Went back to an old game and got a surprise

[eviltoon]

On my old computer I had a Diamond Monster Voodoo 2. My favourite game to play was Unreal (the original). Being nostalgic I went to play it again. I installed it on my newer P4 system that has a GeForce 2 GTS and nice big 19" monitor. Downloaded the latest patch 2.26 started it up and "my god it looked terrible!". The new patch made it Direct 3D friendly. Yes I could run it at 1600x1200, but it did not have the same smooth edges and subtle lighting effects that I remembered. The Voodoo 2 running at 800x600 looked far superior...Interesting eh?. Power and speed aren't everything.

For anyone in the know, what did 3dfx have going that NVidia didn't? At least up to their GeForce 2 GTS card. And, since I'm looking to get a new card, have NVidia improved in this area. Honestly, the rendering from the Voodoo card was beautiful. I'm probably just flogging a dead horse, but the difference in visual quality has got me quite puzzled.

 

[Mavrick007]

Wasn't the original Unreal using Glide with the Voodoo 2? Glide made for a nice way of doing it, and at the time most of the good games supported it, and Direct 3d, but hardly any did OpenGL. 3dfx lead the 3d gaming industry at one time not too long ago, it's just hard to believe that they're really gone... but maybe, just maybe we'll see something in the next gen of nVidia (nv30) using Glide or some of 3dfx's other techniques. I doubt it though.

 

[YBS1]

Um...you did enable D3D rendering in advanced options didn't you? It does not automatically run under D3D, if it doesn't find a 3dfx card it defaults to software rendering. Software rendering at 1600x1200 would account for the poor image quality. I don't remember a reduction in image quality going from Glide to D3D in Unreal, so I'm guessing this is your problem.

 

[Sk8ter]

Yeah here in Australia the PC mag i buy put the full version of Unreal on the cover disc (they have also done it with Tribes, MOO2 and others). Anyway, on the disc there was a patch for the game and another that made it heaps better for Geforce cards so maybe you could try finding that on the net somewhere.

 

[FalseChristian]

Let's put it this way. Using Direct3D on my 128MB RADEON 8500 oc'ed to 303/606 I only get 43 fps at 1024x768 but using Glide and my Voodoo5-5500 AGP I get 120+ fps. 'Nuff said.

 

[AdamK47]

If you want to play the original Unreal with newer cards, Unreal Gold is the way to go. Moves just as smoothly as Unreal Tournament.

 

[Crapgame]

Rage3D had a Glide emulator that worked on any ATI less than an 8500, I wound up playing all the way through again on "Unreal".

 

[nRollo]

" Let's put it this way. Using Direct3D on my 128MB RADEON 8500 oc'ed to 303/606 I only get 43 fps at 1024x768 but using Glide and my Voodoo5-5500 AGP I get 120+ fps. 'Nuff said. "

Put it this way. If you want to run a bunch of ancient, primitive games that were coded specifically for Glide, because that's all there was at the time, 3dfx is the way to go. 'Nuff said.