Motoracer D3D and S3 Virge?
Royce Liao
I'm trying to get the US demo of Motoracer to use the Direct3D
acceleration (DEceleration) of my Virge.
So far, I've gotten it to work only with the command-line parameter
DEMO -D3D
^^^ (yes, ALL CAPS otherwise it doesn't work!)
Unfortunately, instead of getting a smooth "x fps" running game, I end up
with a "spf" (seconds per frame) demo, say maybe from 1 second per frame
all the way up to 30 seconds pre frame. Am I doing something wrong? I've
tried changing the options "D3D" between "ON", "OFF", and "FILTERED"
OFF gives best performance. ON looks no better than OFF but is extremely
slow, I'd say slide-show performance.
FILTERED looks pleasing (Virge has bilinear filtering), but *sigh*, if I
wanted to see a free-running slide-show (with 1-5 second variable pause
betwen successive frames), I'd just download some screenshots.
Before you all flame me for expecting so much from the Virge decelerator,
let me say that Monster Truck Madness and MDK D3D run normally (by
"normally", I mean anywhere from a very-slow 5 to slow 15 fps, not
ludicrously slow 5 seconds per frame!)
Critical Bill
On 4 Jun 1997 16:35:24 GMT, li...@uci.edu (Royce Liao) wrote:
>FILTERED looks pleasing (Virge has bilinear filtering), but *sigh*, if I
>wanted to see a free-running slide-show (with 1-5 second variable pause
>betwen successive frames), I'd just download some screenshots.
I've had the exact same experience with my card. I don't think
Motoracer actually recognizes the ViRGE as a real 3D card and forces
the game to run in S-L-O-W software rendering mode. This method of D3D
would make a Pentium Pro-200000000 run at 2 fps.:>
The readme file explains how some of the lower-end cards (ViRGE, Rage,
Mystique) may be forced into software mode and may not support all 3D
features. I have a feeling that the game defaults to software 3D upon
any support problem.
Play the game in regular rez, and save up for the Voodoo Hercules
Stingray 3D. I know I am.
-
"Game Drek gives me all the Gaming Grossness (tm) I can handle" - Critical Bill
Royce Liao
Critical Bill (gd...@hotmail.com) wrote:
: The readme file explains how some of the lower-end cards (ViRGE, Rage,
: Mystique) may be forced into software mode and may not support all 3D
: features. I have a feeling that the game defaults to software 3D upon
: any support problem.
Actually, I just downloaded the latest Win95 S3/Virge drivers from
http://www.s3.com. They cure the speed problem...but it looks like S3's
new drivers trade one feature for another.
Now that new S3/Virge drivers support alpha-blending (no more opaque red
rectangles in MDK!), they seem to have lost transparent-texture mapping.
Explosions, circular texture maps now have this black rectangular border
around them, kind of like the Tie-Fighters in the movie Return of the Jedi
when they flew against a ship background (well those were green sqaures,
sorry.)
Looks like that transparent texture-mapping was really bringing down
performance. MDK is actually playable, except for polygons which shift
around. Disabling perspective correction fixes that problem, but turns
the entire ground into a swimming optical illusion.