STB Nitro 3D (Virge GX) on PCI.

Wasn't there a post here somewhere that a tool exists that patches apps for the later Virge models?

TV works fine on a DX using the S3d toolkit patcher that I uploaded here. It should work with other models too, including GX.
Unfortunately the file is no longer available where I uploaded it, and I'm away from home to upload it again.

Oh that sounds useful. You should definitely upload that when you get a chance, Unmei220. 😀

TV works fine on a DX using the S3d toolkit patcher that I uploaded here. It should work with other models too, including GX.

That link you posted to the other thread and this one has me really curious about Virge history. I know it wasn't a great chip, but still curious. This thread is about S3 Virge games. What chips does this refer to?

325 / DX / GX / GX2 / VX all appear to be part of the same family before the Savage3D. Is this the right idea? Are we referring to games that only fit into that line of chips?

Is Savage3D, Trio64, Trio3d, and such considered a type of "Virge" that these games can use or are they way after? In the topic it says S3D. Is that another?

EDO and SGRAM. I don't think I've seen any 325's with anything other than EDO, but I've seen some other chips like GX with sometimes EDO and sometimes SGRAM. One better than the other? The Diamonds always show up on ebay looking like EDO memory. That is, assuming just looking at it visually is how to tell. Longer rectangles I think are EDO and shorter square with more pins I think are SGRAM.

Heh heh sorry for the bombardment of questions. i'm just trying to get a better grasp of the chips and what S3 Games we are trying to narrow down on.

-bytes

S3D is what they named their 3D interface.

Yeah S3D is the proprietary 3D API for the Virge / Trio 3D chips.

It's the same idea as 3DFX Glide, Rendition's RRedline/Speedy3D, PowerVR SGL, etc.

The Savage chips use "S3 MeTaL" not S3D. AFAIK that was only used for some Unreal Engine games.

Ahh I didn't know there was anything else other than Glide, OpenGL, and the new D3D at that time. I suppose there may have been more too.

S3d Toolkit Patcher:
This utility is meant to let old S3d games compiled for the ViRGE chipset (such as TV and D2) work on the newer ViRGE DX/GX/GX2 chipsets. Once you've installed the files, put the S3DOSDRV (or wherever you told the setup to put the DOS files) directory in your path and type S3DRUN <progname>.

HERE or HERE.

Here are some links to S3 ViRGE patches:

Terminal Velocity: http://legacy.3drealms.com/tv/ (Scroll down to Downloads)
Mechwarrior 2 (thanks to swaaye): MechWarrior 2 | 3D card conversion files
GLQuake: http://www.gamefront.com/files/941667/s3quake_zip
Tomb Raider: https://www.patches-scrolls.com/dl.php?file=s3tomb.zip
Descent II: http://www.interplay.com/games/support.php?id=104 (doesn't work)
https://www.moddb.com/games/descent-2/downloa … scent-3-updates

And here is a link to downloads for the S3 (description is in Indonesian):
http://dmarton.tripod.com/download.html

heh heh. I found an old S3 virge for the Terminal Velocity patch. It ran on my old dos 6.22 machine. It started up and was officially decelerated. 🤣

But still cool to try out and see something so old and rare work.

IMO the Virge does fine with most of the S3D games. Terminal Velocity looks good and runs well enough. Virge has better quality than some other early chips.

The Virge DX and GX are pretty much as capable as Verite V1000 but the drivers are so horrible for D3D that the potential was wasted.

What is a 3D card before the Virge 325?

bytesaber wrote:

What is a 3D card before the Virge 325?

Negating the high-end workstation cards - 3DLabs' GameGLINT (based on a scaled down version of their GLINT 300SX workstation chip), Matrox Impression and Millennium/Mystique, NVIDIA NV1, Yamaha YGV612 - almost all have very basic/crude 3D feature support. The 300SX does dithered filtering (similar to the ViRGE) and stipple alpha (like the Millennium/Mystique)

I don't really have an appropriate system to run old cards like this. Any emulating of this old hardware exist? Can't say i'm really turning up much beyond typical DOSbox and SB16 emulation.

There is someone here starting on emulating Edge3d / NV1. There is also some working Voodoo emulation. Check the DOSBOX development forum.

Just a few corrections.
GameGLINT is based on 300TX.
Matrox Impression (those with Athena chip) and Millennium do not have any hardware texturing, you could add Imagine 2 then as well.
Mystique came out after Virge, but Rage before.

unmei220 wrote:

What I'm also looking for (is also ViRGE related) is the Brender Rendering Demo. The following i'm going to copy and paste from […]
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What I'm also looking for (is also ViRGE related) is the Brender Rendering Demo. The following i'm going to copy and paste from the now gone S3 Planet website, which will do better in explaining than I:

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1Brender Rendering Demo - [746k]
2This program is a demonstration of the ViRGE Brender driver, a 3D engine written by Argonaut software. It clearly shows the ViRGE is able to put around a couple of polys with a convincing frame rate!

The name of the file was virgedemo.zip, but I hardly doubt anyone will have it with that name...

In case anyone came across this old post and wondered if it was found:
http://dmarton.tripod.com/virgedemo.zip
I'll see about putting it on VogonsDrivers

GameGLINT was better known as the chip in Creative 3D Blaster VLB (the PCI card was a Rendition Verite 1000).

m1so wrote:

GameGLINT was better known as the chip in Creative 3D Blaster VLB (the PCI card was a Rendition Verite 1000).

Yeah, we know. Sorry, I bumped a two-year-old thread.