Is it just me, or does Unreal + Glide = Ugly?

[HannibalX]

I have never played Unreal in anything but Glide up until today becuase I had a Voodoo3 3000. So now with my Viper II I run it today, go into options/advanced options/driver/display and switched it to D3D.

When I got back into Unreal I was blow away! Watching the Castle Flyby was awesome, much better looking than Glide ever was. Man I guess I didn't know what I was missing. Then I tried out S3 MeTaL, and it's even better than D3D, I have never seen textures look so detailed. Man I don't care what 3dfx owners say, 32 bit MAKES a difference.

I was dissapointed though, OpenGL looked like sure Shizzat!

Unreal + 32 Bit + MeTaL = Drool!

 

[HannibalX]

Well even before the new drivers, in Unreal you could change the detail bias under glide settings, it just looks cleaner and richer in MeTaL. In my opinion.

 

[Jaraxal]

I have a Voodoo 3 2000 (o/c to 3000 speeds) and I was running UT in glide mode. I decided to check it out under D3D (DX8 Beta) and I was impressed with the quality improvement. The game just looks better in D3D.

My frame rates are roughly the same, so I hardly lost any speed in doing so.

 

[sandorski]

Metal does kick Glide's butt in UT and Unreal(although I haven't seen it in Unreal).

 

[HannibalX]

Yeah it's a tad jerky :|

 

[Soccerman]

heh I gotta try this, thoug I should get a faster CPU first.. my K6-2 400@420 just can't handle Unreal that well.. mmm.. need new CPU.

 

[HannibalX]

My K6-II 450 with the Viper II bairly gets it done @ 800/600 max detail.

 

[Napalm]

Any links to DirectX 8.0?

Napalm

 

[Mem]

Careful Paulson you will get some Voodoo owners upset.
LOL.........

 

[SSP]

So..... finally 3dfxer agrees that 32bit color does make a difference in quality. I don?t know how you guys can use 16bit color... I hate it

 

[Mem]

Paulson,what about 128 bit colour or 256 bit colour,when will it stop?

 

[Soccerman]

no I believe it stops at 32 bit, becuase every visible color is shown at 24 bit even, 32 bit just adds transparency to the mix.

EDIT: I tried it (Direct 3D mode in Unreal Tournament), but for some reason I saw no noticeable difference in terms of visuals. there was a small amount of more stuttering I THINK. I don't know for sure...

 

[Mem]

True,I read also after 32 bit the eye cannot tell the difference.

 

[Eug]

I dunno, but I think on the intro flyby the V3 in UT sucks, even though I have never seen it on a better card. I am not surprised at all that other cards would look better in 32 bit.

However, I still can't get myself to spend $250+ on a vid card.

 

[skullcap]

Does MeTaL work with a GeForce card? I wanna try it badly since UT runs at 30 fps on my geforce... Is there some kind of metal wrapper for me to use so it can work with my geforce?

 

[Shazam]

Multiple texture passes will require more bits to prevent artifacting. 64-128 bit color is coming precisely for this reason.

 

[Soccerman]

well we already know that S3 card has 32 bit, the question is, as it always has been, how are the drivers? stable enough? next to me, would be how does it perform compared to the V3?

Now about that 64 bit color, I'm pretty sure 32 bit already has those extra bits for multitexturing, becuase the amount of colours displayed in 24 bit and 32 bit is the same, it's just that 32 bit adds transparency abilities (which would be part of multitexturing).

And, now, how come I never saw a difference between Glide, and Direct 3D in UT on the flyby. I also think that flyby sucks ass. I mean, compare it to the original UT flyby of the castle... that was a looker!

On second thought, it could have been the settings that the computer used automatically. because this computer isn't that great, I have to have some of the settings turned down, like the texture settings and the object detail. I'll try turning em up, but watch that demo run to a standstill!

 

[HannibalX]

No MeTaL only works on S3 cards, it's a proprietary API much like Glide, but better.

I guess the GF owners lucked out on this one, S3 has always had the best 3D picture quality.

 

[Soccerman]

oh ok, Metal was an API..

Well hold on, what do you mean by GF card owners lucked out??

Paulson, how come you changed back? describe your problems...

 

[HannibalX]

I mean its sad that Metal isn't a universal API that the GF could use becuase it would be much faster than S3 card.

 

[KarlHungus]

Soccerman -

64 bit color would be used internally, the output could still be 32 bits. The advantage of the extra bits are the reduced artifacting this provides. If all calculations are run at 32 bits internally there is a large chance of roundoff error -> a good example is losing 2 bits of accuracy when using 4x FSAA. Now, if the same frame was rendered internally with 64 bits of color accuracy those artifacts would be eliminated. 64 bits will not be a major jump in quality (like 16 to 32), but should provide some benefits.

 

[piku]

64-bit color is coming. Why?

BECAUSE CARMACK SAID SO!!!!!

hehe. But its true, as hardware makers acctually listen to him. I couldn't imagine anything higher.

 

[BoberFett]

When they talk about 64 bit graphics processing, I don't think they're referring to the color depth, but the ZBuffer depth.

 

[Soccerman]

I can see Z Buffer depth, and geometry processing being 64 bits (for more accuracy), but that's all I can think it would be useful.

You want to know why more bits equals more accuracy? well decimals (floating point numbers) tend to need alot of bits to get into accurate numbers, so you need to be able to calculate up to, say 32 bit accuracy or in this case 64 bit accuracy, so that polygon popups and the like don't occur.

This is visible on 16 bit cards if I'm not mistaken, like Homeworld, when I'm a fair distance away from the mothership, I can sometimes see through one side of it (with my Voodoo 3).

BTW, I still don't see 64 bit colour. what artifacting IS there in 32 bit color? I certainly don't see dithering or banding.. what ARTIFACTs are there at 32 bit?

 

[HannibalX]

Just OC your card a tad and they will become more aparent.