swaaye wrote:I believe Wing Commander 4 adds 16-bit color depth. Maybe only for the FMV.
Only for FMV yes, it uses a YUV lookup table conversion for that but still a variant of Origin's RLE compression scheme, not block based like Cinepak or earlier Indeo variants. (or that thing Activision used for a few games like Return to Zork) Not totally sure why Origin did that given posterized (undithered) 16-bit RGB should fit RLE type compression better and decode faster than multi-plane Y/C type formats. (or arguably better still, stick with 8-bit paletted frames and just reload the pallete every frame, something I think most VGA compatible streaming video avoided due to questionable ability to double buffer and page flip without tearing -tearing would look REALLY bad if the palette changed/clashed mid-screen, though dropping to 128 colors and using the high/low banks of the pallete for even/odd frames would avoid that)
Anyway that's off topic. 🤣
The main 'SVGA' mode I was speaking of was 640x480 256 colors with double buffering and v-synch (you'd need a 1 MB SVGA card for that, or some form of extendeed VGA that supported similar modes). Tie Fighter's CD-ROM release added an SVGA mode like that, and I know WCIV had it too, but I thought WCIII was limited to 320x200 like X-Wing (floppy and CD releases) and Tie Fighter (floppy). But looking again, yeah, WCIII does have a 640x480 mode.
I think most/all SVGA cards also added vblank interrupt support, avoiding the need to poll the screen status register or (more often) ignore it entirely and suffer with screen tearing. (with standard 64 kB mode 13h, you can't double buffer anyway, and generally don't have the bandwidth to copy a full 320x200 frame within vblank either, not on ISA at least -plus there's almost no vblank time at 72 Hz 31.5 kHz anyway ... those 200 lines are spaced as 400 lines in that mode, leaving very little time)
On that note, there's some really useful info on WCIII and IV here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/565023-wing-comman … tiger/faqs/1676
Including confirmation that it does not require an FPU and CAN run on a 486SX-33, though slow at times. (I've seen 386DX-40s listed as acceptable in other anecdotes, especially with a VLB video card and board-level cache -Cyrix DLC would presumably be a bit faster still)
There's a useful chart for expected framerate on given CPU+video card + video mode in that page too, both for WCIII and IV, though given they're nearly identical I'd assume the same game engine is being used. (WCIV adds a 486DX-120 to its list too, and matches the Pentium 90 on their list, and beats a Pentium 60 -the 75 isn't on there for some reason) WC seems pretty bus-speed sensitive, so an AM 5x86 might not fare any better than a 120. (at 4x40 MHz, it'd obviously win and probably beat the Pentium 100 there)
WCIII or IV would probably be interesting ones to compare 6x86(and MX) performance on too given the lack of pentium-specific optimization (or FPU requirement). And K5, K6, Winchip ... Cyrix 5x86. Though I do wonder if they frame-locked it to 30 FPS given the very gradual gains at higher performance levels on that list, and nothing breaking 30 FPS.
I'd also suspect WC (and pretty much every other non-FPU utilizing 3D game) sticks with 16-bit integer math for the 3D vertex handling given it tended to be considerably faster than 32-bit (and 32-bit integer mul/div was slower on the 486 than single precision floating mul/div ... more dramatically worse on the Pentium, and still noticeably worse on AMD and Cyrix's chips -packed 16-bit multiply using MMX may have also been one of the few areas MMX could have been faster than FPU-optimized 3D, if you were willing to drop the precision -the N64's Vector coprocessor used packed 16-bit integer math too). This is probably also the reason very few 486-optimized games used the FPU at all, even when basically any CPU fast enough to run the game playably also had an FPU.
Huh ... would've made a FPU-less socket 5 CPU kind of interesting, 586SX if you will. (like if NexGen had released the Nx586 in Socket 5 format -the only FPU-less 586/686 class CPU on the market, plus it was out in 1994)
