aT3D with Superbike game at 640x480 mostly high details. It's even impressive it's actually working and "without" gfx errors beside its "unique" rendering quality..

Continue.. even the driver was looking at that texture on the side.. 😁 😁

I suppose I'll increase the difficulty with games from 1999 but tomorrow. 😀

Fantastic work! I would have never expected that one could coax that thing into (almost) respectable rendering output.

DrAnthony wrote on 2024-04-14, 22:20:

Fantastic work! I would have never expected that one could coax that thing into (almost) respectable rendering output.

Some games still has problems and would need the lost newer drivers and I am trying to find new ways to use the few packages around but it is difficult for sure. Probably few games would get better. Of course 640x480 resolution is too high for this low end chip and 1998 games but I find that the frame/s increase really a lot with this architecture on lower res when possible.

Trying to run Unreal 1998 with 219 patch but D3D goes to black screen at fullscreen and there's a D3D surface busy error in the logs. I tried different resolutions and I suppose I'm asking too much for this driver and card.

Edit: no also UT demo doesn't start with D3D with some WinViewport error lines. The whole locked 640x480 resolution can sometimes be a boring limit while maybe in this case is something else.

Try lower resolution via preferences/ini.

I need to do more tests in Unreal; tried Unreal.ini 320x240 and 640x480. It looks like in software mode is ok but forcing Direct3D it is starting, looks almost there and clearly logs report the usage of D3D but those generic surface error are not promising and fails; the whole D3D 640x480 only resolution might be a side problem but doesn't even run also with that. I'll try other D3D patches maybe.
Meanwhile I ran few more games that looks good, while not as fast as others but anyway screenshots soon.

aT3D running some more games from that period, 640x480 and suffering frame rate a bit more considering high details and much heavier than supposed to run. Toca2 in these screenshots.

aT3D and Carmageddon2 demo

Of course, the way of rendering that at3d uses seems very curious to me, it has its charm. Too bad those games don't seem very playable.
In some ways, it reminds me a lot of the first 3D games on the Arcade machines.

Hoping wrote on 2024-04-15, 20:58:

Of course, the way of rendering that at3d uses seems very curious to me, it has its charm. Too bad those games don't seem very playable.
In some ways, it reminds me a lot of the first 3D games on the Arcade machines.

Too bad that they didn't really wanted to run this card at lower resolutions, some apps can others not but the times I could force like 400x300 the frame rate jump was big and much more than usually expected from similar cards. I'll test this too.

For Unreal 219, try editing the System/Unreal.ini file with these lines:

StartupFullscreen=False
NoLighting=True
LowDetailTextures=True

Also, try using 256-color desktop mode before launching the game.

pixel_workbench wrote on 2024-04-16, 04:11:

For Unreal 219, try editing the System/Unreal.ini file with these lines: […]
Show full quote

For Unreal 219, try editing the System/Unreal.ini file with these lines:

StartupFullscreen=False
NoLighting=True
LowDetailTextures=True

Also, try using 256-color desktop mode before launching the game.

I tried those and even forcing both full/windowed D3D path. Need to try the 256 colors mode. Clearly it seems like starting but fail to render. I suppose I need to spend more time on this game to see how it render maybe trying also other patches.

Unreal can't do anything for 8-bit color, that'd likely induce more initialization errors. Unreal's support for 8bpp was stripped out of SoftDrv in 1997

Unreal 219 now seems to only give few driver related error messages like:

D3D Driver: Multitexturing not available
D3D Driver: DESTCOLOR, SRCCOLOR blending not supported
D3D Driver: DXT1 textures not supported
D3D Driver: Mipmapping not available
D3D Driver: W Buffering not available
D3D Driver: Gamma control not available

and then come back to the desktop. Resolution now is fixed to 640x480.

Trying to force in many ways the D3D rendering with the lowest configs, I get a DDERR_SURFACEBUSY lock error in a long wordpad log file with a black screen in fullscreen.
Even updating to 226 Patch, I get a DDERR_SURFACEBUSY "DirectDraw Flip failed" error into the logs. And after trying even more I get a D3D Driver Oversize texture without sufficient mipmaps error. Interesting game..

While the Alliance aT3D has become a personal quest to test as long as I can in the next weeks, meanwhile some of the cards I've bought begins to arrive for future tests. This low end built is a modern SiS6326 H0 (2001 chip), 8MB, 6ns memories. Soon I'll get the best Diamond version.

Other games run on the aT3D card.. screenshots soon..

EDIT: soon some in-game screenshots