Development on Voodoo2 or 3 and OpenGL output.

[RetroGIG94]

Is anyone at PCem doing any development of Voodoo2 or 3 and OpenGL output for host computer video card emulation yet? I mean it would be nice if the emulator a had OpenGL output option much like DOSbox SVN, emulation of the second and third version of 3Dfx accelerator cards and a emulation of a VH's primary video card that is like better than S3 virge/DX so we can use the video card on our host machine so it can give more playable speed for games like "Star wars episode I racer, and Lego Creator." When I tested "Lego creator" on my Win95 VM and used the hardware option by using the S3 virge DX card it freezes the game and the VM. I mean PCem is getting better at emulating games like from the late 90s and early thousands but there are still games some games from our childhood that we enjoyed playing that needs to be relived and played once again. I am thinking about sharing the PCem emulator and my Windows 95 VM I made for some friends that would like to enjoy these games. So I am just curious on how the development for any of these features for some future releases of PCem is going.

[omarsis81]

First off, I'm not part of the development team, but from what I've been reading, and from the expierience I had using PCem, voodoo 1 emulation consumes a lot of CPU power (I have a 4790k and it can barely handle it). So, having Voodoo2 or 3, would requiere the latest Xeons to work, so I understand the devs are working on optimizing CPU and Vodoo 1 code in order to advance to next generation CPUs and GPU.
I noticed a great improvement in speed from version 10.1 to 11, so SarahWalker and the other programmers are working hard, but it takes time and patience

[SarahWalker]

V2 emulation is on my list of things to look at, but the main bottleneck for most games is the emulated CPU. So that's what will have my main focus in the near future.

[RetroGIG94]

Ok so do you think you can make a OpenGL NB output much like how DOSbox SVN can use your host computer GPU?

[RetroGIG94]

First off, I'm not part of the development team, but from what I've been reading, and from the expierience I had using PCem, voodoo 1 emulation consumes a lot of CPU power (I have a 4790k and it can barely handle it). So, having Voodoo2 or 3, would requiere the latest Xeons to work, so I understand the devs are working on optimizing CPU and Vodoo 1 code in order to advance to next generation CPUs and GPU.
I noticed a great improvement in speed from version 10.1 to 11, so SarahWalker and the other programmers are working hard, but it takes time and patience

Oh and I sent you the link to the "Lego Creator" ISO.

[leilei]

I can only think of OpenGL being practical for post-process effects like the CRT stuff, and in 3dfx's case, my dac filter, plus an interference shader

PCem's Voodoo emulation is best done in software anyway. 3dfx has many quirks and special features and you can't trivially wrap to another API on, especially in the case of accuracy and performance targets (good luck evaluating pixelclocks in GL to make realistic performance). Today's CPUs that can work with PCem's pentium emulation already have the nice CPU extensions that can make the software rasterization of Voodoo pretty fast anyway.


BTW there is a fake and misleading "PCem Voodoo2" video out there which actually shows slow gameplay on the ViRGE card, and some renamed 3dfx Voodoo Graphics driver.

So, having Voodoo2 or 3, would requiere the latest Xeons to work,

The CPUs that PCem emulates right now would bottleneck the voodoo2 hard to the point that it'll only be faster than V1 in multitexture-using/particleabusing games and less texture thrashing. I suppose I could get started ahead on reversing the V3 2x2 box filter (aka "22-bit rendering" in 3dfx marketspeak)

[RetroGIG94]

I can only think of OpenGL being practical for post-process effects like the CRT stuff, and in 3dfx's case, my dac filter, plus an interference shader

PCem's Voodoo emulation is best done in software anyway. 3dfx has many quirks and special features and you can't trivially wrap to another API on, especially in the case of accuracy and performance targets (good luck evaluating pixelclocks in GL to make realistic performance). Today's CPUs that can work with PCem's pentium emulation already have the nice CPU extensions that can make the software rasterization of Voodoo pretty fast anyway.


BTW there is a fake and misleading "PCem Voodoo2" video out there which actually shows slow gameplay on the ViRGE card, and some renamed 3dfx Voodoo Graphics driver.

So, having Voodoo2 or 3, would requiere the latest Xeons to work,

The CPUs that PCem emulates right now would bottleneck the voodoo2 hard to the point that it'll only be faster than V1 in multitexture-using/particleabusing games and less texture thrashing. I suppose I could get started ahead on reversing the V3 2x2 box filter (aka "22-bit rendering" in 3dfx marketspeak)

Great! I can't wait till the next PCem release. But one interest thing I like to point out is I would like too see if the main video card can do proper 3D acceleration emulation.

[SarahWalker]

No, I don't think that's something I want to try to add. It's outside the scope of the emulator, and as leilei says, will probably end up with rendering issues due to differences between 3DFX and whatever graphics card your host system is using.

[RetroGIG94]

Ok so that won't be a addition.

[laxdragon]

What about passing the rendering through to a local glide translation layer like nglide? I know that is not cross platform, but on Windows it could be a good option.

[SarahWalker]

PCem has no idea what Glide is (or OpenGL or Direct3D for that matter). It operates on a register level only, and I have no desire to try to reverse register writes back into Glide API calls.

[leilei]

I suppose I could get started ahead on reversing the V3 2x2 box filter (aka "22-bit rendering" in 3dfx marketspeak)

Unsuccessful because i'd need to work with two lines, and the threaded lines makes this impossible. 2x2 would be best for a proper post shader system instead

[ENM23]

I would like to have a Voodoo Banshee, had a Maxi Gamer Phoenix in the late 90s.

[omarsis81]

I would like to have a Voodoo Banshee, had a Maxi Gamer Phoenix in the late 90s.

I Banshee wouldn´t make much sense... it performs very similar to a single Voodoo2, and the developer (he/she?) said that would work on a Voodoo2 in a future

[SarahWalker]

Banshee's certainly a possibility - if nothing else, it would be the most powerful 2D card PCem emulated.

[leilei]

I see it feasible as well. It's more similar to a Voodoo Graphics (no multitexturing) but with a decent 2D core this time around (unlike Rush), and much stronger Windows driver support (also including third-party drivers)

also like all of the newer Voodoo cards it can do 3d from 320x200 to 1600x1200 (at least) so it could also lower the cpu demand for voodoo emulation