My first game I played with the Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo 1 4 MB) was Tomb Raider 1. I could not believe what was happening. It looked soooo much better, and the frame rates were so fucking high! That really was voodoo magic. I can't remember something other that magical in all my gaming history.
Same. Another similar breakthrough memory I had was the Gravis Ultrasound and hearing actual sampled instruments in the Ultima music. Before that game music was much more bleeps and bloops.
I had the same feeling, but with a TNT2 card. I first played Half-Life with software rendering, 320x240 in my fishbowl 14" monitor. Then a few months later I bought the TNT2 (M64, the cheap version), and began my 2nd playthrough at a glorious 640x480 with much better FPS. It was awesome.
@HornedMeatBeast oh yeah, I remember that “Siluro” models…btw a dead horse remains a dead horse even if marketing department beats the shit out of it 🤷♂️ and with Geforce 4 MX they went even harder on that. Brrrrr
I had a Voodoo 2. I was salty at my parents that they got the 8 MB version instead of 12 MB. But I couldn't formulate my frustration because I didn't quite get the difference between system and graphics memory yet.
Still it was amazing how fast everything was. I spent hours just switching weapons in Jedi Knight. And Unreal was just drop dead gorgeous in Glide. No comparison to Direct3D or OpenGL.
And it included a demo of a rotating donut with bump mapping which would be toutet as this amazing new graphics feature decades later.
Depending on whether you had a 3dfx or GeForce made playing Planetside a bit of a cheat. You could spot the cloaked infiltrators from anywhere as they would shimmer a nice ghostly white. Great times 😏
Without a graphics card? Of course not. Without 3d acceleration? Definitely not. Quake 3 was by far the most taxing game I was aware of when I came out. I barely saw any computers that could run it with maxed out settings until probably a year after it came out.
Yeah, I wanted to have it my collection since it came out, but it's not happening anytime soon, at least not until us millennials don't have anything better to live for.
19 Comments
leave_it_blank@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 148d
My first game I played with the Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo 1 4 MB) was Tomb Raider 1. I could not believe what was happening. It looked soooo much better, and the frame rates were so fucking high! That really was voodoo magic. I can't remember something other that magical in all my gaming history.
dan1101@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 148d
Same. Another similar breakthrough memory I had was the Gravis Ultrasound and hearing actual sampled instruments in the Ultima music. Before that game music was much more bleeps and bloops.
keimevo@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 148d
I had the same feeling, but with a TNT2 card. I first played Half-Life with software rendering, 320x240 in my fishbowl 14" monitor. Then a few months later I bought the TNT2 (M64, the cheap version), and began my 2nd playthrough at a glorious 640x480 with much better FPS. It was awesome.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club · 6 pts · 148d
Same.
Next I upgraded to 2×12MB Voodoo 2 (SLI with an IDE cable). I could play at 1024×768!
Best of times.
HornedMeatBeast@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 148d
I miss my Voodoo 3 2000 AGP card.
Some games ran worse when I finally replaced it with a GeForce 2 MX400.
I noticed a large FPS drop in Diablo 2.
Antrotroll@livellosegreto.it · 4 pts · 148d
@HornedMeatBeast @AngelikaMerkel
Geforce 2 MX?!
HornedMeatBeast@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 148d
The website is a bit busted for me, but I believe it was this one.
https://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/pt_main_back.jsp?pPRODUCT_TYPE=Video+Card&pMODEL_NAME=Siluro+MX400
Antrotroll@livellosegreto.it · 2 pts · 148d
@HornedMeatBeast oh yeah, I remember that “Siluro” models…btw a dead horse remains a dead horse even if marketing department beats the shit out of it 🤷♂️ and with Geforce 4 MX they went even harder on that. Brrrrr
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de · 10 pts · 148d
I had a Voodoo 2. I was salty at my parents that they got the 8 MB version instead of 12 MB. But I couldn't formulate my frustration because I didn't quite get the difference between system and graphics memory yet.
Still it was amazing how fast everything was. I spent hours just switching weapons in Jedi Knight. And Unreal was just drop dead gorgeous in Glide. No comparison to Direct3D or OpenGL.
And it included a demo of a rotating donut with bump mapping which would be toutet as this amazing new graphics feature decades later.
Triumph@fedia.io · 10 pts · 148d
"They're worth a bit now" partly because they were used in coin-op arcade games, and people who refurb those will buy them as spares.
digitalFatteh@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 148d
Depending on whether you had a 3dfx or GeForce made playing Planetside a bit of a cheat. You could spot the cloaked infiltrators from anywhere as they would shimmer a nice ghostly white. Great times 😏
bonenode@piefed.social · 6 pts · 148d
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 148d
Probably quake 2. Quake 3 likely wouldn't have run the best on a 3dfx card but I think it would have run.
yora@mastodon.gamedev.place · 4 pts · 148d
@TrickDacy @bonenode Could Quake 3 even run without a graphics card? It came out in late 1999 and was the best looking game at the time by far.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 148d
Without a graphics card? Of course not. Without 3d acceleration? Definitely not. Quake 3 was by far the most taxing game I was aware of when I came out. I barely saw any computers that could run it with maxed out settings until probably a year after it came out.
Quicky@piefed.social · 5 pts · 148d
I had a Voodoo 5, which I bought about a month before 3dfx went tits up. Impeccable timing.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club · 6 pts · 148d
... today it's worth about 128GB of DDR5 ...
Quicky@piefed.social · 6 pts · 148d
Holy shit I thought you were joking.
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club · 2 pts · 148d
Yeah, I wanted to have it my collection since it came out, but it's not happening anytime soon, at least not until us millennials don't have anything better to live for.
aburrito@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 148d
I had no idea you could emulate old hardware like this on an FPGA, that’s so cool