Bandit LOAF wrote:

I'll be happy to give it a shot, Stiletto! I'll try it this weekend and report back.

And boy a PCFX-GA would be cool... my rule is it has to be for Wing Commander, though. Otherwise I'd go crazy 😀

Here's a weird question: was there ever a feature connector splitter? I ask because the 3DO card is replacing a Forte VFX-1 in this computer. I wonder if it'd be possible to have both... a computer with a VR helmet AND a 3DO in it would be the most 1994 thing I can imagine.

Is there anything worth playing on the PCFX though? Speaking as a huge PC-Engine fan it was something I toyed with picking up a good 10-15 years ago, but couldn't bring myself to get due to the extremely limited selection of (mainly) fmv and digital comic style titles.

No, there's not really much worth playing on the PCFX unless your Japanese is good and you're into animated novels and obscure hentai games. If I remember correctly there's a Langrisser title for the PCFX, some Adventures (Zork) and a handful of RPGs.

But I think there are only 60-70 titles on the system anyway.

I'm a PC-Engine fan myself (unfortunately my PCE Duo's sound is dead) and I really like the PCFX as a system, but from a gamers perspective it's just not worth it.

But to get back on topic:
I took a brief look at the MSD data, but I'm not very familiar with the tool. As far as I could tell there were just 2 roms loaded. One VGA and one without further description, but I'm not sure if it's the 3DO Blaster or how I could find out if it was.

I came across this googling around, a similar card for the Philips CD-i: http://playcosm.tripod.com/Eigenstart/cdipc2.0.htm

I wonder if they really exist! Has anyone seen one? It wouldn't fit my project, but it'd be pretty neat to see someone do something with one... (maybe a 3DO/CDi/PC-FX combined setup!)

There's also an Atari Jaguar isa card:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ATARI+AND+SIGMA … E+PC-a015194713

However, never made it to retail.

Galatea2.2 wrote:

There's also an Atari Jaguar isa card:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ATARI+AND+SIGMA … E+PC-a015194713

However, never made it to retail.

I wonder if it even got to the prototype stage and if there's any out there in the wild.

It's difficult to imagine such a thing being made because you'd need to incorporate a Jaguar cartridge slot into it and you can't fit one of those through the card cage slot on the back of a PC so it would have to be remotely located to a drive bay which means it probably won't work with most OEM PC cases that usually only have a limited number of drive bays accessible from the outside of the case, most of those being filled at the factory. The only other option would be to make it an external device that connects to the system through a PCI card but that might end up costing more than an actual Jaguar.

I think it was meant to run Jaguar cd games:

"JAGUAR PC CARD. Computer peripheral. Sigma Designs is developing a card for IBM PCs and compatables that runs Jaguar CD software and acts
as a ReelMagic MPEG card. Last announced release date was December 1994. No price has been given."

Source: www.atariage.com/Jaguar/faq/index.html

Mystery wrote:

Make sure you don't chose a resolution above 640x480 for the fullscreen mode or the scaling will reduce the image quality significantly.

Another advantage of the 3DO Blaster is the superb image quality, even exceeding the RGB modded consoles.

It displays in VGA right, so 31 kHz 640x480 60 Hz? (inherently better image quality than the interlaced video the consoles output, and better quality monitors at that -unless you get a really nice 15 kHz capable RGB monitor)

Yes the 3DO resolution is 320x240 so at 640x480 the image is scaled perfectly. I tried different resolutions and the image doesn't get resampled, it's just point scaling which doesn't look that good.

The image quality should be better than any regular 3DO console. Since the 3DO doesn't offer native RGB the only option is through a pretty complicated mod and I'm pretty sure the overall image quality suffers slightly due to the signal conversion. It still looks good, better than s-video, but I'm pretty sure it's no match for a pure vga signal.

But that's pretty much the only advantage to a regular console 😉

Hi, sorry for the offtopic, is the VFX1 helmet any good? I've been offered one quite cheapish and I'm a bit undecided... Is it compatible with a Matrox G200?

It's extremely cool on the few games that support the head-tracking. Origin's Wings of Glory is really cool with the ability to look around your airplane... but I think that support is pretty limited!

(I'm a terrible person to ask, sadly, my setup is all Origin games... and I'm blind in one eye so I can't tell you how the 3D works! But there are still active VFX communities out there playing around with the things, so they have some longevity anyway. Make sure the one you're offered has the ISA card, it's worthless without it.)

I'm a terrible person to ask, sadly, my setup is all Origin games

You have to check out this site then:

http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/

Bandit LOAF wrote:

It's extremely cool on the few games that support the head-tracking. Origin's Wings of Glory is really cool with the ability to look around your airplane... but I think that support is pretty limited!

(I'm a terrible person to ask, sadly, my setup is all Origin games... and I'm blind in one eye so I can't tell you how the 3D works! But there are still active VFX communities out there playing around with the things, so they have some longevity anyway. Make sure the one you're offered has the ISA card, it's worthless without it.)

Thanks for your insight! Unfortunately I hesitated too much and someone beat me to it 🙁
Lesson learnt I guess, I hope I can find another one one of these days (or wait until Oculus Rift comes out).

You have to check out this site then:

That is a fantastic suggestion! I know Pix and his site pretty well and he deserves all the attention he can get! (I run WCNews.com, the big Wing Commander community site.)

Thanks for your insight! Unfortunately I hesitated too much and someone beat me to it
Lesson learnt I guess, I hope I can find another one one of these days (or wait until Oculus Rift comes out).

Don't worry, they actually show up pretty frequently! I turned down my first chance at one (to Pix, actually!) immediately regretted it and managed to find several of them within a few weeks.

Even if you're doing nothing with it, it's SO MUCH FUN to have a 1990s-looking VR helmet sitting next to your computer. Worth it for that wow factor alone!

Drivers added to Vogonsdrivers:

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … 988&menustate=0