I'm gearing up for a long overdue playthrough of Diablo II, and I'm noticing that a lot of people play the game with Glide wrappers these days. Is there a reason for this? The Glide renderer obviously makes sense for 3dfx hardware, but I've never had any problems with the Direct3D renderer on newer cards.
Glide wrappers like nGlide (the best IMHO) are useful for playing Glide-exclusive games. Other than that, might not perceive much difference. Some games may look better with Glide - I remember some people claim games like Unreal Tournament, etc. Diablo II... I don't think there's much difference between Glide and D3D.
Maybe the additional possibility of playing games in Glide mode (that supported it) may bring a different feeling... nostalgia, curiosity, etc.
Haven't really played Diablo 2 much, I'm more of a Diablo 1 guy.
However, I believe D3D can be problematic, I seem to remember hitches and stuttering. People recommend the Glide renderer because it's apparently more stable and smoother in performance. Additionally, maybe you can increase the game's resolution beyond the 800x600 limit using nGlide (although that could prove to be problematic).
There is at least one Diablo 2 game object that does not display correctly in directx but does in glide. Kurast Docks, in the middle somewhere there is a blue sphere on a stand. After a certain quest completion this changes to a dagger if you are using glide but not if you are using directx. Not a big deal except for us perfectionists.
Otherwise I used to be convinced glide did look better and was far smoother on older hardware [not necessarily contemporary with D2 release], but with an lcd screen and modern hardware there is probably not much difference. Of course the dagger issue means I would only use nglide. Glide may be refresh-limited to 25fps [certainly is on glide hardware]? And I'm not sure whether the higher resolution setting [800x600], perspective etc work in directx as well as glide.
I recall that athlon 2000 + voodoo2 + glide gives far smoother gameplay than athlon + mx400 + directx. But I also recall that it was the Lord of Destruction expansion that really seemed to cause the directx renderer problems with choppiness and lags.
More annoying is that 3d sound effects [Aureal A3D] won't be available on modern kit/OS and probably not environmental effects [Creative EAX] either [latter may work with Creative Alchemy, not sure].
glide looks better for diablo 2, exception may be when you force some filters on directx via drivers; also iirc diablo was made for glide in the first place, directx was only an idditional option to widen the potential userbase;
I started a new thread to share my experience with Diablo II's Glide renderer:
