Hello 3dfx people,

There is a thing that has been on my mind for along time, but it never found it's way out....

When the VSA-100 series arrived we all knew that it could do 32 Bit 3D with OpenGL and Direct3D and Rave3D for MAC people. but what about 32 Bit Glide, was that in the planning? is that possible and if so what would of been the difference compared to 16Bit Glide and OpenGL 32Bit?

I always thought that the Voodoo4 and 5 cards could do 32Bit Glide But I never seen it in action nor i didn;t even know it would exsist.

Hopefully someone can tell me if 32Bit Glide was or is still possible. :)

Friendly Regards,

Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Hm, I think I played Unreal Tournament in Glide 32bit, but went back to 16bit plus 22bit POST-Filter for performance reasons.

But to be honest, I can't remember 100.0%  :-/

well glide2x games can run only in 16-bit.glide3x games should be able to run in 32-bit,but I know only one game that uses glide3x natively (without an opengl driver),its hitman1,and 32-bit mode doesnt work (reverts to 16-bit)..

hmm okay, so a VSA-100 based card does actually 22Bit 3D and not 32Bit 3D, wow wierd.  :-/

I sure thought I was playing Descent3 @ 32 bit, maybe not. I was more into AA with my voodoo5, made that game look sweet.

In the original Unreal Tournament I can only select 16 bit in glide mode but my driver has a "force 32 bpp" option under the glide section. So I guess it should be possible to play in 32 bit glide. Unfortunately I cant see any difference so its a bit hard to tell if the game is in 32 or 16 bit  :-/

@omega_supreme is correct. ;)

Although @Falcon noted he played UT in 32-bit, the only way to do this is to FORCE 32-bit via 3dfx tools. :(

The menu's in UT only allow 16-bit selection for GLiDE - oh well! ::)

Quote:

well glide2x games can run only in 16-bit.glide3x games should be able to run in 32-bit,but I know only one game that uses glide3x natively (without an opengl driver),its hitman1,and 32-bit mode doesnt work (reverts to 16-bit)..

psycho47, you're right about glide2x (I think). Other games using glide3x are Diablo2, Operation Flashpoint 8)

..well glide3x is capable of 32bit,via an opengl driver (such as wickedgl or mesafx),but I'm not sure if glide3x can do 32bit natively (without an opengl driver).maybe I should check operation flaspoint..

hmm I also heard that a Voodoo card does 22Bit Glide instead of 16Bit, of was that the Glide of a Voodoo3 based card?

22bit is the Analog POST Filter from 3dfx for enhanced 16bit Post-Rendering Image quality enhancements.

It was first introduced with Voodoo3's (and later also available with Voodoo4/5's) and is a selectable Option from the 3dfx Tools.

just checked deus ex (glide2x) with force 32bit enabled,and the game is really running in 32-bit (clear improvement in smoke effects for example).so 32bit glide2x is really possible..

I played the Demo through on the V3 and it looked great! I have the registered version and I'm just waiting for my V5 6K to Play it ;D

It's very peculiar as I do not really see a visual improvement in Unreal Tournament, but I do notice it in almost all my other unreal engine games: Undying, Wheel of Time, Tactical Ops, Rune, Deus Ex.

Probably because U.T. actually has no 32-bit support for GLiDE, whereas DeusEX (as noted by @Psycho47) does indeed have a 32bit mode! 8)

That's all I can think of as to why it doesn't look different in U.T. :P

hmmm very interesting indeed, I'll see if I can do any test's with my Voodoo5 5500 AGP in some other Glide games like Descent3 :) 32Bit Glide is possible if the visuals are different in UT and Tactical Ops. So Descent3 should be nicer also then.

wrote on 01.04.05 at 01:19:28:

Probably because U.T. actually has no 32-bit support for GLiDE, whereas DeusEX (as noted by @Psycho47) does indeed have a 32bit mode! 8) That's all I can think of as to why it doesn't look different in U.T. :P

there are improvements,you just have to know where to look.but they arent big,those engines were optimized for 16-bit.as I mentioned,take a look look at the smoke effects  ;)

If I'm not mistaking 3dfx' 16bit was rendered internal at 22bit, right?

That's not far off from 24bit.

Now for those who are wondering why I'm talking about 24bit;

32bit is 24bit colours with 8bit of transparency stuff.

So if I'm right about the 22bit rendering, then it's not really a wonder why there's little difference between 3dfx' 16bit and 32bit.

well I installed Windows 2000 Pro + SP4 and Amigamerlin 3.1 R6 and I force 32Bit Glide and ran Unreal Tournament Game Of the Year Edition 4.36 and I found out that 32Bit Glide forced by the driver lokked abit darker than 16 Bit Glide of the  Voodoo5 it's self. so 32Bit Glide is possible, but sometimes in the menu's my 2D get's abit fuzzy and the screen flickers alittle.