marxveix wrote on 2025-05-15, 10:14:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2025-05-15, 10:08:

marxveix wrote on 2025-05-15, 09:43:

Does it have fog? It has paletted textures for sure.

The graphics settings has a Fog option

I have seen rain, but no fog, maybe its because i have used ATi cards Rage Pro and Rage128 Pro.

I see only resolutions + use 8bit textures support and use triple buffer option.

Its not in the initial Config.exe. It is inside the Main Menu settings

In AI prompt sessions I've been seeing conflicting info about support for these features, do the GF3 Ti xxx and the GF4 Ti 4xxx cards have full support?
I've been seeing that the FX5200 and FX5500 don't have the full hardware and that the 8bit texture is instead done via software emulation and requires you to swap back and forth between different driver versions for different games and the results might not be perfect due to it being emulation. Also any cards that are more powerful than the FX5500 do not have any support at all e.g. the FX5800.

As far as I'm aware, there is support up to and including the FX series for both table fog and 8-bit paletted textures. Table fog has always been emulated on NVIDIA cards, spotty on ATI, and fully supported without emulation on 3dfx.

How do you know if table fog is getting emulated?

NVIDIA released a whitepaper demonstrating their use of vertex fog instead of table fog. Vertex fog is not as accurate as table fog, as mentioned specifically in the whitepaper.

https://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/ … v/docs/Fog2.pdf

The drivers also explicitly stated that it's emulated (vertex) table fog.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-05-23, 15:50:

NVIDIA released a whitepaper demonstrating their use of vertex fog instead of table fog. Vertex fog is not as accurate as table fog, as mentioned specifically in the whitepaper.

https://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/ … v/docs/Fog2.pdf

The drivers also explicitly stated that it's emulated (vertex) table fog.

This only applies to Nvidia cards released before the original GeForce. Relevant bit from the linked document, around page 10:

Nvidia wrote:

The RIVA 128, RIVA128ZX and the RIVA TNT all emulate table fog using vertex based fog. The GeForce 256 supports table fog in hardware.

They did leave the emulation option in the drivers though, not sure why. Possibly as a fallback/compatibility setting. Also, if you look at table fog comparison screenshots between Nvidia and 3DFX cards, the visuals are practically identical, save for the (unrelated) differences in 16-bit dithering.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-05-23, 15:50:

NVIDIA released a whitepaper demonstrating their use of vertex fog instead of table fog. Vertex fog is not as accurate as table fog, as mentioned specifically in the whitepaper.

https://developer.download.nvidia.com/assets/ … v/docs/Fog2.pdf

The drivers also explicitly stated that it's emulated (vertex) table fog.

Could it be that the option was placed as a temporary hold for the bugged hardware implementation? Table fog works and is supported in Hardware to date, but they mess up the vector coordinates due to which it becomes invisible. They haven't fixed it yet for some reason.

It kind of blows my mind that something as important to early graphics accelerators for both visuals and performance, such as fog, was neither consistent nor perfected as a staple feature across manufacturers. I also wish that 16-bit dithering was given better treatment by ATI; something that NVIDIA did very well, even as far back as the RIVA.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-05-27, 03:29:

It kind of blows my mind that something as important to early graphics accelerators for both visuals and performance, such as fog, was neither consistent nor perfected as a staple feature across manufacturers.

Starting with the original GeForce, Nvidia cards supported table fog in hardware. Matrox G400/G500 cards also had hardware support for table fog, per their respective datasheets.

As for ATi, I don't know what they used for table fog emulation, but it looks accurate on R300 and R400 cards when using Catalyst 7.11 and newer.

Support from ATI was very inconsistent for contemporary cards and their drivers. I also hate ATI's dithering, which only has options for ordered dithering or noise.

To be fair, all of this was new technology, and it was also ATI's introduction to 3D accelerators. They also had to keep pace with how fast technology was moving, and it wasn't always economical for them to put time into older chips, when they always needed to support whatever new features were coming out for the next series. I just feel that a lot of potential for some of these older chips were left on the table.