I got the game running!
It definitely looks alot better in S3 mode than in normal DOS! Higher resolution and filtering 😀
The executable that leileilol provided didn't work straight out of the box, so I thought I should give it one more go at the NO-CD hacking. I got it running, but it's not perfect at the moment. I still get an error that says "NO CD detected in drive" and there is no CD audio. I need to work on that to see if it's possible to get it back into the game. Also I noticed that using the generic Windows S3 Virge DX driver the game had some lag and FPS issues. I switched to the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO driver (made for the DX version which I have, though I don't have a Diamond card installed) and it ran alot better. I can confirm that my hack to remove the driver check does work without any issues, but it looks like this game has been optimized for the diamond drivers.
I also have another problem, the game runs at 512x384. My monitor reports: 1024x768 (which is bollox) at 56.3kHz running at 70hz. If I can't get it to run at 60hz or 75hz, then it will be a problem to capture some video footage as both my VGA capture card and my HDMI scaler doesn't sync with it.
EDIT:
Found something interesting from this source:
http://www.myrkul.org/virge.html
Since I do not have the normal version of Destruction Derby I was not able
to make any comparisons. The version that came with […]
Show full quote
Since I do not have the normal version of Destruction Derby I was not able
to make any comparisons. The version that came with the ViRGE ran at 512x384
in high color, and ran at about 15-25 fps. If the filtering option is turned
on, the speed goes down to about 8-15 fps. These frame rates are probably OK
for a racecar game (in Descent they would be nauseating), however even at
512x384 with filtering on the game looks blocky as it uses very low resolution
textures.
[NOTE: I originally thought the game was running in 1024x768 because of the
horizontal and vertical scan rates that my monitor was showing (which matched
1024x768 70Hz refresh). 512x384 uses the same scan rates and is in fact
exactly 1/4 of a 1024x768 screen.]
btw, I definitely have better framerate with my DX card and 1ghz P3 than what he is reporting.