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I remember buying the Diamond Monster 3D based on 3DFX's voodoo 1 chipset. The hardware was a total hack job! It didn't do desktop 2D graphics at all, so you

by beloch 12y ago

I remember buying the Diamond Monster 3D based on 3DFX's voodoo 1 chipset. The hardware was a total hack job! It didn't do desktop 2D graphics at all, so you still needed a separate card for that. To avoid forcing users to swap plugs on their monitor every time they fired up a 3D application, the Voodoo included a pass-through plug. Yup. You took a short VGA patch cable and plugged the output of your 2D card right into the 3DFX card, and then your monitor into the 3DFX card! Next, games had to be written specifically to take advantage of the 3DFX API (Glide), so gaming support was far from universal. If something as unrefined as the original vooddo was released today it would probably be scoffed at. However, it's also worth noting what a huge leap forward in quality the original voodoo card offered. The original quake was ported to GL so that it could work on the voodoo, and it was a revelation. Many games were subsequently released with wildly different software and Glide (3DFX's API) rendering modes. The original "Grand Theft Auto" in particular looked vastly better under Glide than under software. Before long, game developers started requiring Glide hardware support rather than trying to build software rendered versions of their game. The voodoo cards were such a big leap forward for gaming that they were universally adopted in spite of their problems. After 3DFX folded and the voodoo series fell into obsolescence, it was difficult to play an entire generation of glide-only games for quite some time. Fortunately, despite the fact that Glide was proprietary, a host of different people made glide wrappers, and we can now enjoy Glide optimized games from the comfort of a standard DOSBOX install!

wtallis 12y ago
NVidia's G-Sync is almost as kludgy as Voodoo Graphics. In theory it can be properly taken advantage of by a well-written preexisting game engine, but there are also a ton of games out there that assume a fixed limit of 60FPS and will see no more benefit than if Direct3D were to start doing triple buffering. And the idea of ripping a PCB and power supply out of your monitor and replacing them is definitely as uglier than a VGA patch cable. Fortunately, commercial G-Sync monitors will become available a lot quicker than the 2D-capable Voodoo 3.
- anon4 12y ago
  > a fixed limit of 60FPS These days it's 30fps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1yn5OD5WbM#t=107 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1yn5OD5WbM#t=107
phil21 12y ago
I'm going to say that the hardware implementation wasn't a hack job at all. Their "competitors" at the time had far worse implementations, even if it was a single VGA output (who cares?). This way 3dfx could focus on 3D, and leave 2D to people that cared. 3dfx voodoo1/2 did one thing and did it damned well. They are basically responsible for the 3D revolution in gaming, as before 3dfx you had absolute shit like Matrox and Trident with "3d accelerators" which may as well have not existed. It was as close to a hard requirement as anything at the time for gaming. Voodoo3 was the beginning of the end for 3dfx, and I wouldn't doubt that part of that was having to switch focus to 2d performance as well as 3d. Time to go pull out my old V1/V2/V5500's from storage :)

by beloch 12y ago

wtallis 12y ago

NVidia's G-Sync is almost as kludgy as Voodoo Graphics. In theory it can be properly taken advantage of by a well-written preexisting game engine, but there are also a ton of games out there that assume a fixed limit of 60FPS and will see no more benefit than if Direct3D were to start doing triple buffering. And the idea of ripping a PCB and power supply out of your monitor and replacing them is definitely as uglier than a VGA patch cable. Fortunately, commercial G-Sync monitors will become available a lot quicker than the 2D-capable Voodoo 3.

anon4 12y ago
> a fixed limit of 60FPS These days it's 30fps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1yn5OD5WbM#t=107 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1yn5OD5WbM#t=107

phil21 12y ago

I'm going to say that the hardware implementation wasn't a hack job at all. Their "competitors" at the time had far worse implementations, even if it was a single VGA output (who cares?). This way 3dfx could focus on 3D, and leave 2D to people that cared. 3dfx voodoo1/2 did one thing and did it damned well. They are basically responsible for the 3D revolution in gaming, as before 3dfx you had absolute shit like Matrox and Trident with "3d accelerators" which may as well have not existed. It was as close to a hard requirement as anything at the time for gaming. Voodoo3 was the beginning of the end for 3dfx, and I wouldn't doubt that part of that was having to switch focus to 2d performance as well as 3d. Time to go pull out my old V1/V2/V5500's from storage :)