I still think the hate for Virge is misplaced - S3 were at the front of the pack for an all in one, 2d/3d, mass market design.... it's just that they were wide of the mark in terms of what features they thought were going to be needed.

Look at what came before... you had wireframe and flat shaded polys, often very low poly counts, minimal support for textures etc. in a way it mirrored very much the Unix workstation market. They probably never imagined the 3d gaming demand to take off as quickly (or be as feature demanding) as it did.

I say this as someone who bought a Diamond Stealth 3d 2000 when it was released and was largely happy with it. For the first couple of years it was still being used largely in dos, where it was arguably one of the best cards you could have.

It's often easy to look back in hindsight and identity why things failed, but it still wasn't clear at the time of 95/96 that 3d texture mapped games were the way the entire industry was heading. In some respects it would have been great if it wasn't (a lot of the late 90s and early 2000s games look absolutely dreadful compared to the 2d pixel art that came before).

Matrix Mystique was a disaster. Remember playing AvP1 and so many graphical bugs due to unsupported functions.... Like when You thrown flare - nothing that You could see in this game anymore...

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-16, 08:16:

I still think the hate for Virge is misplaced - S3 were at the front of the pack for an all in one, 2d/3d, mass market design... […]
Show full quote

I still think the hate for Virge is misplaced - S3 were at the front of the pack for an all in one, 2d/3d, mass market design.... it's just that they were wide of the mark in terms of what features they thought were going to be needed.

Look at what came before... you had wireframe and flat shaded polys, often very low poly counts, minimal support for textures etc. in a way it mirrored very much the Unix workstation market. They probably never imagined the 3d gaming demand to take off as quickly (or be as feature demanding) as it did.

I say this as someone who bought a Diamond Stealth 3d 2000 when it was released and was largely happy with it. For the first couple of years it was still being used largely in dos, where it was arguably one of the best cards you could have.

It's often easy to look back in hindsight and identity why things failed, but it still wasn't clear at the time of 95/96 that 3d texture mapped games were the way the entire industry was heading. In some respects it would have been great if it wasn't (a lot of the late 90s and early 2000s games look absolutely dreadful compared to the 2d pixel art that came before).

They weren't alone with that mistake either, the N64 graphics subsystem has many of the same mistakes.

Spitz wrote on 2024-12-16, 22:43:

Matrix Mystique was a disaster. Remember playing AvP1 and so many graphical bugs due to unsupported functions.... Like when You thrown flare - nothing that You could see in this game anymore...

To be fair, blending functions were a luxury for 1995-96 3d hardware. You'd get the same AVP unplayability on AT3D, ViRGE, PCX2, Laguna3D... AvP was once developed for the PSX (cancelled) and geared a lot of the rendering towards additives, modulated colors and inverts. There's hardly an alpha blend so it should be very fine for a Rage Pro to play (in theory)

Do think mystique gets too much of a bad rep for the lack of bilinear filtering, it at least has depth functions and framerates!

DrAnthony wrote on 2024-12-16, 23:42:

They weren't alone with that mistake either, the N64 graphics subsystem has many of the same mistakes.

N64's RDP is a bit interesting because of all the similarities to 3dfx (3dfx being ex-SGI and all) with what the whole filtering thing going on, and edge AA implementations. But also it does blending functions that no one really uses because the colors can overflow, you know, just like 3dfx V1/2 when you crank the gamma too far! 😀

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-12-16, 08:16:

I still think the hate for Virge is misplaced - S3 were at the front of the pack for an all in one, 2d/3d, mass market design.... it's just that they were wide of the mark in terms of what features they thought were going to be needed.

the s3virge is just one of the many failed 3d cards, but its known for being one of the earliest (behind the nv1) and produced in massive quantities with many variants.
rendition1000 is as early as the virge, but a far more decent 3d card.
nvidia also failed with the nv1 and even nv2(sega paid for it but gave it up), but they quickly dumped the quadrilateral mapping design and switched lane to work on triangles and created the successful nv3.
and what for s3? they just stuck with updating the poor virge design and brought out vx, dx, gx/gx2, trio3d... rather than getting savage out earlier. and while savage3 was a far better piece of hardware, they could never provide decent drivers until bankruptcy.

leileilol wrote on 2024-12-17, 02:02:

To be fair, blending functions were a luxury for 1995-96 3d hardware. You'd get the same AVP unplayability on AT3D, ViRGE, PCX2, […]
Show full quote

Spitz wrote on 2024-12-16, 22:43:

Matrix Mystique was a disaster. Remember playing AvP1 and so many graphical bugs due to unsupported functions.... Like when You thrown flare - nothing that You could see in this game anymore...

To be fair, blending functions were a luxury for 1995-96 3d hardware. You'd get the same AVP unplayability on AT3D, ViRGE, PCX2, Laguna3D... AvP was once developed for the PSX (cancelled) and geared a lot of the rendering towards additives, modulated colors and inverts. There's hardly an alpha blend so it should be very fine for a Rage Pro to play (in theory)

Do think mystique gets too much of a bad rep for the lack of bilinear filtering, it at least has depth functions and framerates!

DrAnthony wrote on 2024-12-16, 23:42:

They weren't alone with that mistake either, the N64 graphics subsystem has many of the same mistakes.

N64's RDP is a bit interesting because of all the similarities to 3dfx (3dfx being ex-SGI and all) with what the whole filtering thing going on, and edge AA implementations. But also it does blending functions that no one really uses because the colors can overflow, you know, just like 3dfx V1/2 when you crank the gamma too far! 😀

Yup. Still lack od alpha blend +bi filtering makes this card not to be able play with in some games... Like avp. I was more scared that alien will jump than I should be (solid wall was projected instead of transparent smoke/light) ....

I guess the worst primitive card you can get is Matrox Millenium I, since it has no texture mapping.

ATi Rage2 was primitive 3D card, but from Rage3 it already got better and to squeeze max out of Rage3, use Pentium 3.
One example with Rage Pro based Rage XL card with Pentium 4 cpu that is overkill, any higher end Pentium 3 could do.

My vote is with S3 Virge. One of my favorite DOS games was Descent II. When I upgraded to a Cyrix P-200 the first video card I paired it with was a 4mb S3 Virge PCI. I eagerly loaded up Descent Ii with the Virge patch… and it sucked. It was worse than software rendering, and not just a little worse.. like unplayable.

Within 2 months I dumped it for a Diamond Stealth II S220 - Rendition Verite 2100 and that was a beautiful pairing.

Spitz wrote on 2024-12-16, 22:43:

Matrix Mystique was a disaster. Remember playing AvP1 and so many graphical bugs due to unsupported functions.... Like when You thrown flare - nothing that You could see in this game anymore...

The Matrox Mystique was a very good card for its time! Which is 1996-1997... AvP1 was released 1999 and that's Voodoo3 era!! At that time, a Mystique would almost be two "generations" behind.

Even in 1996 Mystique was a minimum viable product for 3D stuff. You can't even argue that it was fast, because Virge DX also had performance boost from omitting all texture filtering and alpha blending.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-21, 15:16:

Even in 1996 Mystique was a minimum viable product for 3D stuff. You can't even argue that it was fast, because Virge DX also had performance boost from omitting all texture filtering and alpha blending.

This doesn't make sense to me. Why would other products having a boost from omitting these features prevent the argument?

Linoleum wrote on 2024-12-16, 04:51:

Yeah I did a Savage 4 built where 99% of the challenge was getting the right driver with the right minigl and the right metal patch. Once you get it, it's a pretty good card (if you pretend Voodoo3 and TNT2 don't exist).

What are the right driver version, right minigl and right metal patch version to use? Thank you!

Putas wrote on 2024-12-22, 07:09:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-21, 15:16:

Even in 1996 Mystique was a minimum viable product for 3D stuff. You can't even argue that it was fast, because Virge DX also had performance boost from omitting all texture filtering and alpha blending.

This doesn't make sense to me. Why would other products having a boost from omitting these features prevent the argument?

Agreed. That and it's not hard to see (thanks to your site!) just how much faster the Mystique was than the rest of it's entry level peers. It's always been a "fast, but ugly" 1st generation part that could easily be paired with a powervr or voodoo card if you needed more on the 3D side.

marxveix wrote on 2024-12-22, 13:13:

Linoleum wrote on 2024-12-16, 04:51:

Yeah I did a Savage 4 built where 99% of the challenge was getting the right driver with the right minigl and the right metal patch. Once you get it, it's a pretty good card (if you pretend Voodoo3 and TNT2 don't exist).

What are the right driver version, right minigl and right metal patch version to use? Thank you!

I believe it's the driver set from 2000 (4.12.01.8226), Metal patch 2.0.3.0 and MiniGL 1.1.0.5... If you get the S3Tex patches from VogonsDrivers, don't use the provided Metal and MiniGL drivers!

DrAnthony wrote on 2024-12-22, 13:55:

Putas wrote on 2024-12-22, 07:09:

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-21, 15:16:

Even in 1996 Mystique was a minimum viable product for 3D stuff. You can't even argue that it was fast, because Virge DX also had performance boost from omitting all texture filtering and alpha blending.

This doesn't make sense to me. Why would other products having a boost from omitting these features prevent the argument?

Agreed. That and it's not hard to see (thanks to your site!) just how much faster the Mystique was than the rest of it's entry level peers. It's always been a "fast, but ugly" 1st generation part that could easily be paired with a powervr or voodoo card if you needed more on the 3D side.

I do remember upgrading to a Mystique 220 from an S3 Virge card; it totally felt like an upgrade!