PowerVR dominates phones and tablets so don't get too sad over their PC failures. Even Intel licenses their tech for some things.

My favorite 'what if' is had PowerVR not been licensed for the Dreamcast, maybe we'd have seen PowerVR SG released in December 1998... some of the games leading up to that point were trying to support it! Half-Life had a special config for it even. The MiniGLs for PowerVR SG were in the 1.1.x.x version range.

Another potential showstopper for PowerVR were the limitations of its own tiled rendering. When bloom was beginning to be popular in 2003 by techniques involving render-to-texture, the KYRO II would be so slow for rendering each tile along with the bloom texture on the "same frame", getting like 2fps. So, it wasn't just the lack of hardware T&L that killed this beast...

Since PowerVR_Drivers.rar is up, do you think we should also be like this, and collect every released MiniGL, including rare ones like the Crime Cities driver? 😜 Named after their internal versions (i.e. 1001.dll, 1019.dll)

Indeed, yes 😀

I was able to run Quake3 arena on a PCX1 with the Crime Cities MiniGL some months ago!

leileilol wrote:

Since PowerVR_Drivers.rar is up, do you think we should also be like this, and collect every released MiniGL, including rare ones like the Crime Cities driver? 😜 Named after their internal versions (i.e. 1001.dll, 1019.dll)

This would be indeed a step forward to archiving. But there must be also some documentation, which dll to use for specific games and or hardware (as stated with the 3DNow! support for K6-2 and Athlon f.e. on falconfly for 3dfx minigl).

How about a wiki site? Seems the easiest way to me. People with rare cards can add to it easily.

Stumbled on the Die by the Sword PowerVR renderer.

After I got both NEC 3DEngine PCX1 & 2 cards with the whole bundle, I've been playing around with SEGA's arcade port to the PC; Virtual On: Cybertroopers PowerVR edition. (Picture of NEC 3DEngine2 Virtual On Edition here.)

Here are the first impressions:
The PowerVR version is graphically superior to the regular software version. It is basically the arcade version. I love the gameplay with the official twin-stick arcade joystick. The game kicks serious ass, I just played almost 2 hours straight! This is going on my top 10 list of must have installed retro games.

Downsides to the PowerVR version is that it is capped at 30 FPS and at 640x480 resolution. The performance is normally at that cap with a P3, but at big explosions/lots of stuff going on it can drop to 12-14 FPS (according to FRAPS) for a short moment in the worst cases! A normal drop is from 30 down to the low 20's. This is a bit annoying when playing, as the regular software version is steady at 30 FPS no matter what if you got a powerful Pentium 3. I also noticed that using the official Twin-Stick arcade joystick the game didn't like CPU speeds beyond 700mhz. The joystick started to act a bit funny.

Reading the minimum system requirements I think they are INSANE for being first half of 1997. Minimum requirement is a Pentium 166 with 32MB of RAM, recommended is a Pentium 200 with 64MB of RAM. I tested the game on my Pentium 200 with 32MB of RAM with the PCX2. I was disappointed with the framerate. I think that very well explains why this version wasn't made very public back in the days. I think this game was just something for the programmers at SEGA to learn/test on for the PowerVR chip for the upcoming Dreamcast.

I'll upload both the PCX1 and PCX2 drivers of the NEC 3DEngine cards to Vogonsdrivers.

EDIT:Small preview video for those that are interested. More will come in a future comparison episode. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Ny-6lmi_4&feature=youtu.be

Virtual On kicks some serious ass. It just fits the whole Model 2 era of Sega arcade games that I love.
Did you get a good price on that package? Looks pricey and awesome 😉

Awesome about the VirtualOn!!!! Any chance of (binary) patches for the software version?

F2bnp wrote:

Virtual On kicks some serious ass. It just fits the whole Model 2 era of Sega arcade games that I love.
Did you get a good price on that package? Looks pricey and awesome 😉

I got it from Japan for 4900 yen, which is 56 dollars. I think that was a good deal, seeing how the joystick alone go for over 100 on Ebay. What really didn't help was the extra fees to my handler, domestic shipping which brought the total to 85 dollars before even going out of Japan. Then it was another 50 for shipping to Europe. So all in all it got alot more expensive than what I initially thought.

Awesome about the VirtualOn!!!! Any chance of (binary) patches for the software version?

After paying this much I want to play around with it, make my videos before I release any patches. You can't just copy the binary. There are loads of extra and different files on the PowerVR version. These can ofcourse be singled out and added with the patch, but the main problem is that the CD structure are different. Since the game got disc check protection at startup this means that it would have to be cracked or modified to accept the software version CD. Hopefully this check isn't too sophisticated. To sum it up, I think a patch is possible, but it will require some work.

In case anyone is interested: I was able to get the old PowerVR Series 1 SDK from Imagination Technologies by asking. (Got the tip from somebody's blog.)
I asked if it could be redistributed but didn't get an answer. I didn't have to sign an NDA, although NDAs are mentioned in the SDK.
So if you want to ask for yourself just write politely to devtech@imgtec.com (I had to wait for a week). Maybe they will make the SDK public if there is enough interest.

OK, got official permission to redistribute the SDK. Uploaded here:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=431

Lots of interesting stuff in there, even if you don't want to program the chip yourself.

Awesome! Definitely gonna have a look on that.

I loved my M3D back in the day. I thought it would be a simple matter to find one again now that I've got my PIII machine, but so far no dice. I'm out of money for the time being so that isn't too big of a deal. I wonder how the M3D compares to the Riva TNT AGP that I already have in there. I'd guess not too well.

Thanks a lot, now I finally know why "infinite plains".

ResetVXD in that sdk is a very handy tool that should've been released in the first place. 😜

Also that guide to draw a pair of fogged triangles in programming for SGL is a very good start to creating a SGL API wrapper.

I follow the thread for quite some time now since I got a 3Dx and a Kyro II, though I don't remember if anyone mentionned this : I found out something last time I setup my old computer with both PCX2 and Kyro II inside, the latest PowerVR driver also update the 3Dx. I didn't check or really notice if the functions are improved or not, but it surely updates the control panel.

I didn't see any updated PCX2 stuff when I installed Kyro II drivers when I had both together.

My oldies machine isn't up and running right now so I can't check what changed on mine, but I'll take time in my vacations to list what changed. Last time I noticed new things it was under Windows ME with latest beta driver from PowerVR, and it was mostly a redesign of the control panel if I remember well.