3dfx Archive - Rampage dongle

gdonovan YaBB Administrator Offline Infernal Collector Posts: 2361	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #300 - 18.06.13 at 00:51:54 New video coming tonight..
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gdonovan

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Re: Rampage dongle
Reply #301 - 18.06.13 at 03:06:45

Ok some notes tonight.

1) The first shot is clealy a blue screen of death, always at the same address no matter what application is running direct x. Aside from the DX test demos, Direct3D applications run from a few seconds to a minute before blue screening. I reinstalled the sound driver, made no difference. I do have a microsoft DX app running in the control panel that lets me tweak some things, no difference there either.

2) Next is a desktop shot showing what is on the Voodoo 3 tab- gamma controls work fine but clearly the only information shown which is correct is the BIOS revision.

3) Last is a V_control screen using the V-control tool using the V-4500 properties ini, clearly off in the weeds.

Direct Draw and Direct X testing below-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gxf6CUa1wI&feature=youtu.be

Fans on high for friends at VoodooAlert!

Been thinking about why Unreal engine games run when hardware slider is all the way to the left. I thnk Microsoft will default/redirect rendering to either Direct Draw or some sort of software rendering done by the OS which I have seen mentioned on some MS docs.

I have run Half Life in Direct 3D and software modes and they clearly look different than "Direct 3D with slider all the way to the left" if you know what I mean.

Have a good one, I'm off to bed.

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Loeschzwerg

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Re: Rampage dongle
Reply #302 - 18.06.13 at 08:53:21

gdonovan wrote on 18.06.13 at 03:06:45:

Been thinking about why Unreal engine games run when hardware slider is all the way to the left. I thnk Microsoft will default/redirect rendering to either Direct Draw or some sort of software rendering done by the OS which I have seen mentioned on some MS docs.

I have run Half Life in Direct 3D and software modes and they clearly look different than "Direct 3D with slider all the way to the left" if you know what I mean.

Have a good one, I'm off to bed.

Slider to the left means no 3D hardware acceleration at all, so all work is done by the CPU.
The slider step by step deactivates the hardware acceleration from D3D to DirectDraw (2D acceleration) to completely off. The first thing you will notice when 3D acceleration is deactivated, the texture filtering is bad as hell... no bilinear filtering is applied.

More or less, the "Software rendering" mode within the UT engine is doing the same, it doesn't make use of any Direct3D/OpenGL/Gilde API hardware acceleration.

If the gamma control tab works correctly you should be able to boost the brightness a little more. This is what worked fine for me when using my S3 5400e.

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« Last Edit: 18.06.13 at 08:58:20 by Loeschzwerg »

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gdonovan YaBB Administrator Offline Infernal Collector Posts: 2361	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #303 - 18.06.13 at 11:10:16 Quote: Slider to the left means no 3D hardware acceleration at all, so all work is done by the CPU. Ah, here lies my confusion. The "tunnel test" is a directx only application (no software mode) and unreal shows that it is in Direct X mode. How is this possible?
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gdonovan

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Re: Rampage dongle
Reply #304 - 18.06.13 at 11:13:10

Loeschzwerg wrote on 18.06.13 at 08:53:21:

If the gamma control tab works correctly you should be able to boost the brightness a little more. This is what worked fine for me when using my S3 5400e.

Yes gamma control does work, the games look better/brighter (till they BSOD) chuckle.

I'll try to take some comparitive screenshots in Half Life tonight..

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Loeschzwerg

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Re: Rampage dongle
Reply #305 - 18.06.13 at 11:44:44

gdonovan wrote on 18.06.13 at 11:10:16:

Quote:

Slider to the left means no 3D hardware acceleration at all, so all work is done by the CPU.

Ah, here lies my confusion.

The "tunnel test" is a directx only application (no software mode) and unreal shows that it is in Direct X mode.

How is this possible?

Using DirectX as API and making use of hardware acceleration are two different pair of boots

Slider to the left just means the GPU won't accelerate anything, but DirectX itself is still available to the "CPU", at least to some point of functionset.

That's why the DirectDraw-Test is still available, but the Direct3D not.

Unreal shows DirectX cause it still detects the API itself (which is still available, just the acceleration has been deactivated).

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gdonovan YaBB Administrator Offline Infernal Collector Posts: 2361	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #306 - 18.06.13 at 12:03:38 Quote: That's why the DirectDraw-Test is still available, but the Direct3D not. Actually I think when it is all the way to the left, directdraw is grayed out. Will double check tonight.. I'll add it to my work list..
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Loeschzwerg Senior Member Offline AAlchemy PSU maker :-) Posts: 396 Germany -> Bavaria -> Augsburg Gender:	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #307 - 18.06.13 at 12:18:37 DirectDraw still works, but choppy. This also makes sense, cause without DirectDraw functions Windows couldn't display any icons, cursor or windows.
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gdonovan

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Re: Rampage dongle
Reply #308 - 19.06.13 at 01:43:54

Loeschzwerg wrote on 18.06.13 at 12:18:37:

DirectDraw still works, but choppy. This also makes sense, cause without DirectDraw functions Windows couldn't display any icons, cursor or windows.

1) You are correct, Direct Draw is still there.

Pictures above, some curious results.

First was in software mode, then in direct3d with (hardware acceleration) slider to the right, then direct3d with slider to the left. You can see clear differences in the rendering.

I had about a second to get the screenshot in full direct3d before it locked up, took about 3 tries to get it.

Fooled about with some other D3D titles with not much luck, going back to the Rashly drivers made no difference. Both can run the DX 7 and 8 test in the DX control panel but thats about it.

I bet the code is pretty messy and tweaked to just pretty much run them. (proof of concept/starting point perhaps)

Fooled around with Quake 3 too, going to dink around with some command line parameters and see if I can make anything happen.

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« Last Edit: 19.06.13 at 01:47:14 by gdonovan »

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Loeschzwerg

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Re: Rampage dongle
Reply #309 - 19.06.13 at 07:51:12

gdonovan wrote on 19.06.13 at 01:43:54:

First was in software mode, then in direct3d with (hardware acceleration) slider to the right, then direct3d with slider to the left. You can see clear differences in the rendering.

[quote='gdonovan','index.php?page=Thread&postID=344620#post344620']First was in software mode, then in direct3d with (hardware acceleration) slider to the right, then direct3d with slider to the left. You can see clear differences in the rendering. [/quote]

Very interesting pics, but I wouldn't give too much on them.

My assumption: The CPU is much slower when it comes to 3D rendering than GPUs. This means the developers had to cut down the image quality (Software Mode) so Half Life can run smooth using the CPU. We are speaking of the year 1998, fast CPUs were very expensive back then and ~200-300MHz mostly common. This would describe the difference between the ingame software mode and the DX software mode.

Can you post the Quake3 error message that gives the engine?

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NitroX infinity YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 1936 The Netherlands Gender:	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #310 - 19.06.13 at 08:00:37 Is it bad that I like the sharpness of the textures in software mode?
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Loeschzwerg Senior Member Offline AAlchemy PSU maker :-) Posts: 396 Germany -> Bavaria -> Augsburg Gender:	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #311 - 19.06.13 at 08:08:13 Point sampling vs Bilinear filtering It does look sharper indeed, but also very pixelated and when the image is in motion the whole scene is very bumpy. The sharpness comes back with trilinear and anisotropic filtering.
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gdonovan

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Re: Rampage dongle
Reply #312 - 19.06.13 at 10:29:32

Quote:

Very interesting pics, but I wouldn't give too much on them.

Ha, I thought they were dull pictures (aside from the rendering details) but that is what I was looking for- A simple area with a minimum of textures and polygons but with some contrasting items.

Loeschzwerg wrote on 19.06.13 at 07:51:12:

Can you post the Quake3 error message that gives the engine?

Same as last year "failed to find appropriate pixel format" and shuts down.

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« Last Edit: 19.06.13 at 10:40:07 by gdonovan »

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m14radu God Member Offline Take your chance ! Posts: 555 Timisoara, Romania Gender:	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #313 - 19.06.13 at 18:28:38 Did you try using another opengl32.dll file from Mesafx or Metabyte ?
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gdonovan YaBB Administrator Offline Infernal Collector Posts: 2361	Re: Rampage dongle Reply #314 - 19.06.13 at 22:27:47 m14radu wrote on 19.06.13 at 18:28:38: Did you try using another opengl32.dll file from Mesafx or Metabyte ? Already have even though I know its pointless. Rampage was a break 3d wise from the voodoo graphics->VSA-101 architecture and was designed as a native DX8 part.
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