Usually game developers want a system where they only have to code for one standard rather than several ones - and in the late 90s this became true. In this period, however, the first DXes were very inefficient and suffered much criticism. Glide might have only communicated with Voodoos but it did it directly to them meaning it was faster. This, in conjunction with the cards raw performance meant the Voodoo was irresistible to gamers and due to this, the whole industry incorporated Glide. Glide was a major modification of OpenGL, another neutral API that predated and went on to rival Direct3D. It was created by the high end workstation manufacturer SGI and was expanded by a number of hardware and software developers - OpenGL was the closest you could get to an altruistic 3D API. Even though it continues to operate today, if it had been more successful in fending off the supreme power of Microsoft, we wouldn't be stuck with the issue of having to buy the error ridden OS that is Vista to play the best looking games (FSX, Crysis, Bioshock etc). Another 3DFX achievement of the late 90s was the custom MiniGL driver which meant OpenGL games could harness the power of the Voodoo - specifically the then new game release, Quake. The card's close relationship with the game that popularised online deathmatches and true 3D gaming - unlike Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, which adopted a 3D viewpoint when facing straight ahead - only reinforced the card's must have "cred".
As 3D gaming expanded, 3DFX's rule seemed less assailable. The Voodoo 2 was a refinement of the first chip, and made some image quality forfeits like no 32-bit colour support and no 800x600+ resolution support - however, it still offered unrivalled raw performance. The Voodoo Rush was able to cope with both 2D and 3D rendering, although there was a noticeable decrease in 3D performance, the Rush was an appealing upgrade. SLI - before nVidia had even got to it - had established the hardcore gaming enthusiast. 2x Voodoo 2s in one PC meant more FPS and ultra sharp 1024x768 resolution.
Final article to be continued...
1 comment:
that dosn't sound like u wrote it...
it dosn't sound like u atall
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