Meatball wrote on 2023-08-27, 15:31:

The Wheel of Time Retail CD w/v333 patch applied:

Looking good! But do test Direct3D with a different card as well, just to be safe. As mentioned before, developers often put warnings in readme files to not use Direct3D and OpenGL on 3DFX cards when Glide was natively supported. And yeah, check the .INI file to see if Detail Textures can be turned on for Direct3D.

I want to check the game on a 5900XT for Direct3D to see if it's a Voodoo5 issue (forgive my lack of technical wording), but there's this weird, I don't know, it appears as some kind of "lighting box" where textures get progressively blurrier on Direct3D. There are multiple boxes, and they are obnoxiously noticeable especially when looking downward. Still images don't capture as well, but you will notice them while moving. Take a look at the Direct3D cave shot, and you'll see one of them at the second blood spatter on the ground. Glide also has at least one of these boxes, but it blends into the scene better.

I noticed something similar in Messiah. Under Direct3D, objects got blurrier the more distant they were from the player. I even tried forcing 8x Anisotropic Filtering on my 5900XT but that didn't help. With Glide, this never occurs, and distant objects are always sharp.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-27, 15:57:

Meatball wrote on 2023-08-27, 15:31:

The Wheel of Time Retail CD w/v333 patch applied:

Looking good! But do test Direct3D with a different card as well, just to be safe. As mentioned before, developers often put warnings in readme files to not use Direct3D and OpenGL on 3DFX cards when Glide was natively supported. And yeah, check the .INI file to see if Detail Textures can be turned on for Direct3D.

I think you misread; I wrote OpenGL. Direct3D definitely has highest detail textures enabled. Just now for OpenGL, I checked the WoT.ini file for 'UseDetailTextures=True.' This line is missing in OpenGL but present for Direct3D and Glide. When I copied the line over to OpenGL, the game crashed on startup. The OpenGL area is quite sparsely populated compared to Direct3D and Glide; being experimental and all it's not unexpected, of course.

I'll definitely check on the GeForce card, too, for all you've mentioned.

auron wrote on 2023-08-27, 15:43:

is there anything in the .ini that can be forced for the D3D renderer? particularily, it looks like detail textures are off by default, but at least in UT99 they can be forced on.

Detail Textures are on for Direct3D, and they can be activated from the standard menu. Only OpenGL could not activate them from the standard menu (or from the ini, which results in crash on startup).

Here is some testing for the 'The Wheel of Time' with a Radeon 9600 XT on Windows ME. I reset the WoT.ini file, and then made sure it matched previous settings. A 32-bit texture option is now available, but only in the WoT.ini file. The game starts up in 32-bit color, also. The Radeon still has that light box issue, though.

Also, I tested 32-bit settings to see if they'd work on the Voodoo5 by modifying the WoT.ini Glide section with ColorDepth=32 and Use32BitTextures=True. The settings won't take if you start up the game normally, but if you start up the game each time by selecting the Glide Renderer, they stick. However, if you modify resolution settings in the standard menu, it flips back to 16-bit. I did not force 32-bit rendering in 3dfx Tools. I validated by setting the CRT to 75Hz on 16bit 1024x768 and 100Hz on 32-bit 1024x768. I can't prove anything other than it didn't drop down into the 75Hz setting for 16-bit. Compared to the Radeon which looks less washed out, it doesn't seem 32-bit colors/textures did much of anything, however, on the Voodoo5.

As for the 5900XT, I'm in process of testing, and Direct3D is doing a lot better here. The box is practically gone in the open world; caves still have a problem; trilinear filtering (available in the advanced options as off by default) is looking good, now. Textures are looking more consistent near and far. I'm checking one other area and it's the fog inside the ruins beginning what I'll call "level 2." The banding is atrocious. I'm going to check if this occurs on a Voodoo5 like it is occurring on the 5900XT. I'll post those photos in the next reply.

Perhaps the game can be moved into the "if you have the right card, it's going to look good category" heh. It's a toss-up now, but for me I'd pick Direct3D just for the texture consistency and trilinear filtering, but I wouldn't be sad if I had to play using Glide.

i was about to say it's a texture LOD difference, as it's pretty clear the glide shots exhibit more texture detail far away, like on the ground on the other side of the pond, and that would fit with what you tried to describe as a "lighting box" (which would be mipmap banding). however, looking at this again, the ground texture right in front of the camera is actually quite a bit more detailed in D3D than it is in glide. could this game actually be using >256x256 textures in D3D, but somehow compensating for this by running a higher LOD bias?

there used to be an old site that had all the 3dfx driver settings explained, it may finally be down as i can't find it right now... the voodoo5 drivers definitely have the option to alter texture LOD bias, i forgot whether that's available for D3D as well though. if it is, setting a negative value there will increase texture quality at the cost of more shimmering.

auron wrote on 2023-08-27, 20:46:

i was about to say it's a texture LOD difference, as it's pretty clear the glide shots exhibit more texture detail far away, like on the ground on the other side of the pond, and that would fit with what you tried to describe as a "lighting box" (which would be mipmap banding). however, looking at this again, the ground texture right in front of the camera is actually quite a bit more detailed in D3D than it is in glide. could this game actually be using >256x256 textures in D3D, but somehow compensating for this by running a higher LOD bias?

there used to be an old site that had all the 3dfx driver settings explained, it may finally be down as i can't find it right now... the voodoo5 drivers definitely have the option to alter texture LOD bias, i forgot whether that's available for D3D as well though. if it is, setting a negative value there will increase texture quality at the cost of more shimmering.

Thanks for the details and helping me to understand what I'm looking at! Yes, you can change LOD for both Glide and Direct3D from 3dfx Tools. Did you want me to post some comparisons?

well, if you're inclined you could try to dial in a value that will make the D3D renderer display similar faraway texture detail as in glide and post another shot of that pond. apart from running SSAA negative LOD bias settings usually aren't useful, due to the shimmering they cause, but if a game deliberately lowers texture quality like that...

auron wrote on 2023-08-27, 20:57:

well, if you're inclined you could try to dial in a value that will make the D3D renderer display similar faraway texture detail as in glide and post another shot of that pond. apart from running SSAA negative LOD bias settings usually aren't useful, due to the shimmering they cause, but if a game deliberately lowers texture quality like that...

By default, the W0T.ini file has DetailBias=-1.500000 for Glide, but the entry is not present at all for Direct3D. Should I play around with this instead?

yes, that would explain the difference - so then it would be the other way around and they tried to compensate for the presumably lower quality textures in glide by running a negative LOD bias.

could this be a case of 8-bit paletted texture usage reducing the quality in glide?

Can anyone tell me what is "light box" issue meant? Google does not, and it refers to photography stuff.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-08-28, 00:05:

Can anyone tell me what is "light box" issue meant? Google does not, and it refers to photography stuff.

Cheers,

It's my own made-up filler term as I had no words to describe what I was seeing - auron described it more accurately as mipmap banding.

this old tom's article still illustrates it well: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ati,819-4.html

I'll post another update soon, I have a few more screenshots to review. I've now applied Direct3D Update 2 for v333b patch for 'The Wheel of Time.' I should have checked https://www.patches-scrolls.de/patch/4783/7/55581/download before digging up the old site at archive.org, https://web.archive.org/web/20010124055600fw_ … loads/main.html!

The patch claims to resolve some Direct3D performance issues. There is an updated D3DDrv.dll file, and the following settings are now listed in the Advanced Options/Preferences menu. Both options, from what I have read, when set to 'True,' address issues with polygon flickering/flashing and non-local AGP texture memory usage (which is normally an automatic fallback process), should they be experienced. The GeForce 256 is mentioned as having polygon flickering/tearing problems:

UseVideoMemoryVB=False
UseAGPTextures=False

The 5900XT suffers from the polygon flickering issues, even with the D3D patch applied. However, when I set the Voodoo5 in Direct3D it does not have this problem. Perhaps a Riva TNT2 may also be OK, if someone has one of these cards. There's a bigger issue I've seen now, and it's with the lightning. In Direct3D, you can see the seams of polygons all over the place (I couldn't capture it in the photos, but you'll see it when playing), and there's banding (Voodoo5 and 5900XT). On one occasion, I had rocks glitching out as if they we're being electrocuted. Pulling up the menu then going back in the game resolved it. Maybe a one off? Anyway, with Glide, lightning is smooth, realistically lighting the environment, and banding free. I've also (almost) solved the mipmap banding issue with Glide by setting the Alpha-Blending option within the 3dfx Tools to 'Smoother," which disables dither subtraction. If you really look for it, you can guesstimate where there's some banding happening, but there's no hard line anymore.

Glide is the way to play for me after further testing.

More Photos.

Final set of photos.

Meatball wrote on 2023-08-28, 04:59:

The 5900XT suffers from the polygon flickering issues, even with the D3D patch applied. However, when I set the Voodoo5 in Direct3D it does not have this problem. Perhaps a Riva TNT2 may also be OK, if someone has one of these cards.

Interesting findings. I'm not familiar with this game, but I might do a quick test on my TNT2 M64 for completeness sake.

BTW, while I appreciate the effort to show off as much detail as possible, maybe stick to 2 screenshots per post (or 4 in total if you're doing a direct comparison inside a single post)? We don't want to overwhelm the forum software with too many attachments. Also, a large number of screenshots makes the thread more difficult to parse.

Glide is the way to play for me after further testing.

Yeah, this looks like a definitive win for Glide.

Games tested:

• The Wheel of Time - retail CD release + latest official patch v333b + Direct3D update 2

Graphics cards tested:

• 3DFX Voodoo3 2000, using 3DFX reference drivers version 1.07.00 (Glide renderer)
• Nvidia TNT2 M64 using Nvidia reference drivers version 3.68 (Direct3D renderer)

Did a quick test of Wheel of Time with my TNT2 M64, just at the start of the game. I can confirm that the texture flickering under Direct3D occurs on that card as well, and that's with period correct 3.68 drivers. Also, as it was mentioned before, the lighting under Direct3D looks off.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-08-26, 11:45:

Ouch, that texture distortion looks pretty bad. If you can reproduce it on a non-Voodoo card, I think that would qualify Rayman 2 for "looks best in Glide".

Reproduced on an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400. Seems to affect many of the edges in that general area. Don't know if there are other such areas.

dr_st wrote on 2023-08-28, 09:09:

Reproduced on an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400. Seems to affect many of the edges in that general area. Don't know if there are other such areas.

Cheers!

Added Rayman 2 to the "looks best in Glide" list and linked to your screenshots.