If you include FPGA based solutions then this is the current state of the art. Using a custom interface that's as fast as the author knew how to make instead of emulating an existing one, giving you Quake 1 at 30 fps. Still a long way to go to reach GF2 territory.

Today's CPUs ain't got the juice to emulate a Geforce2, and so a FPGA can't either

PCem and others already emulate 3dfx cards, don't they?

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-13, 02:20:

PCem and others already emulate 3dfx cards, don't they?

I thought the GLide wrappers were more of a "real-time translation" rather than true "hardware emulation through software".

douglar wrote on 2024-05-13, 02:52:

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-13, 02:20:

PCem and others already emulate 3dfx cards, don't they?

I thought the GLide wrappers were more of a "real-time translation" rather than true "hardware emulation through software".

That makes sense.

How's MAME's performance these days? Iirc they do everything, save for scaling the final image through OpenGL, in software, and I think they have a couple 3DFX-based boards too. I see that a Hydro Thunder ROM exists, but didn't find a single videos of this version running on YT so I don't think it's anywhere near playable? And of course that would assume you're able to somehow shove an entire modern PC inside your retro one, and ignores everything related to interfacing (to magick the necessary state from the "CPU machine" into the "SDR-GPU" one), i.e. it's an extremely naive best case scenario.

Ya I have used PCEM. I was just curious if there was any new retro hardware on that level. I kinda thought that speed might be an issue to create something like that, but they are 20-25 year old gpus so thought we might have a solution.

Instead of emulating a Voodoo, would it be more feasible to create a novel GPU that acts like one instead? Basically, something new that provides compatibility and glide support.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-05-13, 17:43:

Instead of emulating a Voodoo, would it be more feasible to create a novel GPU that acts like one instead? Basically, something new that provides compatibility and glide support.

That would be a great solution.
Technically the challenges would be solvable and you may even get licenses for the ancient patents that are required.
It would be a special design PCB, a specially designed chip and low quantities of everything. It would surprise me if you could keep the cost under €200/$200.

waterbeesje wrote on 2024-05-13, 21:11:

That would be a great solution. Technically the challenges would be solvable and you may even get licenses for the ancient paten […]
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Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-05-13, 17:43:

Instead of emulating a Voodoo, would it be more feasible to create a novel GPU that acts like one instead? Basically, something new that provides compatibility and glide support.

That would be a great solution.
Technically the challenges would be solvable and you may even get licenses for the ancient patents that are required.
It would be a special design PCB, a specially designed chip and low quantities of everything. It would surprise me if you could keep the cost under €200/$200.

Patents only last 20 years in the US and EU, so there's a chance there, but price per unit for the debugging cycles is going to sink you. Back in the day, 3dfx would make the hardware based on previous working designs and then they had the option of smoothing out any issues that show up later in the driver. Here, you are trying to fit new hardware a the driver, and that's a much more challenging task.