Texture filtering - yay, mipmap - nay.

Putas wrote on 2024-03-20, 05:40:

midicollector wrote on 2024-03-19, 17:26:

chuky wrote on 2024-03-17, 04:48:

I was also puzzled when I saw the new Tomb Raider 123 remaster where you can switch between the new graphics and the "original" graphics. The original graphics in the remaster have no filtering so it looks worse than the actual original game where you couldn't disable filtering.

Tomb Raider only had filtering if you had a video card like the voodoo, at the time most people didn’t so either pixelated or filtered would have been period correct.

No, you can use the bilinear filter with all the supported chips that have the feature.

I meant that many people at the time would have been using software rendering. Probably the majority of computer owners at the time wouldn’t have had anything better than software rendering.

Oh yes, I agree. Also because people weren't used to patching.

Putas wrote on 2024-03-30, 06:39:

Oh yes, I agree. Also because people weren't used to patching.

This! I would've played the first TR with the s3 Virge patch had I known that one existed!

revolstar wrote on 2024-04-02, 09:00:

This! I would've played the first TR with the s3 Virge patch had I known that one existed!

funny thing about Tomb Raider s3 Virge patch - it was done wrong :] company doing the conversion received source code to 3dfx version with removed software rendering optimized path. It relied on Z-buffer instead of sorted triangles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6fk_iarL-8&l … Dfunb2V14AaABAg

@andrewpomianowski5190 :
"2 years ago (edited)
This brings back memories. I wrote the back-end driver for the Argonaut titles on the Virge (used in Fx Fighter and Croc) - it my first job out of University back in the day when I joined Argonaut's technology team. It was really crazy back then with every video card needing a different customized back-end implementation - as I recall I had to do ATI Rage and some other cards as well. Later, after I left and formed my own company we also did the port of Tomb Raider for the Virge, although that was mostly done by a friend of mine. The Virge was an interesting card - it did pretty much everything right in terms of image quality features, but basically every effect you turned on halved the fillrate. Want perspective correct textures? Fillrate halves. Want depth buffering? Fillrate halves again. And so on. It was a real art trying to extract performance.

When we did the port of Tomb Raider we were working from the version of the back end renderer of the engine that had been used for 3DFX's Voodoo graphics. One thing we didn't realize at the time was that it had been converted to use depth buffering, but the original engine version (software renderer) used a depth-sorting algorithm. If we had obtained that version from Eidos we probably could have got twice the frame rate, but we didn't realize that was an option in the engine at the time and just worked from what we got. I think we did use some of the Virge's more funky features though, like a pseudo-bilinear mode that only filtered in one direction but was faster. You had to calculate when you could use this instead of true bilinear filtering without losing too much image quality."

Btw Linkedin tells me dude did all right after Virge, ended up AMD Fellow, CVP Radeon Product Architect

That's a funny story, kinda reminds me of the Amiga port of Street Fighter 2.

On a somewhat related note, I've seen some dude on youtube playing devil's advocate and claiming TR is actually playable with the s3 Virge patch provided that you turn the resolution down to 512x384 or sth.

revolstar wrote on 2024-04-02, 19:41:

On a somewhat related note, I've seen some dude on youtube playing devil's advocate and claiming TR is actually playable with the s3 Virge patch provided that you turn the resolution down to 512x384 or sth.

Depends on how you define playable, and which Virge model are you using. For example, a Virge DX from a reputable manufacturer (e.g. Diamond) comes with a clock speed of 72 MHz. You can also overclock some generic Virge DX cards to that spec.

Anyway, with a 4MB Virge DX running at that speed, you get 15-18 FPS at 640x480 with all the eye candy features turned on. Drop the resolution down to 512x384 and you get to 20-22 FPS. Turn off bilinear filtering and you might get to 25 FPS. Tomb Raider caps out at 30 FPS so that's not too bad I suppose.

Also, here's a video of someone using a Virge DX on a 486 and actually benefitting from the acceleration.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-02, 20:06:

revolstar wrote on 2024-04-02, 19:41:

On a somewhat related note, I've seen some dude on youtube playing devil's advocate and claiming TR is actually playable with the s3 Virge patch provided that you turn the resolution down to 512x384 or sth.

Also, here's a video of someone using a Virge DX on a 486 and actually benefitting from the acceleration.

Yup, that's the video I was referring to! 😀