If you want to catalog early, non-accelerated hi-res (640x480 and above) texture-mapped 3D games, you should look for flight sims; titles like Jane's US Navy Fighters (it's even older than Jane's ATF), Jane's Longbow, F-22 Lightning II, Top Gun: Fire At Will, Hind, Back To Baghdad, and Flight Unlimited. Apache Longbow (not to be confused with Jane's Longbow) also preceded Quake, though the game's textures are sparse. There is also a WWI flight sim named Dawn Patrol which has beautiful 640x400 texture-mapped 3D graphics, which also came before Quake.

Regarding other genres, I think Screamer Racing is also older than Quake, and it sports 640x480 texture-mapped 3D graphics. I remember playing it together with friends in 1996, but we usually used 320x200 resolution to keep the game from become choppy.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0 is probably the oldest of hi-res texture-mapped 3D games; it was released in 1993 and it supports 640x480 resolution! I mean, whoa.

The game has hi-res texture-mapped 3D graphics, and it was released in 1993.

Some of the pre-Quake, hi-res texture mapped 3D games got 3D acceleration patch later, like LongbowFX which gives 3dfx acceleration to Jane's Longbow, and Front Line Fighters version of Hind, Apache Longbow, and iF-16. Most of them, however, didn't. Naturally, such games needs fast CPU, and since many of them are DOS games, they need the fastest DOS system one can build.

There is also TIE Fighter CD, which is 3D and hi-resolution (640x480), but it's not texture-mapped, so I guess it doesn't count. Strike Commander, Pacific Strike, and Fleet Defender all have texture-mapped 3D, but they're all low-res (320x200).

What's not mentioned is how affine they are. Warping everywhere. It wasn't until Quake that perspective correction (and speed!) were really emphasized.

Wing Commander III had SVGA texture mapped 3d in 1994, and very common performance complaints 😀

leileilol wrote:

What's not mentioned is how affine they are. Warping everywhere.

The warping is annoyingly noticeable in Screamer, but it's not noticeable in, say, F-22 Lightning II. But of course, the latter is very choppy even on Pentium 100.

It's quite interesting, by the way, to note the developer's attempt to optimize SVGA texture-mapped 3D games back then. Top Gun: Fire At Will has 640x480 resolution, but the ground textures are grouped together in large clumps that it looks more like 320x200 than anything (fixable by hi-res texture patch). Dawn Patrol has 640x400 instead of 640x480, and F-22 Lightning II has exotic resolutions between VGA and SVGA --things like 320x400 and such. Of course, the most common way is reducing textures, and it's what Jane's Combat Sims did.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Top Gun: Fire At Will has 640x480 resolution, but the ground textures are grouped together in large clumps that it looks more like 320x200 than anything (fixable by hi-res texture patch).

Not sure a patch is needed unless this feature was introduced with a game update patch... from the Top Gun Fire At Will notes:

Q: Is there any way to make the ground terrain look better?

A: Try the SUPERHI option. Type "TOPGUN SUPERHI" at the DOS prompt, and the ground terrain will be rendered in single-pixel resolution. Be sure, however, to set the Terrain Detail setting in the Graphics menu to Medium. The SUPERHI option will significantly decrease your frame rate. If you have Top Gun version 1.0, make sure you always start with Disc 1 in the CD-ROM drive when you use the SUPERHI option.

Xenphor wrote:

I'm thinking of games that would be out around the same time as the early consoles that also did 3D, like the 3do, psx, or saturn. So the time period would be approximately 93-96. I would like to compare some of these early console 3D games to early PC 3D games.

As far as I can tell, the PC did not have that many stand out early 3D titles. In fact, many of them seem to be ports from consoles such as the Saturn (Tomb Raider), PSX, and n64. Many of the early 3D titles exclusive to the PC were not actually 3D, but 2.5D (Doom as an obvious example).

So my question is, what are some below-average to great PC titles that were actually true 3D and not something like Doom?

I think you might find this post interesting 3D accelerated games list (non 3dfx/D3D/OGL)

Magic Carpet does 640x480 too, but needs a fast Pentium to be enjoyable in that mode.

Sticking with the FPS theme, Midwinter has filled 3D and even vehicles. In 1989!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwinter

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

Not sure a patch is needed unless this feature was introduced with a game update patch... from the Top Gun Fire At Will notes: […]
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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Top Gun: Fire At Will has 640x480 resolution, but the ground textures are grouped together in large clumps that it looks more like 320x200 than anything (fixable by hi-res texture patch).

Not sure a patch is needed unless this feature was introduced with a game update patch... from the Top Gun Fire At Will notes:

Q: Is there any way to make the ground terrain look better?

A: Try the SUPERHI option. Type "TOPGUN SUPERHI" at the DOS prompt, and the ground terrain will be rendered in single-pixel resolution. Be sure, however, to set the Terrain Detail setting in the Graphics menu to Medium. The SUPERHI option will significantly decrease your frame rate. If you have Top Gun version 1.0, make sure you always start with Disc 1 in the CD-ROM drive when you use the SUPERHI option.

Ah, you're correct. Top Gun SUPERHI is available even before patch. I remember keeping a Top Gun patch somewhere among my CDs, but can't remember what exactly does it do.

MicroProse Formula One Grand Prix from 1992 also had a very nice 3d engine for its day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_O ... ideo_game)
It's amazing that it was basically developed by a single person, Geoff Crammond. His work was groundbreaking in terms of simulation in games. He had quite advanced simulation of the car's physics, including things like tyre grip/wear levels, and allowing you to tune your car in various ways, with downforce, damper stiffness, ride height etc.
It has texturing, but only in the PC version, and only on select objects (mainly the tarmac and grass).
https://youtu.be/ZD_eugqNrOM

If you're mentioning F1, Accolade made the (pretty poor) F1 game Grand Prix Unlimited. Also worth checking out is Car & Driver by Looking Glass Studios (who did Flight Unlimited), with SVGA mode 3D.

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

If you're mentioning F1, Accolade made the (pretty poor) F1 game Grand Prix Unlimited.

I have a soft spot for it since it's my first ever PC racing game (I got Stunt Driver AFTER GPU). The track designer was pretty cool. Also, my kit came with some weird mouse-steering wheel I still have somewhere. Reading Scali's post caused me to get the intro music stuck in my head, despite him not talking about GPU actually. 😉

bjt wrote:

Magic Carpet does 640x480 too, but needs a fast Pentium to be enjoyable in that mode.

I didn't mention that because it's still 2.5d. (even though it could do 640x480x16 anaglyph 3d in '94)

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

If you want to catalog early, non-accelerated hi-res (640x480 and above) texture-mapped 3D games

According to the title message any polygon true 3D fits, wich is not 2.5D and was issued befor Quake. Especially games wich were released on PC, but not consoles.

There is also TIE Fighter CD, which is 3D and hi-resolution (640x480), but it's not texture-mapped

As I remember there were textures on polygons in TIE Fighter.

Stiletto wrote:

Reading Scali's post caused me to get the intro music stuck in my head, despite him not talking about GPU actually. 😉

I don't know Grand Prix Unlimited, but I do know the earlier Grand Prix Circuit by Accolade.
And I got that awesome C64 soundtrack in my head when I read that 😀
https://youtu.be/c_4vb8v4Et0

Also, MicroProse came out with Grand Prix 2 in 1996, which is a fully textured software rendered 3d game, which can also run in SVGA resolutions if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps worth a mention here as well, even though I think Quake was released a few months before that.