First post, by kaiser77_1982
- Rank
- Newbie
In the history of video games and graphics technology, Glide holds a prominent place as one of the great innovations in the graphics card industry. It was the first major proprietary API specifically designed to leverage the capabilities of 3dfx's Voodoo graphics cards. Glide was characterized by being a simple, fast, and efficient API for 3D graphics during the industry's boom and the onset of what we call the "Great Graphics Purge."
However, like many phenomena that rise rapidly, Glide fell just as quickly—almost like a rock star. Its golden period spanned from 1996 to 1998, followed by a decline at the end of 1999, and its end in 2000. Although some titles continued to use it until 2003, by 1998, it had ceased to be the standard.
Reasons for Its Fall
We can summarize the reasons for its decline into four main points:
- 3dfx's self-destruction: A topic we'll explore in another article due to its complexity.
- Exclusivity with 3dfx cards: This limited its reach and viability.
- The arrival of DirectX: An API that worked with any graphics card, backed by Microsoft—a company with an almost monopolistic hold on computer operating systems.
- Competition from Nvidia: While 3dfx offered superior quality, Nvidia began offering similar products at competitive prices, reaching a broader audience.
Glide's success depended directly on 3dfx's ability to dominate the market, ensuring developers worked exclusively with its API. Before 1998, there were no truly decent graphics cards for gaming. Matrox was focused on other sectors, S3 struggled with the limitations of the ViRGE, Rendition failed to take off, ATI was concentrating on other projects, and Nvidia was just starting to gain relevance with the Riva128 in the OEM market. If you wanted to game, you needed a Voodoo—period.
After 1998, everything changed. Nvidia launched the TNT and TNT2, which became direct competitors to 3dfx. ATI improved with the Rage 128, the Intel i740 emerged as a budget-friendly option, and S3 had its brief moment of glory with the Savage. With such fierce competition, maintaining leadership was almost impossible. 3dfx's only hope was to change the game with the Rampage, but failing to do so, Nvidia took the lead with the GeForce 256, supported by Microsoft.
Outside of hardware, the true deathblow for Glide was DirectX, an API that did not rely on specific hardware and was developed by Microsoft—a company with nearly unlimited resources. Understanding why DirectX was inevitably superior is as straightforward as analyzing the Eastern Front in World War II: Stalin always had more resources and men than Hitler. No matter what the latter deployed, Stalin always had more to counter it.
Microsoft invested massively in DirectX, even paying developers to create games compatible with their API, covering salaries and expenses for one or two years. This represented a huge cost saving for companies—something that 3dfx, a much smaller company, could never compete with. Even if the 3dfx merger with STB had been a success (a topic we'll tackle in another article), it would never have had the muscle to stand up to Microsoft.
In fact, even if 3dfx had succeeded in all its goals, it’s likely that Microsoft would have faced it head-on, as they did with Netscape or Sony in later years. This confrontation was hinted at in details like 3dfx's complete lack of support for Microsoft’s Talisman project.
The exclusive reliance on their own graphics cards was a burden for Glide due to its limitations, including:
- The inability to handle higher resolutions in later years.
- Lack of support for 32-bit color and advanced effects.
- The absence of shaders, which were essential for graphical development in the 2000s.
While Glide was revolutionary in its time and deserves recognition for its merits, it had no place in a future dominated by broader and more flexible standards. Glide was a product of its time—brilliant but fleeting. It leaves us a legacy of innovation, great games, and highly collectible artifacts, but also a lesson on how open standards and adaptability are key to surviving in the tech industry.
That’s all for now. Happy New Year, and thanks to read until here.
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I'm leaving you with a reflection on Glide and 3dfx. I would like to know your opinion.
PS. I have the original text in Spanish in my newsletter, if you see any mistake, let me know and I'll correct it.