VOGONS


First post, by DEAT

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This has been information that I've been sitting on for a long while as I've been meaning to revisit this and produce a more complete list (including games that are explicitly not compatible), but as I've been bouncing around various projects this has become neglected - I figure it's best to just post what I currently have available and get community input for anything that is missing, as I have no idea when I'll get around to going back to continue working on these lists.

As some of you may know, the ATi 3D Rage, Matrox Millennium and #9 Imagine 128-II all have partial Direct3D support in their drivers - the Matrox Millennium and #9 Imagine 128-II lack texturing support, while the ATi Rage lacks Z-buffering. The lack of Z-buffering for the 3D Rage is especially unfortunate, given that in ATi's press release from November 1995 they explicitly mentioned that Direct3D will be supported. Microsoft shafted ATi hard on that one.

The list of games that can successfully run (as in it is possible to get in-game without crashing or bombing out with an error message explicitly mentioning lack of texturing or z-buffering support, regardless of the end result - OR if the menu features 3D rendering but still crashes when trying to get in-game) is predictably low for all three cards, but I find it interesting to note that there's games that simply don't care about checking for Direct3D features that are supported by drivers and will happily chug along as best as possible, even if the entire world is textured all-white!

I've tested these cards with Windows 98 SE with the built-in drivers for Matrox Millennium and #9 Imagine 128-II, while I used W95-2139 drivers for ATi 3D Rage. The test system was an EPoX EP-3VSM mobo with a 1.4Ghz Tualatin Pentium III-S and 512MB of SDRAM. ATi 3D Rage card has 2MB of RAM, Matrox Millennium has 4MB while the #9 Imagine 128-II has 8MB.

ATi 3D Rage
Confirmed

  • Agile Warrior F-111X - Direct3D Retained Mode game, visual differences between software renderer confirmed - no issues
  • Battlezone - corrupted textures, eventually crashes
  • BreakNeck (aka. N.I.C.E 2) - broken transparency, corrupted textures (game does have built-in benchmark, but I don't have test results listed)
  • Darkstone - broken transparency, building models do not render
  • Dead Reckoning - no issues with low resolution, high resolution loses some textures
  • Deathtrap Dungeon - corrupted textures
  • Fighting Force - disable Z-buffering before launching game - broken transparency, max supported res is 400x300
  • Flying Saucer - broken transparency, some textures missing
  • Forsaken - Z fighting issues, missing textures above 512x384
  • Frogger - broken transparency, missing textures above 400x300
  • Hellbender - broken transparency
  • Hyperblade - no issues
  • Independence Day - broken transparency
  • Jet Moto - broken transparency, water textures render incorrectly
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 - I have a note that only says "TODO: optimal settings"
  • Monster Truck Madness - broken transparency, texture quality must be set to low to avoid corrupted textures
  • Moto Racer - broken transparency, corrupted textures above 640x400
  • Official Formula One Racing - no textures, can be forced to run in D3D mode
  • Outwars - broken transparency, no skybox
  • Plane Crazy - menu does not render objects, skies do not render, Z fighting issues, no textures above 400x300
  • POD Gold (D3D 3 renderer) - corrupted skybox
  • Spirit Warrior - broken rendering of 3D models - possibly related to missing textures?
  • Tank Racer - no textures
  • Terracide - corrupted textures
  • TOCA Touring Car Championship - no textures
  • Tomb Raider 2 - no textures
  • Tomb Raider 3 - no textures
  • Twisted Metal 2 - broken transparency

Unconfirmed

  • ABC Sports Indy Racing/Banzai Bug/Boggle/Lego Rock Raiders - all games are Direct3D Retained Mode, I believe Lego Rock Raiders is working perfectly fine as I don't have Lego Island or Martian Gothic: Unification listed. I have no idea if the other three games actually utilise D3DRM, v1.0 of Banzai Bug has its Direct3D options explicitly grayed out regardless of what video card is used, and v1.1 does not list those options.
  • V2000 - option to change to Direct3D renderer works, but visually appears identical to software mode

All issues that list "broken transparency" above are related to sprites, coronas etc.

Matrox Millennium
Confirmed

  • 1nsane - no textures
  • Barrage - no textures (game can display FPS and polygons rendered by pressing TAB, but does not appear to have a benchmark function - 30FPS cap)
  • Defiance - no textures
  • Gorky-17 - objects barely render, no textures on objects
  • Lego Rock Raiders - no textures
  • Martian Gothic: Unification - no textures
  • Moto Racer 2 - falls back to HAL emulation mode, which is undocumented and does not work on 2D-only cards
  • POD Gold (D3D 5 renderer) - does not render world, unplayable
  • Rayman 2 - most of world does not render, no textures on polygons that do render
  • SpeedBusters - cars that are rendered in-menu only render a few outlines, crashes when trying to get in-game
  • Spirit Warrior - no textures on objects
  • Star Trek: Fleet Command - does not render world apart from very small visual effects
  • The Longest Journey - no textures on objects
  • Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - no textures, skybox constantly flashes
  • Twisted Metal 2 - no textures

Unconfirmed

  • Independence Day - appears to be HAL emulation mode fallback

#9 Imagine 128-II
Confirmed

  • 1nsane - no textures
  • Barrage - no textures (game can display FPS and polygons rendered by pressing TAB, but does not appear to have a benchmark function - 30FPS cap)
  • Battle Realms - no textures in-menu, crashes when trying to get in-game
  • Croc: Legend of the Gobbos v2.0 - No textures
  • Defiance - no textures
  • Delta Force 2 - no textures on objects, unstable and will randomly crash
  • Gorky-17 - no textures on objects
  • Lego Island - no textures
  • Lego Rock Raiders - no textures
  • Martian Gothic: Unification - no textures
  • Moto Racer - can be forced to run with -D3D parameter, but appears to be stuck on splash screen logo
  • Moto Racer 2 - falls back to HAL emulation mode, which is undocumented and does not work on 2D-only cards
  • POD Gold (D3D 5 renderer) - no textures
  • Rayman 2 - no textures
  • SpeedBusters - cars that are rendered in-menu have no textures, crashes when trying to get in-game
  • Spirit Warrior - no textures on objects
  • Star Trek: Fleet Command - no textures, unstable and will randomly crash
  • Tachyon: The Fringe - no textures on objects in-menu, trying to start a game will crash
  • The Longest Journey - no textures on objects
  • Tomb Raider 2 - no textures
  • Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - no textures, skybox constantly flashes
  • Twisted Metal 2 - no textures

Unconfirmed

  • Independence Day - appears to be HAL emulation mode fallback

S3 Virge 325, Chromatic Mpact, Cirrus Logic GD5464, Trident 3dImage975, Alliance AT3D etc. are outside of the scope of this thread as they all have full Direct3D functionality, regardless of their issues.

win16.page | Twitch

Reply 1 of 9, by RaVeNsClaw

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Great list!
I just want to add that you can find the DirectX 2 SDK on Archive.org.

It comes with:
- Direct3D sample game ROCKEM3D from May 1996.
- Direct3D beta driver 0.95 for: 3DLabs GLint 300SX
- Direct3D beta driver 0.98 for: 3DLabs GameGLINT (3D Blaster VLB)

The drivers are pretty much identical, but the 1994 300SX doesn't support texturing, as texture memory was only added with the 500TX and Permedia. The 3D Blaster needs a memory expansion for 640x400.

I'll try the 300SX drivers in this thread: Gaming on 3DLabs GLint 300SX

Last edited by RaVeNsClaw on 2026-11-01, 19:54. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 9, by Putas

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Thank you for your hard work, DEAT.

RaVeNsClaw wrote on 2026-11-01, 17:46:

The 3D Blaster needs a memory expansion for 640x400.

No.

Reply 3 of 9, by RaVeNsClaw

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Putas wrote on 2026-11-01, 18:42:

Thank you for your hard work, DEAT.

RaVeNsClaw wrote on 2026-11-01, 17:46:

The 3D Blaster needs a memory expansion for 640x400.

No.

Ups, you're right. It needs the memory expansion for 640x480, not 640x400.

The Software Release Notes "BLASTREL.DOC" notes on page 5 that "Full screen Hardware Double Buffered needs 2 + 2MB card" with 640x480 at 16 bit.
16 bit is important, as "Note that the Direct3D HAL driver currently only supports 16-Bit modes in this BETA release."

So Direct3D on the 3D Blaster should work at lower resolutions, even without the memory expansion.

Reply 4 of 9, by DrAnthony

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Well I don't mean to pivot the discussion too far, but has any evidence of memory expansion module for the 3D Blaster ever existing as a product been found yet? I know it's supported and the use of it is documented, but the last time I read this, there were questions about if it ever made it to manufacturing.

Reply 5 of 9, by Putas

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My question is, back in those days, was there any proper Direct3D game that did not need texturing?

Reply 7 of 9, by leileilol

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Putas wrote on Yesterday, 10:03:

My question is, back in those days, was there any proper Direct3D game that did not need texturing?

The textures in Starfleet Academy are optional! You could just go goraud on goraud spaceflight with just sprites and 2d buffers.

FUCK "AI". It is a tool of fascism. We do not need it. We do not use it.

Reply 8 of 9, by vetz

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DrAnthony wrote on 2026-11-02, 17:09:

Well I don't mean to pivot the discussion too far, but has any evidence of memory expansion module for the 3D Blaster ever existing as a product been found yet? I know it's supported and the use of it is documented, but the last time I read this, there were questions about if it ever made it to manufacturing.

I'd say yes:

1. The form to order it exist on Creative's webpage on archive.org
2. Several Usenet posts from 1996-97 claim they have it (you can find them on Google Groups)
3. A user commenting on LGR's video on the card also claims he had back in the 90s.
4. Its mentioned in the driver release.

From the driver readme:

(a) Microsoft DirectX requires 4MB of memory on the 3D Blaster VLB for effective execution. Therefore if you are intereste […]
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(a) Microsoft DirectX requires 4MB of memory on the 3D Blaster
VLB for effective execution. Therefore if you are interested
in playing DirectX games on your 3D Blaster VLB, it is strongly
recommended that you acquire the 2 MB upgrade module for this
card.

(b) DirectX games are designed to run optimally on PCs with Pentium
processors. Hence, if you own a 486 machine, the speed performance
of a DirectX game may not be as high as on an equivalent Pentium
machine.

If you have any enquiries on the 2 MB upgrade modules, please
approach your regional Creative Technical Support Centres for more
information

USENET posts:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm. … rU/54wBPKQYG20J (Creative confirms availability of upgrade board)
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm. … nQ/zZXIF3PsJbcJ
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm. … uU/6RyVxYwYStQJ

3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
3D Acceleration Comparison Episodes

Reply 9 of 9, by JustJulião

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Very nice list! Thank you.