Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

That's some serious effort putting these images together!

yhea, its a bit of a hassle swapping cards and rebooting but it was something i've been working on anyways for something I'm writing. I just wish I had a proper way to take the screenshots. That and it feels incomplete without a powerVR to test but there not the cheapest cards to acquire.

anyone know anything about the purple lines i'm getting with the verite? i'm not sure if that's how it is or if my cards just faulty. oh and I can now confirm there are no shadows apparently with the ATI rage CIF version. At least not for Laura.

I use a fairly cheap VGA to S-Video converter and then use a S-Video capture device.

The quality however is quite average...

There are VGA capture devices, Aver Media has one. But things quickly start to become expensive.

With a camera I think it's important to have all the settings adjusted manually and used for every card.

I like how you actually use the stuff you have. I know many they just bag and tag them and that's it.

soviet conscript wrote:

anyone know anything about the purple lines i'm getting with the verite? i'm not sure if that's how it is or if my cards just faulty. oh and I can now confirm there are no shadows apparently with the ATI rage CIF version. At least not for Laura.

Are you using the V1000 or the V2200? The V2200 might not be fully compatible and creating some glitches. Same happens in the verite version of Indycar Racing 2.

There must be an error with your driver/settings, as I get shadows below Laura. ATI Rage Pro VGA capture video in 800x600 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7kpbHKKm2w . At approx. 0:35 you can see some texture flickering which is normal on the ATI Rage version. The image is a tad dark on default brightness

soviet conscript wrote:

the harp with the voodo has a wired line sticking out from its top as you can see in the image and the vertie has a purple line down it. I don't know if these are intentional things. I cant recall from testing but I did notice in the images the rage didn't give a shadow for Laura and as i mentioned the Mystique gave the shadow a checkered pattern.

The 3dfx version merged multiple textures in one bigger texture to save memory. When using bilinear filtering this can lead to strange lines on the edge of a triangle.
[EDIT] From http://www.3dgaming.com/games/adventure/tombr … d/tombqanda.htm:

The Voodoo version also suffers from its limited texture memory, for this reason the several texture maps are stored in big 256x256 texture maps, so ex. several 64x64 texture maps form a 256x256 texture map, this saves memory. However this causes a problem, when using bi-linear filtering the card interpolates between the available pixels, on the border of a texture map this causes problems when pixels from a different texture map(that is also stored in the big texture map) are used for the interpolation.This causes visible errors when both Mip Mapping and Bi-linear filtering are used. 3DFX owners can solve this problem by turning of either Bi-Linear filtering (yuk) or Mip-Mapping.

Regarding the checkered pattern from the Mystique: This is called stipple alpha, the Mystique can't do proper blending.

vetz wrote:

soviet conscript wrote:

anyone know anything about the purple lines i'm getting with the verite? i'm not sure if that's how it is or if my cards just faulty. oh and I can now confirm there are no shadows apparently with the ATI rage CIF version. At least not for Laura.

Are you using the V1000 or the V2200? The V2200 might not be fully compatible and creating some glitches. Same happens in the verite version of Indycar Racing 2.

There must be an error with your driver/settings, as I get shadows below Laura. ATI Rage Pro VGA capture video in 800x600 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7kpbHKKm2w . At approx. 0:35 you can see some texture flickering which is normal on the ATI Rage version. The image is a tad dark on default brightness

That may be the issue then, I'm using a V2100 (couldn't figure out how to do the Bios update to 2200)

As for the ATI card i'm using a ATI Rage II + DVD, what drivers/settings do you use?

soviet conscript wrote:

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5827/2fvz.jpg […]
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I really appreciate that you post this screenshots. Here can compare all 3d accelerated versions of Tomb Raider.

I would buy a rendition verite, really. ; )

I remember that the psx version has a good gold effect on lara (Palace Midas), but not on my 3dfx version that was only a flat color. It's the same on the rest of 3d cards?

I think I recall the PowerVR version being blue like the Rage/Virge/Voodoo. Can't be bothered to check right now though

soviet conscript wrote:

As for the ATI card i'm using a ATI Rage II + DVD, what drivers/settings do you use?

Have you already read Gona's page on the topic? http://gona.mactar.hu/ATI_3D_CIF/
Extremely informative. Rage Pro should be much faster than any Rage II.

(I didn't try TR1 CIF yet. That's on my to-do list, already have the cards.)

idspispopd wrote:

Have you already read Gona's page on the topic? http://gona.mactar.hu/ATI_3D_CIF/ Extremely informative. Rage Pro should be much […]
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soviet conscript wrote:

As for the ATI card i'm using a ATI Rage II + DVD, what drivers/settings do you use?

Have you already read Gona's page on the topic? http://gona.mactar.hu/ATI_3D_CIF/
Extremely informative. Rage Pro should be much faster than any Rage II.

(I didn't try TR1 CIF yet. That's on my to-do list, already have the cards.)

You beat me to it. I was going to link to Gona's webpage myself 😀

As you can see from my video the framerate is almost always 30FPS on the ATI Rage Pro.

thanks for the links and info. for the purposes of what I was doing I was mostly focusing on overall visual quality as opposed to framerate or smoothness of play but Rage Pro cards seem pretty cheap so I may pick one up and see the difference.

Actually the image/output of Rage Pro and Rage II should look different, even though they can use the same API (ATI CIF).
For other proprietary APIs that's not usually the case. (S3D and Rendition should look quite similar on all supported cards, Glide mostly so. PowerVR PCX1 can't do bilinear filtering so it will look different from PCX2. Matrox MSI is only supported on original Mystique and Mystique 220 which are very similar.)

I ran the E3 3DFX demo of Tomb Raider. Damn it looks bad compared to the latest retail patch.

Still must've been impressive when shown on the 3DFX booth 16-18th of May 1996.

vetz wrote:

I ran the E3 3DFX demo of Tomb Raider. Damn it looks bad compared to the latest retail patch.

Still must've been impressive when shown on the 3DFX booth 16-18th of May 1996.

Hey, I'd like to try that or get screenshots. Linkz 😜?

I can't confirm it is the E3 demo, but there are high chances. First off, Tomb Raider on 3DFX was shown at E3. This is states in the following Gamespot article:

One of the first major games to use GLIDE was Tomb Raider from CORE Designs. Producer Mike Schmitt at Eidos Interactive remembers, "Prior to E3 in 1996 3Dfx sent a couple of engineers to Core in England to get a demo working." The result was a stunning 3D game that wowed the crowds at the E3 trade show.

The readme.txt states it is a tech demo:

------------------------------------------------------------------ TOMB RAIDER DEMONSTRATION READM […]
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------------------------------------------------------------------
TOMB RAIDER DEMONSTRATION README.TXT
------------------------------------------------------------------

This technology demonstration shows the game Tomb Raider from
Eidos. This game is a first person action game. The central
figure in the game is Lara Croft. Lara is a 20-something
adventuress with the agility of an olympic gymnast. The full
game will be available in the future from Eidos.

Please run the program SETUP.EXE before running the demonstration.
SETUP.EXE allows you to choose the sound subsystem for the demo.

After running SETUP.EXE, run TOMB.EXE to see the demonstration.

This 3DFX demo has the same level along with the jump animation glitches also found on the Playstation E3 demo, shown here from 6:01: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4zR6D0-1lI The Playstation version had a playable version and a rolling demo (shown in the menu not present on 3DFX). Only the rolling demo is available in the 3DFX demo.

You can find this demo on the Monster3D driver CD available on Vogonsdrivers. http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=158

those VLC captures kinda squished the line pattern... 😁

Have to use VLC due to sync issues.

The camera distance is a bit different in the 3DFX retail version, but here is a comparison shot:

nice 😀

Always loved early Tomb Raider stuff.

The demo shots just look brighter to me... and all of them are obviously not centered 😀

Differences I've discovered so far are:

- No shadow under Laura
- Camera closer to Laura
- Laura appears brighter due to model being either fully lit or fully in shadow
- No antialiasing
- No musslefire from the guns and different sound
- Jump animation glitches
- Laura is clipping into the ground.
- Animation on wolfs behaving strangely in some cases
- Water have no bubbles
- More apparent gaps between texture tiles

You cant see all of this in the few screenshots. Best way is to run the demo yourself on a real Voodoo Graphics card.
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So there is antialiasing in this game? Game specific Edge AA I presume? Wonder why not more Glide games used this really, this one here even runs on a P90...