In GLQuake, GL = OpenGL or Glide ?
Gerald Gutierrez
Hi all.
I'm planning on purchasing a new computer and as such have been looking
into video cards and GLQuake, seeing as it is a high-profile game and
used as THE game to demonstrate a card's capabilities. I had always thought
that GLQuake stood for "OpenGL Quake", but searching for glquake, I
instead got tons of "Glide Quake" pages for 3Dfx cards. What's the deal ?
Assuming that GL means OpenGL, does this mean that GLQuake can be played
on any system that has OpenGL, whether it is software or hardware ? I'd
like to get a good 3D card that allows me to do OpenGL, but I'd like to
have the card be able to run the popular programs today as well. How do I
go about finding a good card that does this ?
I have another question regarding 3Dfx Glide and OpenGL. Which is "higher
level" ? Does OpenGL provide a good hardware abstraction API which can be
used on top of 3D cards ? If so how come so many people write their
programs directly on top of Glide, thus making their programs work on
only one vendor's chipset ?
Thanks.
go...@berkelium.com.xyzzy
gut...@unixg.ubc.ca (Gerald Gutierrez) writes:
>> I'm planning on purchasing a new computer and as such have been looking
>> into video cards and GLQuake, seeing as it is a high-profile game and
>> used as THE game to demonstrate a card's capabilities. I had always thought
>> that GLQuake stood for "OpenGL Quake", but searching for glquake, I
>> instead got tons of "Glide Quake" pages for 3Dfx cards. What's the deal ?
Yes, it is OpenGL Quake. There is no Glide version of Quake, although
3DFx's initial support was a OpenGL-like driver layered on Glide. I'm
not sure if their full OpenGL implementation (in beta) is also layered
on Glide, or is native.
>> Assuming that GL means OpenGL, does this mean that GLQuake can be played
>> on any system that has OpenGL, whether it is software or hardware?
Yes and no. Any system with a decent OpenGL implementation will be
able to run GLQuake, but in practical terms you need a fast enough
card for it to be playable.
>> I'd like to get a good 3D card that allows me to do OpenGL, but
>> I'd like to have the card be able to run the popular programs
>> today as well. How do I go about finding a good card that does
>> this ?
Good candidates include boards based on the NVidia RIVA 128 (OpenGL
driver in public alpha), 3DFx Voodoo (driver in private beta), and
3Dlabs Permedia 2 (driver available now).
Riva - fast 2D and 3D
Voodoo - fast 3D, no 2D (requires a seperate 2D controller and a
passthrough cable)
Permedia 2 - 2D and 3D, not as fast as the above.
Personally I recommend the Riva, but you must take that with a grain
of salt, since I work for NVidia. :-)
>> I have another question regarding 3Dfx Glide and OpenGL. Which is "higher
>> level" ? Does OpenGL provide a good hardware abstraction API which can be
>> used on top of 3D cards ? If so how come so many people write their
>> programs directly on top of Glide, thus making their programs work on
>> only one vendor's chipset ?
OpenGL is a superset of Glide. At the back end, OpenGL is potentially
as low level as Glide, e.g. most implementations write state and
vertex data directly to registers. But OpenGL includes a full
geometry pipeline, which is implemented in software on today's
consumer hardware, and unsupported rasterization modes (e.g. enabling
stencil planes) transparently fall back to software. Glide is a
rasterization-only API with support only for those features supported
by the Voodoo.
Game developers like Glide because its fast and easy to use. Some
might have used OpenGL if drivers were available earlier, and many
will probably use OpenGL for their next project, now that driver
support is becoming a reality. The only alternative available at the
time was Direct3D, which to many is unbearable.
OS-Dev
Gerald Gutierrez wrote in message <66kfq5$rnr$1...@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca>...
>Hi all.
>
>I'm planning on purchasing a new computer and as such have been looking
>into video cards and GLQuake, seeing as it is a high-profile game and
>used as THE game to demonstrate a card's capabilities. I had always thought
>that GLQuake stood for "OpenGL Quake", but searching for glquake, I
>instead got tons of "Glide Quake" pages for 3Dfx cards. What's the deal ?
>
>Assuming that GL means OpenGL, does this mean that GLQuake can be played
>on any system that has OpenGL, whether it is software or hardware ? I'd
>like to get a good 3D card that allows me to do OpenGL, but I'd like to
>have the card be able to run the popular programs today as well. How do I
>go about finding a good card that does this ?
>
>I have another question regarding 3Dfx Glide and OpenGL. Which is "higher
>level" ? Does OpenGL provide a good hardware abstraction API which can be
>used on top of 3D cards ? If so how come so many people write their
>programs directly on top of Glide, thus making their programs work on
>only one vendor's chipset ?
GL means OpenGL, but currently, 3dfx's opengl is only enough to run glquake,
and won't run any other apps (not even windows screensavers). However, the
3dfx full opengl is in beta, so should be out soonish I hope. OpenGL is much
higer that glide. OpenGL is for rendering objects, and glide simply renders
triangles. People use glide because they believe that if they write a 3d lib
directed
espescially for there game (unlike the more generic opengl) it will be
faster, and
it probably usually is. Also, there is no dos opengl.
-Josh
go...@berkelium.com.xyzzy
"OS-Dev" <os-...@effect.nospam.net.au> writes:
>> GL means OpenGL, but currently, 3dfx's opengl is only enough to
>> run glquake, and won't run any other apps (not even windows
>> screensavers). However, the 3dfx full opengl is in beta, so should
>> be out soonish I hope.
This is correct.
>> OpenGL is much higer that glide. OpenGL is for rendering objects,
>> and glide simply renders triangles.
This is not correct. The basic primitives in OpenGL include lines,
points, triangles, and bitmapped images. All geometry primitives are
constructed from individual vertices, which are transformed (or not)
according to the specified matrices. Rasterization modes (e.g. blending,
texture mapping, dithering) are explicitly enabled or disabled.
Higher level scene graph API's (e.g. Inventor, OpenGL++) render
objects, but at the lowest level, OpenGL and Glide are analogous.
>> People use glide because they believe that if they write a 3d lib
>> directed espescially for there game (unlike the more generic
>> opengl) it will be faster, and it probably usually is.
The performance difference between a Glide app and an OpenGL app using
the same features on the same hardware would be marginal at best, once
tuned OpenGL drivers are available. There were no OpenGL drivers
available at the time today's Glide-based games were started, tuned or
otherwise.
>> Also, there is no dos opengl.
There is a DOS version of the OpenGL-like Mesa library, and I believe
it has a driver for 3DFx (layered on Glide, of course).
toto
i want use my viper 330 for glquake, but the driver don't want work.
this is the message of direct3d:
i use the glquake V 0.95
post message in this newsgroups or l...@club-internet.fr
begin 666 glquake.gif
<encoded_portion_removed>
end
toto
i want use my viper 330 for glquake, but the driver don't want work.
this is the message of direct3d:
i use the glquake V 0.95
post message in this newsgroups or l...@club-internet.fr
for kervern jean-marie
Brian Shields
toto wrote:
>
> i want use my viper 330 for glquake, but the driver don't want work.
> this is the message of direct3d:
> i use the glquake V 0.95
>
> post message in this newsgroups or l...@club-internet.fr
>
Hi there,
I also have a Viper V330. You'll want to try:
a) get thew latest version. I think a new alpha version was released a
couple of weeks ago. I can't remember the page I got it off, but it's
called "Riva Zone" or something. All I remember is I put "Riva 128" as
my search sting...
b) Make sure that you're in 16bit colour depth. It seems to be able to
switch screen size but not depth (same as old DDraw stuff).
Also, be warned the drivers suck bigtime. They run slower on my P2-233
with an AGP card than on my P90 with a 3dfx (25 vs 27fps average on
demo1). They're VERY provisional, and can crash horibly in 1024x768
(actually I thing this may be down to running out of memory - 1024x768x2
x3(front, back, Z buffer)>4meg, but there's no warning).
- Brian
--
Brian Shields
Birmingham University School of Computer Science
Please remove 'SPAMMEANDDIE' from my address to reply
Gerald Gutierrez
: >> Assuming that GL means OpenGL, does this mean that GLQuake can be played
: >> on any system that has OpenGL, whether it is software or hardware?
: Yes and no. Any system with a decent OpenGL implementation will be
: able to run GLQuake, but in practical terms you need a fast enough
: card for it to be playable.
I see. The reason I ask is because I'd like to try Quake for my first
time when I get my video card, and it'd be really great if I can see it
really fast ( another reason is I'd like to do some OpenGL programming
later. ) I infer from the above that GLQuake runs on top of the OpenGL
implementation on Windows, and this leads me to another question. On
Tom's Hardware page, it lists the Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro card as
performing THREE times as fast as any other card on its 3D OpenGL
benchmark. Does this mean that, given I have a sufficiently
fast processor and the 3dlabs Permedia 2 drivers ( and the benchmark is
accurate ), GLQuake will perform the best on the FireGL card ?
Andrew Ryan Chang
Gerald Gutierrez <gut...@unixg.ubc.ca> wrote:
>: >> Assuming that GL means OpenGL, does this mean that GLQuake can be played
>: >> on any system that has OpenGL, whether it is software or hardware?
>
>: Yes and no. Any system with a decent OpenGL implementation will be
>: able to run GLQuake, but in practical terms you need a fast enough
>: card for it to be playable.
As an aside, I've been told that the Linux GLQuake2 demo was
playable under sw GL. I think the texturing was point-sampled, not
bilinear. OTOH, I didn't get a whole lot of details. <shrug>
>Tom's Hardware page, it lists the Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro card as
>performing THREE times as fast as any other card on its 3D OpenGL
>benchmark. Does this mean that, given I have a sufficiently
>fast processor and the 3dlabs Permedia 2 drivers ( and the benchmark is
>accurate ), GLQuake will perform the best on the FireGL card ?
No, because different apps need different functionality, and some
apps like Quake would benefit from a higher fill rate and better texture
streaming than the Permedia 2 offers. More information can be found on,
say, Brian Hook's .plan (you can find it on websites such as
http://finger.planetquake.com/ ). One post in csiphv said that the game
doesn't take advantage of texture caching.
OTOH, of course, having a full OpenGL implementation like the
Permedia 2 offers is also a nice thing.
followups set to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.video .
--
"_Johann Sebastian Flathead:_ [...] His Symphony #981, the so-called Infinite
Symphony, contained over 60,000 movements; over the course of its only perfor-
mance, several members of the orchestra retired and were replaced by their
children or grandchildren." -Encyclopedia Frobozzica.