First post, by Nicht Sehr Gut
- Rank
- l33t
Looking for expertise on 3dfx/Glide emulation.
I've heard grand success stories with little-to-no-detail and numerous complete failures as well.
From the experimenting I've done, I've come to the conclusion that 3dfx/Glide emulation _can_ be done.
The keys seem to be carefully tracking what you're doing (what version of what file is going where and what would you need to do restore everything back the way it was) and starting from the bottom-of-the-barrel and working your way up.
Don't start with "Unreal Tournament" and expect a Glide wrapper to give you a GeForce4-level display.
Instead, start with the very earliest 3dfx demos and see if they work. The more primitive they are, the better. Once you are able to run numerous demos consistently, that's the time to start looking at more advanced emulation.
So far, my tests have not been consistent. One wrapper was half-broken on the old 3dfx racing demo (Racing demo with screen split in half. One side is software rendered, the other side is 3dfx enhanced). The software side was fine, the 3dfx side was blank.
But the same wrapper worked fine on the Egyptian room lighting demo (with the floating ankh).
A different wrapper ran the racing demo fine (both sides displayed), but turned the Egyptian room into nothing but shades of blue.
I managed to start "Driver" (the game) up and it ran without crashing, but was unplayable due to horribly distorted graphics.
Hopefully, a FAQ will grow out of this a make 3dfx emulation much easier.