Did Anybody Here Program for Virge?

[swaaye]

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the "olden days", since I've been messing a lot with a little K6 system.

I was wondering if anyone here would have any first hand experience working with a Virge. Now that it's been, oh, a few years since those "glory" days, I was hoping I could get some good inside scoop

 

[aa004]

Here's the programming/register spec for the Virge (86c325):

http://members.shaw.ca/mm99mm/S3_Virge_programming_spec.html

 

[Simon F]

Here's the programming/register spec for the Virge

I remember reading the Virge spec at the time PCX1 was coming out and thinking something along the lines of
"What a lot of messing about you have to do to draw a triangle. This is never going to be fast!"

 

[Nick]

Software rendering on modern processors is faster. And programmability is, well, absolute.

 

[aa004]

Here's the programming/register spec for the Virge

I remember reading the Virge spec at the time PCX1 was coming out and thinking something along the lines of
"What a lot of messing about you have to do to draw a triangle. This is never going to be fast!"

Wasn't the Virge the chip that spawned the "graphics decellerator" catch-phrase?

Well it and the Voodoo specs are educational reading anyway.

 

[swaaye]

Haha, yah. It got that catch phrase.

I believe it actually ran the game slower than the software mode usually, but I imagine it had a lot better image quality than pure software.

edit: OMG, it supports VLB! Was there ever a VLB Virge board?

 

[andypski]

Yes. I programmed on Virge...

A lot...

 

[ERP]

I used one.

Only slightly better that the 3DLabs decellerators that preceded them.

 

[Nappe1]

Haha, yah. It got that catch phrase.

I believe it actually ran the game slower than the software mode usually, but I imagine it had a lot better image quality than pure software.

edit: OMG, it supports VLB! Was there ever a VLB Virge board?

I can't be sure about that, but many first generation 3D chips actually supported VLB and at least Creative 3DBlaster was available as VLB version.

(remember that we are talking pre-voodoo graphics card here, so "ok" means it was around as fast as software on same computer, but looked much better with texture filtering and fog.)

Virge was actually pretty ok when game used it natively. Direct3D support was really bad at start, but thanks to everyone working in S3 driver team back then, there was driver updates quite often and I actually was disapointed when switching to Rage II+ (back then it was usually as fast as Virge, but 16bit rendering looked as ugly as hell. And no driver updates, not a single one during 2 years I owned a one.)

 

[Putas]

Sorry for OT, but are there any reviews/ game benchmarks left on the internet? Im so curious about first 3D cards like virge, gigi, vérité 1000...

 

[swaaye]

Actually the VLB 3D Blaster was based on a 3DLabs Glint chip. THe PCI 3D Blaster was based on the Rendition Verite V1000 and came out at least a year later.

Some 3D Blaster VLB info from our very own forum:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?start=140&t=4759
Archive.Org (love em) link to Creative's old 3d blaster product page

Links:
http://www.renditionrevival.com/
http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/accelerator.html
Sooper long Google Groups Link
http://accelenation.com/?ac.id.123.1
http://www.gamespot.com/features/3d/techover.html
http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/

And, as always, make full use of Google and especially Google Groups. There is still TONS of info out there.

 

[KimB]

Oh, I remember trying to play games on my S3 Virge way back when. The only game that I owned at the time that had direct support was Descent II, and I thought it looked absolutely amazing at the time. But it was so slow that it was unplayable, and so I would just run the game in software mode instead (it probably would have been playable at 320x200, and still looked better than software, but in hardware rendering mode it would only run at 640x480).

I also had one Direct3D game demo that worked, some crappy Star Wars game (Rogue Squadron, maybe? Don't remember). Another Direct3D game that I had, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, pretty much refused to run. I never did get GLQuake running. For the most part, I just utterly gave up and played my old 2D games. It didn't help that back then I just didn't have the cash to spend on hardly any games. So my library was pretty small....heh, nothing compared to the 100+ CD's I have in games today (though, of course, typically more than one CD per game....). I didn't get any significant number of 3D games until I got a TNT a while later...

 

[anaqer]

Descent II had native support for Virge? <neo> Woah! </neo>
Descent is an old love of mine, I'll have to hunt down one of these cards and check it out.

 

[Nappe1]

Oh, I remember trying to play games on my S3 Virge way back when. The only game that I owned at the time that had direct support was Descent II, and I thought it looked absolutely amazing at the time. But it was so slow that it was unplayable, and so I would just run the game in software mode instead (it probably would have been playable at 320x200, and still looked better than software, but in hardware rendering mode it would only run at 640x480).

I also had one Direct3D game demo that worked, some crappy Star Wars game (Rogue Squadron, maybe? Don't remember). Another Direct3D game that I had, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, pretty much refused to run. I never did get GLQuake running. For the most part, I just utterly gave up and played my old 2D games. It didn't help that back then I just didn't have the cash to spend on hardly any games. So my library was pretty small....heh, nothing compared to the 100+ CD's I have in games today (though, of course, typically more than one CD per game....). I didn't get any significant number of 3D games until I got a TNT a while later...

during the time I owned a Virge, there wasn't OpenGL drivers at all available. (maybe reason why it didn't ran? )

a short list about games that I played with Virge (including settings if I remember them...)
- Terminal Velocity (native support, demo version, menu option gave only S3D High as resolution.)
- Descent II (native support. as said, game tried to run 640x480 which was definately too much. 512x384 would most likely have been playable.)
- Tomb Raider (native support via unoffcial patch. never released officially. menu options gave 512x384 and 640x480 which were both too much. with a small hack to saved settings, you did get 400x300x15 which ran flawlessly with fps staying 20-30 fps. looked way better than 8 bit software render and ran nicely.)

there might have been some others too... can't remember them right now though. S3d accelerated Destruction Derby was usually included to bundle if card was retail. too bad that mine was bulk. )

with Direct 3D I played (and tweaked) several games with Virge. Right now I can't remember others than Monster Truck Madness and Tomb Raider 2, which ended my Virge experience. game ran pretty much ok with latest drivers, but 2MB of video memory was just too little and game was missing textures even in lowest resolution.

 

[Mendel]

I remember being amazed with monster truck madness. Texture filtering was something new and completely surprised me. I had no idea that I had a 3d accelerator and I had never heard of texture filtering. It just blew my ass of my chair.

Later I remember running moto racer with vga resolution and texture filtering, it was very playable though some trees were bugging because alpha textures didn't work.

 

[Dio]

- Tomb Raider (native support via unoffcial patch. never released officially. menu options gave 512x384 and 640x480 which were both too much. with a small hack to saved settings, you did get 400x300x15 which ran flawlessly with fps staying 20-30 fps. looked way better than 8 bit software render and ran nicely.)

Yeah, that sounds about right, although I thought it had 400x300 in as default, because it was the most playable resolution for a vanilla Virge. I also thought it was locked to 32-bit, IIRC 32-bit was almost never a performance hit over 16-bit on Virge and it looked miles better in Tomb Raider. IQ was also a lot stronger on DX/GX where perspective correction was free and bilinear was cheaper.

The port wasn't done quite as well as it could have been though. It would have been better (but harder) to take the time to port it back to the Z-sort renderer that the software rasteriser used, rather than using the Z-buffered version that the first hardware prototype had. That would have nearly doubled performance, and since the levels were built to avoid Z-sort artifacts, it wouldn't really have been noticeable. Unfortunately this was only realised about two years down the line

There were also changes that doubled setup rate and got much better general efficiency in the GX2 days, but I don't think that code was ever added to the DOS toolkit that the Tomb Raider port was based on.

Incoming was another Direct3D game that needed a few Virge-specific tweaks in but worked pretty well once it was done.

 

[swaaye]

The Virge I had during TEH ViRGE ERA was a STB Nitro 3D...and all it did was constantly lock up my Supermicro-based Megatrends FX83. STB was clueless as to the problem, but it was later acknowledged that some Supermicro boards had problems with them....

So I replaced it promptly with a Matrox Mystique 220 and never looked back.

The Nitro 3D was a interesting board in that it used EDO RAM but had a Virge/GX onboard instead of the DX.....normally GXs were used with SGRAM.

ViRGE stands for Video and Rendering Graphics Engine, btw.

 

[KimB]

What, it didn't stand for, "On the Virge of being useful?"

 

[darkblu]

What, it didn't stand for, "On the Virge of being useful?"

spoiled kids with virges. matrox mystique had no filtering whatsoever - with its point sampling(tm) and 2MB video mem it was the real men's videocard*. and yet it made Tomb Raider playable on a 486.

* ok, there was a version with 4MB, which i got only much later. also matrox released a 4MB upgrade for the 2MB mystique, boosting it to the whooping 6MB i got that too and kept both my mystiques as my 2d desktop cards of choice.

 

[swaaye]

I have a 2mb Mystique in a drawer.

My Mystique 220 from back then was the 4MB variant though. I actually liked the point sampling better than the Voodoo1's blurry filtering in some games. Jedi Knight looked arguably better. The textures were so low res back then that bilinear just obliterated what little detail there was while point sampling added detail, in a way.