It would probably be better to write a Rendition->GL wrapper for the host OS then have passthrough support within DOSBox.

Problem is, is anyone even interested to start writing a wrapper? Glide wrappers only started existing because everyone and their dog wanted to play Zelda64 on UltraHLE which was Glide only. Had that support any other obscure API we'd see a flood of wrappers for those too 😜

I would if I knew how to code that kind of stuff 😒

Do you have any suggestions for learning how to code GL or DX ?

The problem is how did this stuff actually interface with the Rendition board. Glide is easy because (almost) every glide game/app loads glide2x.dll which accepts GLIDE commands input and outputs the result through the voodoo board. Replace the dll for something which uses opengl, dx, you_name_it and viola, the game doesn't even notice anything. If the Rendition commands are already included in the exe and the game interfaces directly with the card...then you need the hardware specs not the sdk 😀

Or the real hardware and a looooooooot of time 😀

Speedy3d was their API. There were some files for this included with the games and with windows drivers. Later on it changed to RRedline. The SDK has to document these. People were building demos for contests using the SDK stuff.
http://www.wave-report.com/archives/1996/96160501.htm

The Verite chips are not quite like other 3D chips. They run microcode I think, on an internal RISC processing core. They aren't as specialized as 3Dfx hardware.

You guys reminded me that I found some youtube vids of verite demos years ago. All I could find now tho was this one of Battle Arena Toshinden running on a V1000.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiPnujJUKcs
And this horrible Unreal on V2200 vid. Originally Epic said that Unreal would run on there but it doesn't work very well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHgGRCj4yhE

There really aren't very many Verite-only games though. And considering some of those are also Glide games....

I think both "NASCAR Racing" and "NASCAR Racing II" support these cards. I'm not 100% about the first one, because there were specific versions for some of the first 3D cards, but they were either shipped with the cards or the patches were available separately.

Yeah the game was shipped with the card, and it's Rebel Moon, not Red Moon (duh i was tired)... and it uses some dll to interface I believe. I'll have to install it again and look.

I tried out IndyCar Racing II a couple of years ago on a V1000 card. That is very impressive. There's anti-aliasing and it runs quite smoothly. Very nice image quality. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the best V1000 game.

vQuake also has anti-aliasing support. See my screencap slideshow. I think the gamma's off a bit but oh well. 😀

Games that support Verite APIs (that I know of):

• Quake (vQuake)
  Quake II (vQuake2)
  Hexen II (vHexen2)
  Rebel Moon
  Indycar Racing II
  Nascar Racing II
  Tomb Raider
  EF2000 TactCom
  Descent II
  Whiplash
  VR Soccer
  Scorched Planet
  Myth series
  Grand Prix Legends

SODA Off-Road Racing supported it too, another Papyrus game.

I've never heard of vHexen2 or vQuake2 ports, most likely they're just specialized minigl wrappers for Verite cards instead of dedicated ports like vquake.

No they both use RRedline. The readme files say just that. Both are available here.
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Fortress … 6191/files.html

V2x00 apparently normally runs Quake 2 with some form of MiniGL, but V1000 must use VQuake2. V1000 is really only good at Speedy3D/RRedline. V2x00 is a lot faster of course, especially for D3D/OpenGL, and is fully backwards compatible with the proprietary APIs.
http://www.quake2.com/glquake2/verite.html

OpenGL with even the V2x00 is not usually pretty. One of the biggest limitations is their inability to do per-pixel mip mapping. It's done per-poly. With Half Life, for ex, this causes really ugly texture pop-in as the mip maps change detail level. Their D3D isn't super amazing either (see Unreal). It is ok for games from 1997 and earlier, say. Jedi Knight is fine for ex. They released multiple betas, all of which are buggy, and ended development with a beta of a rewrite of the driver. Heh.

Rendition reference drivers aren't entirely functional. Back then the chip manufacturers would recommend you stick with card maker's drivers. But it's the only way to get access to later driver releases. Unfortunately features like setting refresh rate don't work well with the ref drivers. I resorted to Powerstrip usually.

here's my Rendition software archive. SDKs, all of the drivers, and various other hard to find stuff.
http://rapidshare.com/files/286379200/Rendition_files.zip

Kewlio, thanks a bunch. I'll prolly find one of these cards at pc recycle.

Also, I believe there was version of MechWarrior II for rendition.

Seems like there was a special version of MW2 for every single different early 3D accelerator 🤣.

No MW2 for Verite. I'm not sure why....
http://www.geocities.com/k_lupinsky/index.htm

Of course, the later D3D version probably works fine on V2x00.

Maybe he's not referring to the regular "Mechwarrior 2", but to "Mechwarriors 2: Mercenaries". Back in the day it was all over the place, it looked like there was no other game to bundle with the cards.

You're right. MW2 Mercs has Glide and RRedline support, along with D3D.

here's some info about MW2 and Rendition
http://www.geocities.com/k_lupinsky/FAQ.htm

V. Did Activision ever make Rendition or nVidia specific versions of MechWarrior 2? Rendition: […]
Show full quote

V. Did Activision ever make Rendition or nVidia specific versions of MechWarrior 2?
Rendition:

As far as the original 3D Enhanced versions go, the answer is - no -, there was no "VMechWarrior 2."

Rendition Verite (V1000) based cards* were released just before the original Voodoo Graphics cards came out and were a pretty good 3D performers [for a 2D/3D board], though not up to the Voodoo level. Some probable reasons for the lack of a Rendition port of MW2:

1) Rendition had a hardware accelerated version of Quake ("VQuake") to include with their new cards, something no one else could claim ( not even 3Dfx**). Quake was a huge hit among gamers and if you wanted a cool 3D version, the only option at the time wasyou had to have

2) The card/chipset makers paid good money for these specific 3D ports of games and were only willing to put so much money into their software bundles. Rendition had choosen the path of Quake as their big name investment and didn't want to pay for a MW2 port.

3) Lastly, all the PC 3D Enhanced versions of MechWarrior 2 were made for Win95 based native 3D API 's, to ensure acceptable performance (early D3D performance being questionable at best, especially w/ early Verite drivers). The problem? Surprisingly, Rendition did not have a Win95 3D API ready at the time! (One notes their choice, VQuake was DOS based). You were basically left with programing for the DOS "Speedy3D" API and as mentioned above, these were only Win95 3D ports and with that the V1000's fate was sealed for this game. Of course if Rendition/Sierra/Creative, etc. paid a huge amount of money to Activision, I'm sure they could have accommodated them with a DOS Speedy 3D port. (A version that would have been nice to see @ 640x480 with anti-aliasing). Rendition's Win95 Native 3D API "RRedline" was not released until the Spring of 1997, by which time Activision had moved on and already started preliminary work on what would become the Titanium Edition.

The MW2 Titanium editions, released in the Spring of 1998, did finally offer some level of RRedline support, though I never could find any details, aside from Activision's basic information stating that it supports RRedline and finding a "zredline.dll" file in the plugin folder.

* For the record, the main video boards using the Rendition V1000 were the Sierra Screamin' 3D, The Intergraph Reactor 3D (later renamed the Intense 3D 100), Creative Labs 3D Blaster PCI and the Canopus Total3D.

** GLQuake was not out until early 1997 and Mr. Carmack himself has stated (in Boot magazine and elsewhere) that it was *not* made for 3Dfx, but for his work station, but it turned out that the Voodoo cards where the only consumer level boards available [at the time] that were able to run GLQuake at an exceptable level.

swaaye wrote:

here's my Rendition software archive. SDKs, all of the drivers, and various other hard to find stuff.
http://rapidshare.com/files/286379200/Rendition_files.zip

Interested in the SDKs. Is it possible for a re-upload of this archive?