I'm sure i had true form on my ati 9800. But now i'm on laptop with ati 9700 mobility, no i've got no idea how to enable it. I've got driver from january 2004.

Age Of Mythology (Original not Extended Edition) also supports TruForm and works nicely with dgVoodoo.

Screenshots to showcase difference in each game would be nice.

On what ATI cards was TrueForm usable?

Only Radeon 8500 and 9100. Everything else used software emulation.

Laptop guy here. I've got some collection of portable machines packed with ATI cards. Like Acer with ATI 9600 or another Acer with ATI x700 and FJS with X1900. I wonder if i can somehow enable trueform there?

And i wonder if there were laptops based on 8500-9100 chips with HW support for TrueForm?

In theory, something like this http://www.europcs.net/ftp/marcas/acercomp/po … pire1603lc.html
The mobility 9000 supports Truform according to GPU database (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/mobilit … deon-9000.c1595) I have one Aspire 1600 with a desktop Pentium 4 2.4, but never tried anything with Truform.

Hoping wrote on 2023-08-13, 19:42:

In theory, something like this http://www.europcs.net/ftp/marcas/acercomp/po … pire1603lc.html
The mobility 9000 supports Truform according to GPU database (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/mobilit … deon-9000.c1595) I have one Aspire 1600 with a desktop Pentium 4 2.4, but never tried anything with Truform.

That's clearly a typo. Because RV280 (Radeon 9000 with AGP 8x) also has TruForm in that database, which is not true.

Don't trust Techpower GPU database, at least not for old devices.

I recently got a laptop that has a Mobility Radeon 9700, If I have time I'll try Serious Sam on the 9700 and 9000, and Return To Castle Wolfstein if I find out where I have the game..... But the laptop with the 9700 has the hinges broken so it will take a wile.

Mobility Radeon 9700 is essentially just Radeon 9600. Same packaging and chip configuration.

OK, I tried the two games, Serious Sam and Return To Castle Wolfstein, on the two laptops, Mobility Radeon 9000 and Mobility Radeon 9700, Catalyst 7.8, Windows XP SP3 and I couldn't activate/use Truform in either game, so neither of the two GPUs seems to support Truform, I did not try different drivers because it has not been very easy for me to find drivers for these GPUs, since it was expected, I do not see the point in making more attempts.
At the very least, the Mobility Radeon 9700 is quite capable for a laptop GPU of that era.

TruForm was removed from driver support after a certain point.

I know, for that reason I mention not having tried other drivers, it is possible that no driver that supports these GPUs has support for Truform.
In the case of the Mobility 9700, I hope there are drivers for this GPU and win9x, since I would like to try Windows Me and 98 on that laptop. If I find them, they will surely be an older version.

According to my notes, the last Catalyst driver with TruForm was 5.8 - so I guess that's August 2005.
I have no idea about laptops though.

You should be able to use the old Catalyst Mobility Mod Tool to convert desktop driver packages into one that will install on the notebook.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1585

You want to use a driver prior to Catalyst 5.8 because 5.8 is especially slow with Truform for some reason.

But good luck actually noticing Truform in action. Unless it's doing the make-the-weapons-bulbous thing. 😀

Thanks, I had already found that program to modify the drivers, now I have to look for different versions of drivers for XP, I suppose the start would be the first version of Catalyst that works with a desktop Radeon 9600.
I've already seen that curiosity about weapons and other balloon-shaped things in Serious Sam when I tried it with a Fire GL 8800.
I imagine it would be the result of forcing the use of Truform.

Actually the problem is partly that Truform isn't very flexible with how it tessellates. It's best with objects that are already intended to be bulbous.

This is an interesting discussion about it.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/ati-trufor … 954/post-482002

I guess you could add a couple extra polys as a bevel for the normals to wrap around sharp corners, i.e. rounding them off might actually end up making them look sharper? But since that eats into your poly budget you might be better off spending them on the meant-to-be-round parts instead so the NoForm plebs can benefit too. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

Anyways, the discussion you linked to mentions Morrowind supposedly looking great, so I went looking for imagery and found this. The smoother terrain and the strider turned out pretty good, but would you look at those tree branches... ridiculous. Maybe there's a mod that "pre-tesselates" things but only keeps (i.e. manually cherry picks) the good parts?

Anyways, I saved a Rad 9800 from the trash just a couple days ago and can't wait to play around with it and experience more of this bullshit.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-09-22, 23:42:

Anyways, the discussion you linked to mentions Morrowind supposedly looking great, so I went looking for imagery and found this.

Comments say it is recreation via shaders, do we know this is accurate?

I have been trying my luck with the Mobility Radeon 9000 and I have not been able to get Truform to work, I tried old Catalyst drivers that I got from a package available in Vogons drivers, and I also tried the Omega drivers.
I tried version 5.8 first and had no luck, then 5.12 and no luck, I tried the Omega drivers 5.4 and no luck.
I think I'm missing something because I've seen who has managed to use Truform on more modern graphics cards like the X800. But not on laptop graphics cards.

elszgensa wrote on 2023-09-22, 23:42:

Anyways, the discussion you linked to mentions Morrowind supposedly looking great, so I went looking for imagery and found this. The smoother terrain and the strider turned out pretty good, but would you look at those tree branches... ridiculous.

It's been ~15 years, but I think Catalyst 5.8 was what I used when I tried TruForm in Morrowind on a 9800 Pro. The smoothness made the trees look great to me but I was in the eastern part of the map at the time, so I might not have seen those type of trees. I don't know if the ends of the branches really bulge out like that on the real TruForm or not. If they do, the lack of quick A/B comparison must have kept me from noticing.

I gave up on it only because it was so slow. So swaaye's comment about 5.8 being slower than normal is interesting - I should have experimented with other versions back then but I don't think I did.