leileilol wrote:

I'm really curious to see how it works with the usual PVR Extreme SGL MiniGL GLQuake/Quake2/Hexen2/Sin/Half-Life games as well as the Techland SGL MiniGL.

Gotta make sure all the bugs on hardware are duplicated with the software! 😁

vetz wrote:

Stiletto wrote:

I really hope with the wrapper eventually released that someone with a modern rig and a large PowerVR games collection - and an actual retro rig with a PowerVR card - can run a lot of side-by-side tests. 😁

🤣, I see what you did there 😉

*whistles innocently*

1The games people will be most interested in playing with the SGL wrapper will be Mechwarrior 2, Resident Evil and Cybertroopers (in my opinion).

I know I'd be very interested in playing MechWarrior 2 this way. I've long considered the 3DFX version the definitive 3D accelerated version (Titanium Trilogy in Direct3D is crap), and only recently learned that the PowerVR version is even better.

What about Resident Evil and Cybertroopers, though? Is there a big (or any) difference between Resident Evil in SGL and emulating the PS1 version? Or Cybertroopers SGL and emulating it in MAME, or the Saturn version?

I'm also curious about Panzer Dragoon on an NV1 - is that really better than software rendering, or on a Saturn?

Or are those mainly games you'd play on legacy hardware for novelty's sake (e.g. Quake SGL), rather than quality's sake?

thecrankyhermit wrote:

I know I'd be very interested in playing MechWarrior 2 this way. I've long considered the 3DFX version the definitive 3D acceler […]
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1The games people will be most interested in playing with the SGL wrapper will be Mechwarrior 2, Resident Evil and Cybertroopers (in my opinion).

I know I'd be very interested in playing MechWarrior 2 this way. I've long considered the 3DFX version the definitive 3D accelerated version (Titanium Trilogy in Direct3D is crap), and only recently learned that the PowerVR version is even better.

What about Resident Evil and Cybertroopers, though? Is there a big (or any) difference between Resident Evil in SGL and emulating the PS1 version? Or Cybertroopers SGL and emulating it in MAME, or the Saturn version?

I'm also curious about Panzer Dragoon on an NV1 - is that really better than software rendering, or on a Saturn?

Or are those mainly games you'd play on legacy hardware for novelty's sake (e.g. Quake SGL), rather than quality's sake?

I think in Resi you get some higher quality graphics, the game is uncensored, and there's an item exclusive to the PC version.

Small update. As I said before polygon z-depth issue is now fixed in Biohazard. It's sadly quite dirty fix, but works on most SGL applications and games so it doesn't matter that much for now. There are still texture glitches because there is no perspective correction taken into account. After fixing this issue I can make better solution for z-depth issue. So you can see Biohazard in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixqj81AprKU

Also this are two, fresh Virtual On raw screenshots, as you can see texturing is MUCH better than in the old video and closer to the original:

To make a visual diff just watch the old video. Still there is a major perspective issue, but first I need to improve DirectDraw wrapper. This will also make my ATI3DCIF and MSI wrapper working for all games. And of course there will be possibility to run Virtual On with better resolution and multisampling enabled which is already implemented in wrapper, but requires OpenGL 1.3 compatible GPU for now.

I love you, hope you succse,good luck

Tuxality wrote:

Small update.

You mean AWESOME update - good job!

Tuxality wrote:

This will also make my ATI3DCIF and MSI wrapper working for all games.

We do not have the MSI SDKs (DOS/Windows), do you have them? Or are you reversing straight from the chip docs and the games themselves? If you do have the MSI SDKs, please let me know 😀

Unfortunately I can't find the SDK. I've already contacted Matrox with information where it was on their site in the past, but they answered after two weeks and informed me that they are not interested in supporting such old products and I can only look on their site if I can find something that will be useful for me. As you can guess, there were only drivers for old GPUs... So, I was reverse engineering MSI95.DLL and of course demos of games which supports MSI to make this simple wrapper. It's not my top priority to get this fully working because there are no that much games to play around, but it might be done in the future just to have wrappers for most APIs. 😀

Tuxality wrote:

Unfortunately I can't find the SDK. I've already contacted Matrox with information where it was on their site in the past, but they answered after two weeks and informed me that they are not interested in supporting such old products and I can only look on their site if I can find something that will be useful for me. As you can guess, there were only drivers for old GPUs... So, I was reverse engineering MSI95.DLL and of course demos of games which supports MSI to make this simple wrapper. It's not my top priority to get this fully working because there are no that much games to play around, but it might be done in the future just to have wrappers for most APIs. 😀

Okay, I was wondering - still trying to track them down myself. What's really annoying is that we know the filenames of the SDK distributables for Windows and for DOS.

Someone ping me in private message looking for Matrox Simple Interface SDK. I will look it up in my archived CDs and get back.
I had a HDD crashed once, which caused me some work and data lost. I hope they are still there if we are lucky...

Those are the filename for Matrox SDKs used to be on Matrox developers relations portal.
The filenames were:
msi95110.zip - http://www.matrox.com/mga/dev_relati...s/msi95110.zip
msid106.zip -
http://www.matrox.com/mga/dev_relati...es/msid106.zip

MSI95110.zip - Win9x MSI SDK
MSID106.zip - 32-bit Watcom DOS4GW SDK

Try your luck with ftp/file search 1st while I look into my archives.

kjliew wrote:

MSI95110.zip - Win9x MSI SDK
MSID106.zip - 32-bit Watcom DOS4GW SDK

Try your luck with ftp/file search 1st while I look into my archives.

Yeah, I did that a while back and couldn't find anything. I _think_ I checked around FTP sites too, though I could be wrong.

Been looking off and on for a while. DosFreak was kind enough to forward my request to murc.ws a while ago, which also mentioned my looking on the old Matrox forums too. In both cases we've been left with the same sort of answers as Tuxality.
http://www.murc.ws/showthread.php?72893-Looki … e-Interface-SDK

I hope you find it, kjliew...

Look like it is our lucky day.
Yes, I found them.
Attached.

Enjoy! 😊

OMG! MIND BLOWN!

This is why I love this forum so much... Not the first time "impossible" and "thought lost forever" files have shown up again!

Thanks kjliew! 😁

Tuxality wrote:

Also this are two, fresh Virtual On raw screenshots, as you can see texturing is MUCH better than in the old video and closer to the original:

To make a visual diff just watch the old video. Still there is a major perspective issue, but first I need to improve DirectDraw wrapper. This will also make my ATI3DCIF and MSI wrapper working for all games. And of course there will be possibility to run Virtual On with better resolution and multisampling enabled which is already implemented in wrapper, but requires OpenGL 1.3 compatible GPU for now.

Entirely agree. The textures looks very much the same as on the original hardware. good job!

Virtual On is kinda of the game that needs a wrapper the most (Mechwarrior 2 the second), as it doesnt work on Neon250 and a PCX2 can't run it at high FPS all the time (especially with the "smooth animation" option turned on). A wrapper which allows Virtual On to run at higher resolutions at no slowdowns will be the quite the kickass version to play, maybe you can get it running at 60 FPS as well so it can compete with the arcade version? (Game is limited to 30fps in the PowerVR version)

If you want play von@1080p60fps use m2emulator but that's Another story

I wish play RE/BIO PowerVR edition on moden PC 😊

I know you can use the Sega Model 2 emulators for the arcade version, but the PC version offers a bit more configuration options and it has native support for both the Saturn and PC dual joystick that was shipped with the game.

Vetz, can you provide more information about behavior of Virtual On on Neon250? And about framerate in PowerVR version I have an idea, but I don't know if this will work. So generally there is a light for this, but I don't promise anything.

Kjliew, nice find! Thanks, it will be useful! 😀

Tuxality wrote:

Vetz, can you provide more information about behavior of Virtual On on Neon250? And about framerate in PowerVR version I have an idea, but I don't know if this will work. So generally there is a light for this, but I don't promise anything.

It crashes to desktop, no error message or anything. The game just flickers for a microsecond after being started then quits.

The framerate thing was more a dreamwish, I know it can be hard to pull off 😀

vetz wrote:

OMG! MIND BLOWN!

This is why I love this forum so much... Not the first time "impossible" and "thought lost forever" files have shown up again!

Thanks kjliew! 😁

You just stole the words out of my mouth!

Thanks again kjliew!

Mirrored on VOGONSDrivers:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=794
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=795

Your interest in early 3D APIs is greatly evident. Who knows what other goodies you have squirreled away! 😁

Assuming you're the same person, you've authored a good number of oldskool utilities and such over the years. Do you have a website or blog?
Just from the top of my head is MGATweak and I think you made one of those upscaling filters (EAGLE or something similar) or was that someone else?