Texture filtering - yay, mipmap - nay.

Putas wrote on 2024-03-20, 05:40:

midicollector wrote on 2024-03-19, 17:26:

chuky wrote on 2024-03-17, 04:48:

I was also puzzled when I saw the new Tomb Raider 123 remaster where you can switch between the new graphics and the "original" graphics. The original graphics in the remaster have no filtering so it looks worse than the actual original game where you couldn't disable filtering.

Tomb Raider only had filtering if you had a video card like the voodoo, at the time most people didn’t so either pixelated or filtered would have been period correct.

No, you can use the bilinear filter with all the supported chips that have the feature.

I meant that many people at the time would have been using software rendering. Probably the majority of computer owners at the time wouldn’t have had anything better than software rendering.

Oh yes, I agree. Also because people weren't used to patching.

Putas wrote on 2024-03-30, 06:39:

Oh yes, I agree. Also because people weren't used to patching.

This! I would've played the first TR with the s3 Virge patch had I known that one existed!

revolstar wrote on 2024-04-02, 09:00:

This! I would've played the first TR with the s3 Virge patch had I known that one existed!

funny thing about Tomb Raider s3 Virge patch - it was done wrong :] company doing the conversion received source code to 3dfx version with removed software rendering optimized path. It relied on Z-buffer instead of sorted triangles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6fk_iarL-8&l … Dfunb2V14AaABAg

@andrewpomianowski5190 :
"2 years ago (edited)
This brings back memories. I wrote the back-end driver for the Argonaut titles on the Virge (used in Fx Fighter and Croc) - it my first job out of University back in the day when I joined Argonaut's technology team. It was really crazy back then with every video card needing a different customized back-end implementation - as I recall I had to do ATI Rage and some other cards as well. Later, after I left and formed my own company we also did the port of Tomb Raider for the Virge, although that was mostly done by a friend of mine. The Virge was an interesting card - it did pretty much everything right in terms of image quality features, but basically every effect you turned on halved the fillrate. Want perspective correct textures? Fillrate halves. Want depth buffering? Fillrate halves again. And so on. It was a real art trying to extract performance.

When we did the port of Tomb Raider we were working from the version of the back end renderer of the engine that had been used for 3DFX's Voodoo graphics. One thing we didn't realize at the time was that it had been converted to use depth buffering, but the original engine version (software renderer) used a depth-sorting algorithm. If we had obtained that version from Eidos we probably could have got twice the frame rate, but we didn't realize that was an option in the engine at the time and just worked from what we got. I think we did use some of the Virge's more funky features though, like a pseudo-bilinear mode that only filtered in one direction but was faster. You had to calculate when you could use this instead of true bilinear filtering without losing too much image quality."

Btw Linkedin tells me dude did all right after Virge, ended up AMD Fellow, CVP Radeon Product Architect

That's a funny story, kinda reminds me of the Amiga port of Street Fighter 2.

On a somewhat related note, I've seen some dude on youtube playing devil's advocate and claiming TR is actually playable with the s3 Virge patch provided that you turn the resolution down to 512x384 or sth.

revolstar wrote on 2024-04-02, 19:41:

On a somewhat related note, I've seen some dude on youtube playing devil's advocate and claiming TR is actually playable with the s3 Virge patch provided that you turn the resolution down to 512x384 or sth.

Depends on how you define playable, and which Virge model are you using. For example, a Virge DX from a reputable manufacturer (e.g. Diamond) comes with a clock speed of 72 MHz. You can also overclock some generic Virge DX cards to that spec.

Anyway, with a 4MB Virge DX running at that speed, you get 15-18 FPS at 640x480 with all the eye candy features turned on. Drop the resolution down to 512x384 and you get to 20-22 FPS. Turn off bilinear filtering and you might get to 25 FPS. Tomb Raider caps out at 30 FPS so that's not too bad I suppose.

Also, here's a video of someone using a Virge DX on a 486 and actually benefitting from the acceleration.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-04-02, 20:06:

revolstar wrote on 2024-04-02, 19:41:

On a somewhat related note, I've seen some dude on youtube playing devil's advocate and claiming TR is actually playable with the s3 Virge patch provided that you turn the resolution down to 512x384 or sth.

Also, here's a video of someone using a Virge DX on a 486 and actually benefitting from the acceleration.

Yup, that's the video I was referring to! 😀

I had some kind of nostalgia googles on. Back in the day when i got my Voodoo, everything looked so smooth and beautiful. Nowdays I prefere my first/second generation games in high resolution software mode. Ok Unreal Tournament have filtering even in software mode. But Quake2 in 3D accelerated is just a blurry mess. And those games run buttersmooth with a 600+ P3 in 640x480 and even 800x600. So only benefit for 3D card usage is filtering. And all before Riva TNT(nice visual)/Voodoo2(poorer visual) are really decelerators.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-09, 19:05:

I had some kind of nostalgia googles on. Back in the day when i got my Voodoo, everything looked so smooth and beautiful. Nowdays I prefere my first/second generation games in high resolution software mode. Ok Unreal Tournament have filtering even in software mode. But Quake2 in 3D accelerated is just a blurry mess. And those games run buttersmooth with a 600+ P3 in 640x480 and even 800x600. So only benefit for 3D card usage is filtering. And all before Riva TNT(nice visual)/Voodoo2(poorer visual) are really decelerators.

Yea, but doesn't 3d accelerated Quake 2 also offer other effects? Like colored lighting etc.?

Never noticed that something needed is missing on Quake2. And early low level 3D accelerated mipmapping is atrocious. Even DooM had better darking grades to the distance.

Quake2's software renderer screws up transparent textures and there's also the general issue of lookup tables straining the CPU more than a 3d card dealing with blending

On a somewhat related note, Phil posted a video about software rendering last week 😉

IMO, "period correct" was experimenting with driver-level (global) settings for your specific setup and deciding what you liked (taking into account the performance impact).

Having someone tell me what the "correct" way to play a game is distasteful. "You need a PVM to play console games." "You need a Voodoo to play Win9x games." Blah Blah Blah. People are getting pulled around too much by YouTube influencers.

revolstar wrote on Yesterday, 06:11:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-09, 19:05:

I had some kind of nostalgia googles on. Back in the day when i got my Voodoo, everything looked so smooth and beautiful. Nowdays I prefere my first/second generation games in high resolution software mode. Ok Unreal Tournament have filtering even in software mode. But Quake2 in 3D accelerated is just a blurry mess. And those games run buttersmooth with a 600+ P3 in 640x480 and even 800x600. So only benefit for 3D card usage is filtering. And all before Riva TNT(nice visual)/Voodoo2(poorer visual) are really decelerators.

Yea, but doesn't 3d accelerated Quake 2 also offer other effects? Like colored lighting etc.?

Yes. Besides colored lighting, there are 16-bit textures for skies if the 3D accelerator has enough VRAM to avoid the "8-bit textures" option.

On the other hand, the software renderer has underwater effect and there are source ports retaining that renderer without the problems around the transparent textures.

Gmlb256 wrote on Today, 00:07:

On the other hand, the software renderer has underwater effect and there are source ports retaining that renderer without the problems around the transparent textures.

Interesting. The transparent water/portal effect could be activated through a console command in glQuake, did they remove that in Q2?

revolstar wrote on Yesterday, 17:12:

On a somewhat related note, Phil posted a video about software rendering last week 😉

ah, explains that thread of a sudden unrealistic prospect of software rendered gta3 on a tualtin for performance.

leileilol wrote on Yesterday, 07:09:

Quake2's software renderer screws up transparent textures

Would that be because it happened around the ugly time period where bilinear filtering was a thing, but using pre-multiplied alpha was not?

it's more like they implemented their brush drawing routine off their transparent water routine which is strictly made for 64x64 (for tiled turbulence), and gets a bad read on any other size and they left that as-is obvious right from the starting level's window. ref_soft in quake2 is a bit of an afterthought