Newer X-Wing Games and PCem

[tk421]

I have completed a test series of the i7 8750H laptop CPU on an MSI laptop using PCem. The only games I could not get working were the newer X-Wing games, mainly X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, X-Wing Alliance and the X-Wing Collector Series (usually referred to as XWING 95 and TIE95). To be fair, these games did not work well in VMWare either, but that could be limited to the laptop I used for testing.

Oddly enough, in PCem the Voodoo 2 graphics card did not work in any configuration I tried. Graphics performance with the S3 Virge DX worked ok with X-Wing 95, but X-Wing Alliance was very choppy and the game froze after a couple of minutes. X-Wing vs TIE Fighter had serious performance and graphical problems. TIE Fighter 95 seemed to only work if I disabled 3D acceleration in-game. Sadly, my attempts to run these games with 3D acceleration through PCem did not work.

These games represent a key objective for any new laptop purchase I make, and given the immense potential of PCem to run these games as Star Wars fans remember using them, I am hoping a solution is possible.

In other tasks PCem seemed to run well in almost every instance. The i7 8750H worked at 3.9 Ghz whenever PCem was running. Performance rarely ever dipped under 100% on full specs. I could run Star Trek Armada on 300 Mhz MMX without problems, though Star Wars Rebellion often had sound issues at 233 Mhz MMX. Starfleet Command was almost flawless at 233 Mhz MMX. Episode 1 Racer was flawless at 233 Mhz MMX while Jedi Knight worked best at 233 Mhz MMX. For the most part I was satisfied the i7 8750H was a good fit for PCem. VMWare was a different matter, but that is another story altogether.

May I ask how we can run the newer X-Wing games in PCem with 3D acceleration?

Thank you for your time,

tk421

[leilei]

I don't have those later X-Wing games, but have you tried slightly earlier Voodoo2 drivers pre-DirectX7? I.e. V3.03.00

The DirectX 7 beta (V3.03.00b) and latest V2 driver (V3.02.02) makes some Direct3D HAL regressions with a few late Direct3D games like AvP which came around the time of Alliance, for one example...

Also it might be worth switching to the Trio64 so you can lose the Virge Direct3D HAL which may interfere with detection of the Voodoo2 for Direct3D...