Glide Wrapper

[Gator]

Originally posted by The Baron
Tribes fanboys. They're completely full of ****--a friend of mine wanted me to build him a computer--a 2Ghz P4 with a gig of RAM, RAID, and a Voodoo3 for Tribes. I refused.

ROFL!

Well, as an alternative you could have built him that rig but instead of the Voodoo3, give him a modern video card like the FX5900 or R9800, then simply combine that with a Voodoo2, or two Voodoo2's in SLI. I've played with dual Voodoo2's with my current rig and it works perfectly fine for Glide. As long as you got the PCI slots available and your a diehard Glide fan, Voodoo2 is your savior.

Zivilian, this might be a good fix for you too. Trust me the Voodoo2 works with ANY video card, it doesn't care. Look for them on ebay

Voodoo2 is wonky on XP, I think, which is the only drawback.

But I'd still like one so I could dual-boot--95% of hard drive for XP, 5% for DOS.

[Gator]

Originally posted by The Baron
Voodoo2 is wonky on XP, I think, which is the only drawback.

But I'd still like one so I could dual-boot--95% of hard drive for XP, 5% for DOS.

Voodoo2 works perfectly fine on XP. Trust me I've used it extensively with WinXP. All you gotta do is install the standard Win2k Voodoo2 drivers from http://www.voodoofiles.com and upon reboot if you get an error message, just use a Startup Control Panel or similar program to remove "Voodoo2" from the system startup. The driver will STILL load, and it works great, even in SLI mode.

[Rob_0126]

Originally posted by Gator
Voodoo2 works perfectly fine on XP. Trust me I've used it extensively with WinXP. All you gotta do is install the standard Win2k Voodoo2 drivers from http://www.voodoofiles.com and upon reboot if you get an error message, just use a Startup Control Panel or similar program to remove "Voodoo2" from the system startup. The driver will STILL load, and it works great, even in SLI mode.

What exactly does the V2 SLI mode do for a fast computer these days?

About Glide; I thought Glide was a better API than Direct X, but Opengl is more flexible.
It's sad that Glide was 3dfx exclusive

I liked glide. When I played Unreal Tournament, I could tell a big difference in DX mode and Glide mode; it just looked better, especially the lighting effects. But now, thats ancient history.

Robert

[RAY16]

When nVidia bought 3DFX, didn't they get the rights to the Glide API? If so, they should update it a little and add it to future cards just for the sake of backward compatibility.

[Gator]

Originally posted by Rob_0126
What exactly does the V2 SLI mode do for a fast computer these days?

About Glide; I thought Glide was a better API than Direct X, but Opengl is more flexible.
It's sad that Glide was 3dfx exclusive

I liked glide. When I played Unreal Tournament, I could tell a big difference in DX mode and Glide mode; it just looked better, especially the lighting effects. But now, thats ancient history.

Robert

SLI is still useful when you consider the Voodoo2 only has 12mb of texture space. By using SLI, it doubles to 24mb. This is not alot when you compare it to modern day cards, so 12mb vs 24mb can make the difference between using 640x480 resolution vs 800x600 resolution. The fastest CPU in the world isn't gonna help you if your video card is limited . I've actually experimented with single vs dual SLI voodoo2, and I would actually see the jump in FPS rates.

And glide was good, but it had some set backs including only 16bit color support and not 24bit or 32bit. You can force 32bit with the Voodoo5, but it still isn't really supported. The truth is Glide is good for games written for glide such as Unreal Tournament, but Opengl is good enough now that so long as you have an updated renderer it can outperform Glide. I run UT at 1024x768 @ 32bit color @ 85hz in Opengl... which is something Glide could never handle

I recommend the Voodoo2 for Glide fans though, because it's a hell of a lot easier to get working than some of the Glide wrappers, and this way it's GENUINE Glide

[Rob_0126]

Originally posted by Gator
SLI is still useful when you consider the Voodoo2 only has 12mb of texture space. By using SLI, it doubles to 24mb. This is not alot when you compare it to modern day cards, so 12mb vs 24mb can make the difference between using 640x480 resolution vs 800x600 resolution. The fastest CPU in the world isn't gonna help you if your video card is limited . I've actually experimented with single vs dual SLI voodoo2, and I would actually see the jump in FPS rates.

And glide was good, but it had some set backs including only 16bit color support and not 24bit or 32bit. You can force 32bit with the Voodoo5, but it still isn't really supported. The truth is Glide is good for games written for glide such as Unreal Tournament, but Opengl is good enough now that so long as you have an updated renderer it can outperform Glide. I run UT at 1024x768 @ 32bit color @ 85hz in Opengl... which is something Glide could never handle

I recommend the Voodoo2 for Glide fans though, because it's a hell of a lot easier to get working than some of the Glide wrappers, and this way it's GENUINE Glide

Cool.

Hey, I wonder what if, 3dfx was one of the v card giants now, instead of nividia?

Robert

[D.K.Tronics]

There are a couple of Glide wrappers worth mentioning.

Glidos, is a wrapper mostly for DOS glide games. It runs many of the old DOS glide games rather well, but it's shareware, and costs £10/$10.
In particular, is it's ability to run Tombraider 1, in a new "Hi-Res" state. It looks amazing, far superior to what it used to look like. It also comes with a windows GLIDE2X.DLL, which will work on many windows games.

http://www.resonantedge.com/trx/



http://www.glidos.net/

But the best of all of them is a wrapper called dgVoodoo, written by a guy from Hungary. Unfortunately, he is doing service for his country, so development is suspended for a while.
Another downside, is that the DOS side of his wrapper only works in Win9x. But his windows wrapper works fine in any windows.
The DOS wrapper is ran through a clever server, that runs in the background. When you run a DOS glide game, the server picks it up and routes it through your DirectX drivers. So you can use all the loverly AA and AF, to make your glide games look better than before.
Compatibility, is great. DOS games work a treat. And windows games work superbly. Even my beloved 'Outlaws' from Lucasarts, works superb.

http://dege.fw.hu/

Only downside for me, is that ATI's drivers, in WinME, are appalling for DOS Glide. Whenever a DOS session is closed, you are left with a complete graphical mess of your desktop. And a complete reboot is required.
Nvidia's drivers are fine, as I tested this on my old PC with a Ti4600.

[Rob_0126]

Originally posted by D.K.Tronics
There are a couple of Glide wrappers worth mentioning.

Glidos, is a wrapper mostly for DOS glide games. It runs many of the old DOS glide games rather well, but it's shareware, and costs £10/$10.
In particular, is it's ability to run Tombraider 1, in a new "Hi-Res" state. It looks amazing, far superior to what it used to look like. It also comes with a windows GLIDE2X.DLL, which will work on many windows games.

http://www.resonantedge.com/trx/



http://www.glidos.net/

But the best of all of them is a wrapper called dgVoodoo, written by a guy from Hungary. Unfortunately, he is doing service for his country, so development is suspended for a while.
Another downside, is that the DOS side of his wrapper only works in Win9x. But his windows wrapper works fine in any windows.
The DOS wrapper is ran through a clever server, that runs in the background. When you run a DOS glide game, the server picks it up and routes it through your DirectX drivers. So you can use all the loverly AA and AF, to make your glide games look better than before.
Compatibility, is great. DOS games work a treat. And windows games work superbly. Even my beloved 'Outlaws' from Lucasarts, works superb.

http://dege.fw.hu/

Only downside for me, is that ATI's drivers, in WinME, are appalling for DOS Glide. Whenever a DOS session is closed, you are left with a complete graphical mess of your desktop. And a complete reboot is required.
Nvidia's drivers are fine, as I tested this on my old PC with a Ti4600.

Tomb Raider 1 came with those high res textures?

Robert

Originally posted by Rob_0126
Tomb Raider 1 came with those high res textures?

Robert

No. It was a restoration project.

[Greg]

I'm not being real helpful, but I used to own a S3 Savage4 card and I'm sure the driver came with a D3D Glide emulator. If that driver set is still floating around it could possibly be useful.

[EciDemon]

Creative used to have a glide wrapper for there 3dblaster cards (TNT 1 and 2, also savage I think) But they only worked on creative cards as the drivers checked what gfx card you have installed before the drivers were installed.
But then again, back when I used to have a Creative tnt 1 that wrapper didnt work good ... but still better then the rest of them.
After v1.2 I think those were discontinued anyways ....