The Serpent Rider wrote:And the most expensive* and sought after cards are Voodoo 4 and 5, which can do next things: […]
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People is spending big money on old Voodoo cards
And the most expensive* and sought after cards are Voodoo 4 and 5, which can do next things:
1. Forced 32-bit color in Glide aps.
2. Full scene anti-aliasing.
3. Better mipmapping and filtering.
4. Crisp VGA image quality and even optional DVI.
So in many ways they're already work similar to an emulator.
Well i guess the same could be said about DOS Games, arcade boards, retro consoles...
Most people do not collect arcade boards. DOS emulation is still not ideal (especially sound), as well as emulation of various consoles. So there are still valid reasons to use original software and hardware outside of "muh authentics".
Compared to these examples, Glide emulation is on very good level right now and even win9x friendly.
*As far as it goes for consumer grade cards anyway.
Voodoo 4-5 are more expensive because they can be run exactly as if they were Voodoo 1-3 (Glide, 16-bit, etc), but faster, are more rare, and the last of the Voodoos. Not because they play games with some GeForce features but worst. Nobody buys them to play games with the highest quality because there are cards much cheaper that can do it much better and much faster.
I actually own a Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3, and Voodoo 5. The only one i use in a system is the Voodoo 3 to play Glide games because of this reasons. The other two are just in my collection and i love to have them.
I do collect arcade boards, and actually there are much more movement on arcade boards than in retro-PC, also there are a lot of FPGA recreations of many arcade games. Just look outside of Vogons and behold 😊
In my opinion Dos-emulation is very good, Dosbox SBPro emulation is awesome, and PCem sounds wonderfully. There are so many creative SB variants that you could consider these emulator's sound just as another variant, they sound about the same as a SB, but not exactly the same, just like a SB CT1740 to a SB CT2950. Glide wrappers and emulators are also in good shape, buy anyway that is not the point here as playing the games in its original hardware, or using a retro computer as it came out of the factory is a very different experience that has nothing to do with emulation in many ways. Only FPGA recreation is so close you cannot tell the difference in practical usage.
I would not play, for example, Need For Speed II SE with a Glide wrapper in a LCD screen on my Ryzen 5, and i tried, it looks horrendous to me and the feeling is just not right. I prefer turning on my Voodoo 3 powered Pentium III, and enjoy the game in my 22" Lacie ElectronBlue IV CRT. But i respect people playing with wrappers or emulators, i do it for some systems that has less interest or no nostalgia component to me.
People would pay a pretty penny for a Voodoo card fpga recreation, while i think almost nobody here would pay for a Glide Wrapper. That must be for something 😉
junglemontana wrote:
But are the software/API specifications (that we already have) enough to create a drop-in replacement for an actual Voodoo graphics card that would be compatible with the original drivers and libraries?
Creating a Voodoo-like card that can do glide and stuff might be a little easier but then you would also have to write your own drivers?
An FPGA Voodoo recreation would just be a drop-in replacement. There is no need to make custom or special drivers for it, the existing drivers would just work. The only software side of the card is the BIOS, i do not think it can be just bundled with the card in a flash memory, for legal reasons, but an FPGA recreation might have an SD card slot so you can put your own bios on it.
Cheers!