Glide survey (sorta)

Preacher

Preacher

Swabbie
Banned
Just wondering, y'all:

Those of you who've played WCP in Glide mode AND one or more of the other available modes (DirectX, etc.); do you find Glide to be graphically superior to the other modes/API's for WCP, inferior, or roughly equivalent?....

(personally, I've ONLY played it in Glide and one other mode, only it was so long ago I can't recall which of the other modes. All I remember is that Glide was superior to that one other mode--wish I could recall which other mode...)
 
Originally posted by Ghost
Glide is the 3dfx API or something like that
Click to expand...
To clarify: Yes, Glide is 3Dfx's own proprietary graphix API. I was pretty impressed with it. I'm just wonderin' how the other modes compare (in WCP), to figure out if I should hunt down a Voodoo card of some type to put in my "dream box" for playing WC games (well, WCP, anyway...).
 
My ols Voodomania had Better Graphics (cause it was Glide-compatimple) than my new Geforce4 Ti 4600 ?????.... :(
 
Originally posted by TCSTigersClaw
My ols Voodomania had Better Graphics (cause it was Glide-compatimple) than my new Geforce4 Ti 4600 ?????.... :(
Click to expand...

Yup; at least better for WCP (IIRC, also for other Glide compatible games as well). There was some sort of Glide "wrapper" program(s) out there at one point that would allow you to run Glide graphix on non-3Dfx cards, but as I recall, the reliability of same was kinda dicey. Oh, well....
 
Its actually hard to say which looks better, glide or d3d. WC Prophecy was written specifically for glide/3dfx. In WCP you miss 2 effects, lens flare and fogging with d3d. In SO (or in the patched (inofficial) version of WCP) it is only the fogging that is missing. Now ignoring the texture alignement bug some people have in d3d there are however also downsides to glide mode:
Both, glide and d3d need to create transparent effects and need to mixture colors. Glide does it by some kind of regular pattern that results in a banding effect (slight horizontal lines). The nvidia cards for example use a dithering effect to do the same. Now it is a matter of taste which looks better for you, for most people (including me) dithering looks better. So if you turn off the fog effect in glide then actually d3d might look better. In the end it really doesn't matter too much anyhow.

PS: Regarding glide on d3d cards: These tools are called GLIDE WRAPPERS. There were/are at least 20 of them around, but none worked for all games/graphic card combinations. Creative once wanted to do an universal wrapper for TNT based cards (also supposed to work on GeForce ones). I don't know what happened to that one as you needed a TNT2 card to be allowed to betatest.
 
Originally posted by cff
...downsides to glide mode:
Both, glide and d3d need to create transparent effects and need to mixture colors. Glide does it by some kind of regular pattern that results in a banding effect (slight horizontal lines). .., etc. etc.,...

PS: Regarding glide on d3d cards: These tools are called GLIDE WRAPPERS.
Click to expand...

1) Funny, I hadn't noticed any such grafix funkiness when I played in Glide. Guess I'm one of the lucky ones...

2) Yeah, "Glide wrappers" is what I called 'em (unless it's supposed to be in all caps...). Check my original post on that
 
Originally posted by Preacher
1) Funny, I hadn't noticed any such grafix funkiness when I played in Glide. Guess I'm one of the lucky ones...
Click to expand...

? Lucky ones? This effect is there, at least on Voodoo1 cards (never had a better one). You just have to see a V1 parallel to a TNT to see what I mean. But as I said, some people actually like the Voodoo effect better.

But then I am one of that guys that also dislikes the color banding in 16 bit modes which is quite invisible to most people.
 
Originally posted by cff
? Lucky ones? This effect is there, at least on Voodoo1 cards (never had a better one). ..
Click to expand...
I got a Voodoo 2 (12 MB); mebbe that's the difference in my case...
 
Originally posted by TCSTigersClaw
Can I put my old Voodomania with my Geforce4 ?
Click to expand...
Um, what's Voodoomania?...
In any event, if you have a free PCI slot, you should be able to run a 2nd vidcard. The problems incurred would likely be these:

Software:
1) Driver conflicts

Hardware:
2) How do you run one card preferentially over the other when you want?... Assuming you can get past the driver conlicts, the easiest way to handle this would be to get a 2-way VGA switchbox. Using "enhanced" cables (that don't allow signal degradation, or indeed actually ENHANCE the signal), connect your monitor to the I/O (output) port, and each card to the other (input) ports. Label clearly which one goes to which card, and you're in bidness!...
 
Eemm...I have reconsidered and Ill not put the Voodoomania along with my Geforce....:eek: ..
 
Originally posted by Preacher
Um, what's Voodoomania?...
In any event, if you have a free PCI slot, you should be able to run a 2nd vidcard. The problems incurred would likely be these:
Software:
1) Driver conflicts
Hardware:
2) How do you run one card preferentially over the other when you want?... Assuming you can get past the driver conlicts, the easiest way to handle this would be to get a 2-way VGA switchbox. Using "enhanced" cables (that don't allow signal degradation, or indeed actually ENHANCE the signal), connect your monitor to the I/O (output) port, and each card to the other (input) ports. Label clearly which one goes to which card, and you're in bidness!...
Click to expand...

Depends what you define a second vidcard...
If you talk Voodoo1, Voodoo2, then those are pass through cards. No likely driver conflicts, no need for 2 monitors.

If you talk about 2 full vidcards be warned that most (all?) videocards cannot be used to do hardware rendering (D3D,Glide,OpenGL) if they are the secondary card.

So your monitor advice doesn't do a thing. The second card won't do hardware rendering. The only workaround is to get a motherboard that supports the change of the graphic initialisation order from AGP to PCI. Then if you want to use your PCI card, shutdown the PC, enter the BIOS, switch to PCI and restart.

That is what I do for my 3 graphic cards in one PC.
 
Damn...I dont know anything about using 2 cards...I got a voodoomania and I just want somehow to put it in my motherboard along with my Geforce4 cause I want to play Prophecy/SO with Glide and not Direct3d
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top