Motoracer 1 Direct 3d on Windows 98 SE \ VOGONS

Motoracer 1 Direct 3d on Windows 98 SE

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First post, by flynth

Posted on 2022-12-31, 00:47

flynth Offline

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My Moto Racer 1 (EU edition) has a problem running with D3d on. When the race starts the game runs, but the graphics is broken (only sky and horizon perhaps are visible nothing else). Once I disable d3d it runs fine.

It is Windows 98 Se plus all the ms fixes from unofficial sp3, with DirectX 4. Hardware wise it is a slot1 P3 system with a geforce mx440 agp gpu. 3dmark99 happily runs overnight so I doubt it is any hardware issue.

I'm aware of many fixes to get this game to work on later versions of windows, but it should work on win98 out of the box. Does anyone have any ideas how to fix it?

Also, what is the difference between d3d and no d3d? Does it look better? Does it draw objects further away? Or is it just a matter of performance? Fps wise it is more than fast enough so perhaps it doesn't matter?

Reply 1 of 3, by Gmlb256

Posted on 2022-12-31, 17:35

Gmlb256 Offline

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If possible, try using an older nVidia driver that the GeForce4 MX 440 supports. Later ones have compatibility issues.

Another thing, did you deliberately stick to DirectX 4 (never released)? Even installing that unofficial service pack for Windows 98 (which I don't recommend) with all the official fixes by Microsoft should have updated it.

D3D means that is uses hardware acceleration for 3D rendering (fast) and no D3D is just software rendering which is done entirely by the CPU (usually slow). The latter doesn't necessarily look better, and it was for users that had video cards with crappy or no 3D hardware acceleration.

Reply 2 of 3, by Geri

Posted on 2023-01-01, 11:00

Geri Offline

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I recommend you to search for a cheap 4mb Virge DX or Trio3D to run Motoracer1.

If thats not available, you can try newer consumer cards, but not too much newer than a TNT1 or Rage Pro, as most of these old first gen 3d games will not function properly with newer video cards than their era.
You can also use directx9 or such, it is not going to break the compatibility with motoracer.

TitaniumGL the OpenGL to D3D wrapper:
http://users.atw.hu/titaniumgl/index.html