dfx engineers. Also I haven't met yet actual decelerator. The features are in the hardware, just made weaker. Problem was many developers cranked up the hardware accelerated resolution all the way to 640x480, probably with Voodoo in mind. Should they kept support for few smaller resolutions, low end 3d accelerators would still be useful.

I need to find the interviews, but the ex-SGI engineers that founded 3DFX brought *new* ideas with them. And those ideas helped capture the early 3d accelerator market (ie, stripping the NON-realtime operations fro IRIS GL, so that the real-time ops that would enable real-time 3D were small enough to implement in hardware to give them the edge.

And the infamous "decelerators" used the CPU for most of the grunt work, especially the operations that weren't implemented (or were implemented improperly), so those tasks got shunted off to the CPU.

Seriously, go dig up articles that interview Scott Sellers, Scott Sellers, Gary Tarolli, and Ross Smith. They explain it better than I can.

And don't forget, the tech they shrunk into hardware for real=time ops typically involved the parts NOT involved in non-realtime rendering. It's not like we needed deep color pipelines, or multiple boards to accomplish what the Voodoo managed to do in real-time.

F2bnp wrote:

It wasn't necessarily the Voodoo 2 that would be going in the Dreamcast. It is probable though. But, probably a custom design like the Banshee/Voodoo3 (Avenger) like swaaye said in the above post. I can't say the console would have been better off with a 3Dfx chip, SEGA was a sinking ship and nothing could prevent them from failing hard.

Honestly, I think the Dreamcast would have had a better chance had it been released a year later, with better hardware. Releasing that early and dumping the Saturn pissed off pretty much everyone.
But at least the DC had Sanik Adventurez 🤣

No, the SOA version was to be Voodoo2 based.

"Some sources say the 3Dfx contract was terminated because Sega had a fit over 3Dfx's too detailed SEC filing (search for "TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND LICENSE AGREEMENT"). The filing says the contract was made on February 28th 1997 and talks about how 3Dfx "will design" hardware for Sega, and I'd say it's more than likely whatever they had when the contract was terminated five months later never actually made it into silicon form. Prototype software could have been built on PCs using GLIDE and Voodoo cards, and while Sega probably had their own set of requirements for the hardware one could speculate that the end result would have been something similar to the Voodoo 2 (announced in November 1997). "

Source 1

" The U.S. skunk works group (11 people in a secret suite away from the Sega of America headquarters) led by Tatsuo Yamamoto settled on an Hitachi SH4 processor with a 3dfx Voodoo 2 graphics processor, which was originally codenamed "Black Belt". The first U.S. prototype boards were silkscreened "Shark" and later "Dural". "

Source 2

I'm old enough to remember the whole kerfuffle.

ElectricMonk wrote:

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

F355 Challenge is much better than anything a Voodoo2 based solution could ever do pps and IQ wise and it still runs at 60 frames per second.

It was even better with three arcade boards, each slaved to a monitor. That was an awesom atwe

/Still looking for HQ pics. All the one's im seeing top out 320x400//

It sure was. Actually, there was even a fourth one working which was responsible for syncing the rest of the boards 🤣

I wouldn't consider an ASSEMBLERGames thread and a wiki very serious sources. Besides, the first source says "while Sega probably had their own set of requirements for the hardware one could speculate that the end result would have been something similar to the Voodoo 2".

On your previous post, you're saying stuff that most of us that posted on this thread already know. Especially Putas, swaaye and leileilol have spent countless hours testing/benchmarking, reading and researching all of this stuff. So it does sound kinda weird when you try to explain it to them 😊 .
I'm not saying you're wrong on BlackBelt using a Voodoo 2, I'm saying you're wrong for being 100% sure about it. Sega and especially SoA loved experimenting with a shit ton of hardware, especially in the pre-Saturn era. At one point, they could have signed a contract for the SGI chip that eventually went on the N64. I believe SoJ ruined the deal once again.

F2bnp wrote:

I wouldn't consider an ASSEMBLERGames thread and a wiki very serious sources. Besides, the first source says "while Sega probably had their own set of requirements for the hardware one could speculate that the end result would have been something similar to the Voodoo 2".

On your previous post, you're saying stuff that most of us that posted on this thread already know. Especially Putas, swaaye and leileilol have spent countless hours testing/benchmarking, reading and researching all of this stuff. So it does sound kinda weird when you try to explain it to them 😊 .
I'm not saying you're wrong on BlackBelt using a Voodoo 2, I'm saying you're wrong for being 100% sure about it. Sega and especially SoA loved experimenting with a shit ton of hardware, especially in the pre-Saturn era. At one point, they could have signed a contract for the SGI chip that eventually went on the N64. I believe SoJ ruined the deal once again.

Feel free to quote sources *you* consider reputable.

IIRC, one stink was that SOA wanted to use Voodoo2 and a Motorola 603, which scared SOJ, because they immediately started thinking clones. And something I haven't see brought up in this thread yet, is that Japanese companies tend to stick to Japanese suppliers/partners.

But, if I'm wrong , I'm wrong.

/I only grew up during that time period, and followed all the industry news/gossip religiously, but I'm sure about what I read/heard. I'm still looking for hires pics demonstrating the difference between Naomi/Naomi2/Hikaru and 3DFX based arcade games, but I doubt even that will changes the minds of people who are *convinced* the Voodoo2 was better and would've "saved" the dreamcast.

/this argument is getting as pointless as pissing in the wind

Still digging up High Quality shots Atari 3DFX coin-op games vs the Naomi series. GIS tends to turn up N64/XBL screenshots. so frustrating.

System16 has plenty of screens, but they are of low quality.

swaaye wrote:

The UT port and appears to have custom, simplified versions of the standard maps. It ran well enough and is fun if you can stand the terrible DC gamepad....

I had a keyboard and mouse to use on my Dreamcast for UT and Q3, worked much better then the gamepad.