Highly likely a driver issue. The 9800 pro will be fine. With the S3 it might be worth trying the version of glide2x.dll from the "Red Baron" page of the glidos web site. Put it in your Glidos folder, replacing the one you find there.

Replacing the Glide2x.dll file fixed the black water effect .😀 I had to turn mipmapping off as it was creating massive slowdown. But now im getting about a 3 sec delay when i hit esc to bring up the inventory screen but the game itself is very playable and looks great.

heh I think i'll hold off upgrading for a wee bit longer. Atleast until they get HL2 problems fixed.

Thanx again
Robbie

Great news! Glad that worked. The 3 sec delay thing is a bit mysterious and also happens with my X800XT, although not with my old GF3.

HL2 problems? I'm playing it on my X800XT and noticed no problems as yet. Are they specific to the 9800?

I just got an ATI Radeon 9600XT ($69 at Best Buy!), and I am also experiencing the 3-second delay on the menu ring.

I also get a lot of flickering when the display switches "modes" -- main menu to game, or to FMV.

I'm running in 1280x1024 (because that's the resolution of my LCD).

3 seconds!!!! You're lucky. I get much longer. Something odd about ATI cards. I get the same on my X800, but never did with my GF3.

Don't understand about switching modes. Surely your desktop mode is also 1280x1024.

Regardless of the screen res, Tomb Raider always appears to switch modes when going from FMVs to the title/game and back. It's more noticeable on my CRT as you actually hear it changing. It's always done that through Glidos.

Is that even with "VESASupport: Yes" configured under Windows XP?

Yes, my GLIDOS.INI has Vesa support set to YES, I'm running under XP, and I've always had the noticeable mode change from FMVs to game and back.

Hmmm, that's a bit odd. It must be TR1 accessing a VESA mode, although Glidos should be taking on all VESA commands.

I never even thought about it -- fairly sure I remember TR1 doing the same thing way back when and just assumed this was expected behaviour. Great if it should work even better than I remember -- but how to do so......?

Does the resolution matter? I run in 1600x1200....

Wouldn't be surprised if TR1 did it without Glidos, but with Glidos both Glide and VESA are taken over and displayed at the same resolution. 1600x1200 shoul be ok, so long as that is also your desktop resolution.

Aah... so that's it. I run my desktop at 1280x960 (need square pixels for design work).

I tried setting both the game and the desktop to 1280x1024. Some of the switching iis now gone -- between each of the FMVs at startup. But I still get to see the windows desktop briefly between each one (that has always happened), and I still get a noticeable mode switch from the last FMV to the main menu (I can hear the tube or relay or whatever it is making it's loud click noise).

Weird? Normal? Fixable? I've always lived with this assuming it's a limitation of DOS games on Windows, with or without Glidos. If there's a way of fixing it completely that would be most excellent!

Sorry to go off topic...

Infact, why does Glidos report all this at startup:

Starting Glide Server v1.29 (c) Paul Gardiner 2001-2004 VESA mode 0x101 VESA mode 0x101 VESA mode 0x110 Resolution = 640x480 Ref […]
Show full quote

Starting Glide Server v1.29 (c) Paul Gardiner 2001-2004
VESA mode 0x101
VESA mode 0x101
VESA mode 0x110
Resolution = 640x480
Refresh rate = 60Hz
Color format = ARGB
Number of color buffers = 2
Number of aux buffers = 1
VESA cmd 4F07, 0, 0, 0
GlideShutdown

I'm interested in the 60Hz 640x480 settings. Is this interfering somehow?

TR1 is running at 640x480, but Glidos scales the triangle coordinates to its own resolution. Not sure about the 60Hz; TR1 runs at 30Hz, but it tells the Glide driver 60Hz, I think.

Aah, so could the FMVs be running at 640x480? Is that why I hear modes switching? I don't understand all this wrapper malarkey...

Gambit37: In a word, yes. 😀

Well not with VESASupport turned on... or at least it shouldn't because Glidos still scales up. It grabs the VESA frame buffer, treats it as a texture, and uses Glide to draw a textured rectangle.

That's exactly what it does here on my GF3. If you take a screenshot of an FMV with VESASupport enabled, the capture is in the resolution you set in Glidos prefs (say, 1024x768). But as Gambit described, for some reason Glidos still tries to switch the res between two FMVs or an FMV and the ingame engine -- even if the res you set is the same one as your desktop. During that very fast switch attempt, you can see a glimpse of the desktop behind.

Guess the only way round it is to play in a window!