I have updated the Vogons wiki EMBM page.

Right now, it's only listing the games for which Matrox claimed that they would have EMBM support. The full list was taken from their archived website. More games will be added if we can get proper confirmation of their EMBM use. Preferably with screenshots, documentation or reference links.

thx for that very helpfull wiki page...would be interesting to add other nice features like ..."games with s3tc texture support".

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-08-26, 07:37:

thx for that very helpfull wiki page...would be interesting to add other nice features like ..."games with s3tc texture support".

Do you mean games which have unique content that only works on S3TC capable cards? Or games which have S3TC support in general?

Because if it's the latter, pretty much every game started supporting it after Microsoft acquired the tech and turned it into DXTC. But if we're talking about S3TC exclusive content (like that texture pack for Unreal Tournament 99) I'm not sure how many games actually had something like that. I can't find any references, other than the aforementioned UT textures and the some Quake 3 demo maps.

seems that I am not up to date on this. So DXTC is (the successor of) S3TC ? What about compatibility? What "older" gfx-cards support DXTC ?
Was DXTC a part of DX6 ? So every card that supports DX6 does support DXTC? That would mean an i815e with 752-gfx chip could display hires-textures in DXTC format?
How are these DXTC hires-textures supported in games? e.g SOF1 what option stands for DXTC, there is an option for S3...

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-08-26, 10:07:

seems that I am not up to date on this. So DXTC is (the successor of) S3TC ? What about compatibility? What "older" gfx-cards support DXTC ?

That's what I gather from what I've read here and also here. The earliest non-S3 cards which supported it were ATI Radeon, Nvidia GeForce and 3DFX Voodoo 4.

Was DXTC a part of DX6 ? So every card that supports DX6 does support DXTC?

DXTC was introduced in DirectX 6, but that doesn't mean that every DX6 capable card supports it. This is similar to how EMBM was added in DX6, but it took years before other manufacturers supported it on their cards (especially Nvidia).

How are these DXTC hires-textures supported in games? e.g SOF1 what option stands for DXTC, there is an option for S3...

Basically, if your GPU supports DXTC, and the game uses either DX6 or OpenGL 1.3 (and higher) then it should be able to utilize it. For what purpose each game used DXTC was up to the individual developers of course. I'm guessing mostly for performance optimizations.

Thank you...now I am investigating all about the intel-igp 752 that is inside the intel-solano i815e chipset.
Seems to be a very nice retro-chip...I think I will perhaps open another thread for this.

Lisr of games

Battle Isle: The Andosia War
Battle Isle: The Andosia War
Battlezone II: Combat Commander
Battlezone II: Combat Commander
Carmageddon TDR 2000
Carmageddon TDR 2000
Carmageddon: The Death Race 2000
Carmageddon TDR 2000: The Nosebleed Pack
Carmageddon TDR 2000: The Nosebleed Pack
Carmageddon TDR 2000: The Nose Bleed Pack
Colin McRae Rally 2.0
Colin McRae Rally 2.0
Command & Conquer: Renegade
Command & Conquer: Renegade
Descent 3
Descent 3
Drakan: Order of the Flame
Drakan: Order of the Flame
Dungeon Keeper 2
Dungeon Keeper 2
Far Gate
Far Gate
The Rift
Freedom Fighters
Freedom Fighters
Fur Fighters
Fur Fighters
Меховые кулаки
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
Himan. Бесшумный убийца
Jugular Street Luge Racing
Jugular Street Luge Racing
Millennium Soldier: Expendable
Millennium Soldier: Expendable
Возмещение ущерба
Rollcage Stage II
Rollcage Stage II
Death Track Racing
Slave Zero
Slave Zero
Speed Busters: American Highways
Speed Busters: American Highways
Speed Busters
Spirit of Speed 1937
Spirit of Speed 1937
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Thief III. Тень смерти
Wild Metal Country
Wild Metal Country
Дальнобойщики 2
Дальнобойщики 2
Hard Truck 2
Дальнобойщики 2: Издание 2-е
Дальнобойщики 2: Издание 2-е
King of the Road
Шторм
Шторм
Echelon

Does anyone know if what TR4 uses is considered EMBM?

squeeb wrote on 2024-03-22, 03:03:

Does anyone know if what TR4 uses is considered EMBM?

The best way to confirm that is to check if the setting is available on a Matrox G400, but becomes grayed out on something like a GeForce 2, which doesn't support EMBM.

There are several types of bump mapping that were used by games during the late 90s and early 2000s. Unless the game specifically states in its documentation that it uses EMBM, or the aforementioned test confirms it, it should not be assumed that Bump Mapping = EMBM.

EMBM always fascinated me, probably because it feels more "unexplored" compared to other types of bump mapping.

As I understand it, the tech behind EMBM can essentially be described as "natively-provided perturbation/displacement of texture coordinates per-pixel". This sounds like a super-cool feature for the time, given that everything was done per-vertex back then. Unless I’m missing something here, it also seems to me that Environment Mapped Bump Mapping represents only a subset of the possible applications of the tech itself. You could probably even use it in tandem with render-to-texture.

Btw, does anyone know if the EMBM tech can be used with dual-paraboloid environment maps?

Hornet13 wrote on 2024-04-26, 16:58:

…
As I understand it, the tech behind EMBM can essentially be described as "natively-provided perturbation/displacement of texture coordinates per-pixel". This sounds like a super-cool feature for the time, given that everything was done per-vertex back then. Unless I’m missing something here, it also seems to me that Environment Mapped Bump Mapping represents only a subset of the possible applications of the tech itself. You could probably even use it in tandem with render-to-texture.
…

I mean, Bump Mapping (not counting Emboss) was always per-pixel, not just EMBM. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you? It is true that EMBM was the first PC video card hardware implementation of per-pixel Bump Mapping of some sort (Dreamcast technically used its own Normal Mapping method in hardware in late ‘98), but even software-rendered takes on it like Trespasser (1998) did it per-pixel too (albeit with normal maps of very low precision, like 4 bits for Z and 6-bits for X/Y when doing a light vector check). EMBM is, however, more of a shortcut than a “true” Bump Mapping function; it doesn’t figure out the partial derivatives/light vector direction 3-dimensionally for each pixel like with Bump/Normal Mapping, it instead perturbs/distorts an environment map using a 2-dimensional (Cartesian) lookup in a height-map/height-field.