chinny22 wrote on 2023-08-21, 02:09:

As this is list only icomparing glide against Direct 3D and Open GL I would argue Mechwarrior 2 should still be included (assuming glide is the better version)
Maybe with a side note stating the PowerVR is the superior version overall.

I've edited the thread title to make this clearer. Originally, I mentioned Direct3D and OpenGL specifically because those were the most complete renderers used at the time, besides Glide. But I now realize that PowerVR and ATi CIF could provide superior visuals in some instances as well.

Appreciate your work though! Never owned a glide card back in the day and now that I do was looking forward to amazing graphics then found it hard to notice much difference in Diablo 2 -Now I know
NFS3 I noticed fog and lighting missing that had been missing.
I think NFS4 also benefits from fog, say on Celtic Runes track? I'd check but my reto fleet is currently immigrating to Australia

Heh, I always felt Diablo II looked nicer in Glide mode, but couldn't really pin it down until I did a side-by-side screenshot comparison using the instructions by ratfink.

As for NFS4, the fog issue is slightly different in that it can actually work in Direct3D if you have a card which supports table fog. This isn't the case with NFS3 which only uses fog under Glide 2.x.

Baoran wrote on 2023-08-21, 05:16:

I have remember Lands of Lore 3 looking better with glide back then but I cant test that myself right now. Even in the latest patch notes it recommends using glide instead of direct3D when possible.

Thanks, added to the preliminary list.

We would need a screenshot comparison to mark it as confirmed. I'm not familiar with this game, but I could look into it if someone points out a specific instance where Glide provides better visuals.

Other games to potentially test (I don't know if Glide have any true advantages in these):

- Interstate 76 Gold (Glide, RRedline, PowerSGL, Direct3D)
- Outlaws (Glide & Direct3D)
- Flying Corps Gold (Glide & Direct3D)
- MDK (Glide, PowerSGL, RRedline, Direct3D)
- Ultimate Race Pro (Glide, PowerSGL and Direct3D) - This game previous releases were designed for PowerVR cards, also part of the "PowerVR Extreme" branded titles, so curious how it compares.

MDK will definitely not look better in Glide over Software and possibly D3D. The reason is that MDK had rather high quality textures, which had to be paired back for Glide (and other vendors I suppose). Voodoo cards were limited to max 256x256 textures until VSA100.

Great thread btw! Can't wait to see more.
Perhaps Rayman 2 and Hype The Time Quest (I believe it uses the same engine) could be of interest? They both support D3D and Glide.
There's also Turok 2.

vetz wrote on 2023-08-21, 10:59:

Other games to potentially test (I don't know if Glide have any true advantages in these):

While I appreciate the sentiment, I would prefer to have some anecdotal reference of Glide having better visuals in a game before investigating it thoroughly. Many games from the late 90s supported multiple renderers, but Glide wasn't always better or worse. The goal is to find those edge cases where using Glide provides visible benefits and document them via screenshots or videos.

With Diablo 2, it was extremely easy to reproduce the steps that ratfink described, screenshot the results and point out the differences. For Unreal, UT and Deus Ex, I was familiar enough with the games to do that on my own. And for NFS3 and Carmageddon 2, I had already discovered the differences while testing those games for table fog use.

Going through multiple games and looking for differences, without any sort of guidance, would be pretty difficult.

For Interstate 76, the resolution of the pistol hand is higher in Glide than Direct3D......however there's that texture memory problem that keeps popping up (tires in the sky etc). Apart from that, they shouldn't look too different. No special blending functions involved and there's missing effects from software anyway (the blur when having impacts, and better night time headlights)

PowerVR has a consistent framerate, the textures don't mess up, and the pistol hand is fine too 😀 the only odd problem are alpha textures flickering tiles when overlapping another.

Is there a good software for taking screenshots in win98 that works with both direct3d and glide? I still have my original lands of lore 3 CDs if they still work I could try to test it some time soon if I can get it to work.

Love the concept! Keep it up!

Baoran wrote on 2023-08-21, 19:18:

Is there a good software for taking screenshots in win98 that works with both direct3d and glide? I still have my original lands of lore 3 CDs if they still work I could try to test it some time soon if I can get it to work.

For Direct3D and OpenGL, you can use pretty much anything that has a screen capture function. Even pressing the PrintScreen key and pasting into Paint usually works. For consistency, I use Fraps 1.9d for this purpose.

For Glide, the situation is quite different. Due to the nature of the API, you can't take direct screen captures using the methods described above. You'll get heavily distorted images if you try.

The solution is to either use the in-game screen capture key (for games which have that) or a specialized tool for taking Glide screenshots. I use HyperSnapDX v3.61 for this purpose, but even that might not be ideal, since I'm not sure if it can capture the "22-bit" filter of Voodoo 3 cards. I think an actual capture card may be needed for that. But for the purposes of just taking a usable Glide screenshot, HyperSnapDX does work fine.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2023-08-21, 19:35:

Love the concept! Keep it up!

Cheers!

BTW, if you or anyone else, have some references to games which looked better in Glide mode, feel free to share. It doesn't have to be very specific, even a quick mention in a review from a late '90s magazine or something would help to narrow things down.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-21, 19:35:

For Direct3D and OpenGL, you can use pretty much anything that has a screen capture function. Even pressing the PrintScreen key […]
Show full quote

Baoran wrote on 2023-08-21, 19:18:

Is there a good software for taking screenshots in win98 that works with both direct3d and glide? I still have my original lands of lore 3 CDs if they still work I could try to test it some time soon if I can get it to work.

For Direct3D and OpenGL, you can use pretty much anything that has a screen capture function. Even pressing the PrintScreen key and pasting into Paint usually works. For consistency, I use Fraps 1.9d for this purpose.

For Glide, the situation is quite different. Due to the nature of the API, you can't take direct screen captures using the methods described above. You'll get heavily distorted images if you try.

The solution is to either use the in-game screen capture key (for games which have that) or a specialized tool for taking Glide screenshots. I use HyperSnapDX v3.61 for this purpose, but even that might not be ideal, since I'm not sure if it can capture the "22-bit" filter of Voodoo 3 cards. I think an actual capture card may be needed for that. But for the purposes of just taking a usable Glide screenshot, HyperSnapDX does work fine.

My pc has voodoo 2 SLI and Geforce 4 ti 4600 so it probably does not have that filter in the first place.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-21, 19:35:

but even that might not be ideal, since I'm not sure if it can capture the "22-bit" filter of Voodoo 3 cards. I think an actual capture card may be needed for that. But for the purposes of just taking a usable Glide screenshot, HyperSnapDX does work fine.

I advise not enabling HyperSnap's filters because they are bad approximations despite their claims, and they've also confused the filters around..

Baoran wrote on 2023-08-21, 20:35:

My pc has voodoo 2 SLI and Geforce 4 ti 4600 so it probably does not have that filter in the first place.

SLI mode disables the filter for sync reasons, but V2's got a single-pass 4x1 filter.

leileilol wrote on 2023-08-21, 21:57:

I advise not enabling HyperSnap's filters because they are bad approximations despite their claims, and they've also confused the filters around..

Interesting, I wasn't aware of the mixup. BTW, this old Beyond3D article states that the 3DFX developers gave some code to the HyperSnap author to help with implementing the filter approximations. That said, I did notice that the end result doesn't quite match what I'm seeing on the screen.

The article also shows that the final step of the filtering process is done on the Voodoo 3's DAC. To my understanding, this means that you would need an external capture card to take proper screenshots with the filter fully applied.

Capture cards also do their own thing when it comes to colors and contrasts, so you kinda have to tune the image by eye to get close to what you are seeing on the monitor.
Im using a semi-ok one, still on the cheaper side. And its close, but never the same as what I see on the monitor, specially in dark areas.

Screenshot software also sometimes apply some contrast correction.

On topic glide vs d3d... Basicly every game pre dx7 will look nicer in glide, just for the better texture filtering. d3d has that grain pattern, that is specially noticeable on lower resolutions.

Games tested:

• Rayman 2 - retail CD release

Graphics cards tested:

• 3DFX Voodoo3 2000, using 3DFX reference drivers version 1.07.00 (Glide renderer)
• Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT using Nvidia reference drivers version 45.23 (Direct3D renderer)

I gave Rayman 2 a quick test, and I noticed some minor banding in the Direct3D screenshot (on the rocks surrounding the waterfall) and slightly worse texture filtering compared to Glide, but no big differences otherwise. Maybe someone who's more familiar with this game can point out some sections where Glide might have a bigger visual advantage.

Messiah (2000, D3D & Glide) and King's Quest 8 : Mask of Eternity (1998, Software & D3D & Glide) might be worth a look as well. Messiah had a notoriously long development cycle for the time, it's likely it was designed with software and Glide only for most of its development. I seem to remember people pointing out differences in the past.

KQ8 is fairly early as well, I think D3D was added in with a later patch maybe? I seem to remember Glide looking better but I'm going off memory here.

Garrett W wrote on 2023-08-22, 11:46:

Messiah had a notoriously long development cycle for the time, it's likely it was designed with software and Glide only for most of its development. I seem to remember people pointing out differences in the past.

After testing this one for a while, I have some thoughts. First, this is a really weird game. Second, when you first install it, it has an unskippable 3 minute long video ad for Interplay's next game Sacrifice, which is a really shady marketing tactic. Third, it's really buggy and frequently crashes with every graphics card and system that I've tested it on. Fourth, it almost looks best in Glide mode, but not quite. Here's why:

Notice how the "Character Texture Resolution" setting is grayed out and permanently set to "Low" on my Voodoo3? Yeah, that's why. Pretty much everything else is better in Glide mode, draw distance, texture filtering, colors... you name it. But that one setting makes the textures on the character's clothes look low-res, which is very noticeable. I've posted some screenshots here if anyone's curious. The one good thing that came out of these tests, is that I could at least confirm that Messiah uses table fog, so it wasn't a total loss.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-22, 19:59:

After testing this one for a while, I have some thoughts. First, this is a really weird game. Second, when you first install it, […]
Show full quote

Garrett W wrote on 2023-08-22, 11:46:

Messiah had a notoriously long development cycle for the time, it's likely it was designed with software and Glide only for most of its development. I seem to remember people pointing out differences in the past.

After testing this one for a while, I have some thoughts. First, this is a really weird game. Second, when you first install it, it has an unskippable 3 minute long video ad for Interplay's next game Sacrifice, which is a really shady marketing tactic. Third, it's really buggy and frequently crashes with every graphics card and system that I've tested it on. Fourth, it almost looks best in Glide mode, but not quite. Here's why:

Messiah_Options.jpg

Notice how the "Character Texture Resolution" setting is grayed out and permanently set to "Low" on my Voodoo3? Yeah, that's why. Pretty much everything else is better in Glide mode, draw distance, texture filtering, colors... you name it. But that one setting makes the textures on the character's clothes look low-res, which is very noticeable. I've posted some screenshots here if anyone's curious. The one good thing that came out of these tests, is that I could at least confirm that Messiah uses table fog, so it wasn't a total loss.

I recall there was a patch (official) for Messiah that fixed the ever crashing game on Win11. Did you try that?

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2023-08-22, 20:23:

I recall there was a patch (official) for Messiah that fixed the ever crashing game on Win11. Did you try that?

I was using the oddly named patch 0.2.

That should be the latest official version, at least per the PC Gaming Wiki.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-22, 19:59:

Notice how the "Character Texture Resolution" setting is grayed out and permanently set to "Low" on my Voodoo3? Yeah, that's why. Pretty much everything else is better in Glide mode, draw distance, texture filtering, colors... you name it. But that one setting makes the textures on the character's clothes look low-res, which is very noticeable. I've posted some screenshots here if anyone's curious. The one good thing that came out of these tests, is that I could at least confirm that Messiah uses table fog, so it wasn't a total loss.

I'm curious to find out if running the game on Voodoo5 would enable this option, as I see the patchnotes for the latest patch mentions FSAA enabled for Voodoo5 (I know this is not related, but maybe there were other undocumented changes). I don't have my Voodoo5 AGP ready in any system, but I plan to build a Voodoo killer machine, so Messiah would be the first game to test.

EDIT: I see people running the game with nglide and wrappers have the same issue, so could be API related.