Great Hierophant wrote:

A retro machine is, by far, the best way to experience Tomb Raider.

as an old TR player since Oct. 1996
I can't agree with you.
What I've been playing it with ranges from P 133 MHz to P4 3,000 MHz CPU's, 2D S3 Virge through 3dfx to GeForce & Radeon graphics etc.
and imho "by far, the best way to experience Tomb Raider" of all is just

1) Glidos
and alternately
2) Dosbox 0.65 w/glide emulation

gidierre wrote:

1) Glidos
and alternately
2) Dosbox 0.65 w/glide emulation

3) dgvoodoo 😀

Zebius wrote:

3) dgvoodoo 😀

Right !
The only thing is I never managed to have a decent "natural" timing with dgvoodoo 😒

gidierre wrote:

The only thing is I never managed to have a decent "natural" timing with dgvoodoo 😒

What do you mean with natural "timing"?

I second dgvoodoo as the best option. I played Tomb Raider back in the old days with a Diamond Monster (3dfx Voodoo 1), but it never looked as good as with dgvoodoo nowadays.

Let me address the reasons why I don't prefer the three mentioned choices:

DOSBOX w/ Glide emulation - Cannot do full screen.
dgVoodoo - annoyingly crackly sound
Glidos - unfree

@Wintermute
>What do you mean with natural "timing"?

that with dgvoodoo it runs 2 fast

@Great Hierophant
>DOSBOX w/ Glide emulation - Cannot do full screen.

I thought so too 😊 until gulikoza
(see Dosbox with Gilde2x.ovl)
notified me that setting InitFullScreen=1 in OpenGLid.ini
enables fullscreen...

>Glidos - unfree

true. It's also true it has some nice features like gamma & resolution correction close at hand, user friendliness, support for textures, other games & so on.

gidierre wrote:

that with dgvoodoo it runs 2 fast

Acutally, this was remedied with the newest version.
In fact I had strange texture problems using Glidos, where the hidden texture algorithm didn't work correctly.

It's also true it has some nice features like gamma & resolution correction close at hand, user friendliness, support for textures, other games & so on.

dgvoodoo can do all these things as well (except large textures specific to Tomb Raider), is faster and has less graphical problems. And the large texture support isn't really important, since right now only parts of very few levels are retuxtered with questionable quality - it doesn't look really good.

So by now, dgvoodoo is by far the better choice. Furthermore it can be used for Windows Glide games as well, were Glidos is useless. And it is free!

Wintermute wrote:

>>with dgvoodoo it runs 2 fast
>Actually, this was remedied with the newest version.

with newest you mean v. 1.50 beta or what ?

not quite sure, but I guess I'd been using v. 1.40
Now I see 1.50 sets timer interrupts at 80ms, does this work by you ?
I'll give it a try if you say it's worthwhile.
Btw did you try and customize the ms value ?

Having finally played Tomb Raider with the Glide drivers on the retro machine, I can offer a few more insights:

1. My old machine is still the only machine I have that plays the cutscenes in perfect sync.
2. The Monster 3D drivers allow you to adjust the gamma to a normal level, even for a DOS game like Tomb Raider.
3. The "white outlines" surrounding certain textures, like the gun blasts, are present on the real hardware, so they are not imperfect emulation as I originally thought.
4. The mipmapping option in Tomb Raider accentuates the white outlines.
5. How I wish the Voodoo 1 connected differenty than the ridiculous pass-through VGA connector, but for that I would be using a DVI connector.

The retro-machine is also excellent for games like System Shock or Fallout.

gidierre wrote:

with newest you mean v. 1.50 beta or what ?

No, actually I used 1.40 Plus. You should try disabling Timer Boosting in the setup.

Great Hierophant wrote:

1. My old machine is still the only machine I have that plays the cutscenes in perfect sync.

Yes, this is a point, that unfortunately is still only working properly in the Dos version. You can change the configuration options of dgvoodoo to rectify the delay to some degree, but I didn't manage to get the cutscenes totally in sync.

3. The "white outlines" surrounding certain textures, like the gun blasts, are present on the real hardware, so they are not imperfect emulation as I originally thought.
4. The mipmapping option in Tomb Raider accentuates the white outlines.

With dgvoodoo you can remedy this problem by tweaking the program like Dege told in this post:
http://www.tombraiderforums.com/showpost.php? … 69&postcount=14

Unfortunately he didn't include this option in the setup program, so you have to use a hex editor for this.

Another advantage of using dgvoodoo instead of the "real thing": Some textures in Tomb Raider are not filtered, e.g. the flames, which looks somewhat strange and (in my opinion) ugly.
In the setup of dgvoodoo you can force bilinear filtering on all textures, which improves the general appearance.

DOSBox has come a long way with Tomb Raider, but it is less than perfect:

1. The cutscenes, sometimes they are in sync, sometimes not. A second load just after the first helps.
2. There is a perspective change when you begin the St. Francis Folly level, the camera seems to focus more on Lara than in the earlier levels. You have to enter the inventory screen to "reset" the camera.
3. The white outlines, sometimes they come back.

Those are the only minuses, and the last two may be driver issues. By comparison with dgVoodoo and Glide, DOSBox offers the best "pure" Tomb Raider experience outside the retro machine. It is easier to set up, no need for VDMSound or the like. At 30,000 cycles in dynamic mode the frame rates are very fluid except when enemies are on the screen.

Great Hierophant wrote:

By comparison with dgVoodoo and Glide, DOSBox offers the best "pure" Tomb Raider experience outside the retro machine.

So now we are not looking anymore for the best solution but for the "purest" solution? 😉 (By the way, I think you mean Glidos, not Glide.)
I still think, that the glide wrappers offer the better graphical quality.

It is easier to set up, no need for VDMSound or the like.

Theoretically, the amount of "work" is the same. In DosBox you also have to install the program, setup and mount harddrives, CD-Roms etc.

But especially for Tomb Raider 1 there exist a program called Advanced Tomb Raider Installer, which automatically installs Tomb Raider 1, VDMSound and dgvoodoo/Glidos with the correct options, so no work is required at all with this solution!

At 30,000 cycles in dynamic mode the frame rates are very fluid except when enemies are on the screen.

But only if you have a very fast PC. (My PC wouldn't make it.)

So I still vote for dgvoodo as the best solution. (Yes, I am biased. 😁 )

Wintermute wrote:

gidierre wrote:

with dgvoodoo TR runs 2 fast

Actually, this was remedied with the newest version.

I tried dgVoodoo 1.40+ that is reloaded the Adv. TR Installer coming w/dgVoodoo 1.31 (yes, that's what I'd been using) then overwrote all dgVoodoo 1.31 files with the later ones, and yes I'd say it has fixed the speed issue 😀

Trying to sum up my various experiences with Glidos, Dosbox and dgVoodoo, the minor glitches, the occasional crashes, and then the nVidia vs. ATI cards troubles etc. like already described in an earlier post, for all it's worth I made up a little scheme to hopefully serve all who care to investigate.

Assuming that to pick up your best choice among these tools what most counts imho is
1) whether yours is a hyped up machine with lots of cpu horsepower, ram & stuff or not
and
2) whether your video card is either a nVidia GeForce (=True) or an ATI Radeon (GeForce=false) especially as regards some dgVoodoo issues,

I streamlined (or uselessy complicated ?) it all up half jokingly half kiddingly in this little pseudo code snippet 😜

-------------
best = glidos;
if (beefy CPU) best += dosbox;
if (GeForce) best += dgVoodoo;
return best;
-------------

in other words

if (beefy CPU && GeForce) best choice(s) = glidos | dosbox | dgVoodoo
if (beefy CPU && !GeForce) best choice(s) = glidos | dosbox // with a Radeon, dgVoodoo in server mode 😒
if (!beefy CPU && GeForce) best choice(s) = glidos | dgVoodoo
if (!beefy CPU && !GeForce) best choice(s) = glidos // with a Radeon, dgVoodoo in server mode 😒

When I say Glidos OR dgVoodoo and such, what I mean is they're sort of equivalent.
Almost.
I still keep preferring Glidos as #1 due to better performance, user friendliness & robustness which make me think it's worth its price still.

Acutally I have an ATI card and dgvoodoo runs just fine and with better perfomance as Glidos.
Did someone already metioned here, that dgvoodoo is free and Glidos not. 😁

So, dgvoodoo is still #1 for me!

But to each his own 😉

Wintermute wrote:

I have an ATI card and dgvoodoo runs just fine

then I guess maybe it's a Catalyst driver version riddle if I have not 100% satisfying results.
There are many of them around and those for a desktop pc aren't quite the same as those for laptops.
Iirc the readme within the dgVoodoo zip addresses this issue especially for ATI cards. Hard to conclude as you can't try them all.

Nothing new it seems, as I remember pretty well having major troubles some years ago with a GeForce 2 & Detonator thirty or fortysomething driver sets trying hard to get through with Glidos v. 1.10 ! 😜
Dramatic up and downs at almost each driver updating until it was fixed.
And not necessarily the later (driver) is the better 🙄

There's a thing I have overlooked and may be interesting to recall here that is,
Glidos & dgVoodoo addressed and solved the "shadow bug", while Dosbox as a general dos emulator did not (yet ?), this bug being afaik no glide related matter, but just a per game TR specific shortcoming.

@Wintermute
as a dgVoodoo expert user, what settings do you use to avoid the visual glitch of "cracks" appearing at texture edges like this image

I tried disabling in dgv setup mipmapping as the first suspect, but didn't seem to make that much of a difference...

any advice ?

@Wintermute
or other dgVoodoo users :

any comments ? didn't anyone read this ? 😕

Sorry, must have skipped over this.

Actually I did remember some of this cracks also, but just ignored them - they are not that common anyway.

I wonder, if they are also present with the original Voodoo.

Wintermute wrote:

Actually I did remember some of this cracks also, but just ignored them - they are not that common anyway.

I wonder, if they are also present with the original Voodoo.

I thought so too. Probably it's a glitch that is over (or beneath ?) any chance of emulation. I tried messing around with those settings, without mipmapping it looks better, but still they're there.
Btw with Dosbox and/or Glidos there's no big difference . Dosbox appears to even make them somewhat more visible.
I can't tell about the original voodoo, maybe that just went unnoticed in the days we used to be not as visually spoiled as today 🙄