3dfx Voodoo Graphics Gets Windows XP x64 Support

ryszards writes, "GlideXP author Ryan 'Colourless' Nunn has turned his insanity up a notch with a driver that allows running the 32-bit NT Glide .dlls for a Voodoo Graphics board on Windows XP x64. Already supporting Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo 2 on 32-bit Windows XP, adding XP x64 to the mix lets even more folks reminisce about the good old early days of consumer 3D acceleration hardware. Any excuse to fire up GLQuake one more time!"

Much better choises than GLQuake available

[inio]

Really, GLQuake? you want quake-glide - it talks glide natively instead of through the OpenGL Wrapper. Or better yet Unreal/Unreal Tourment. Those games never looked better than when they were running on a Voodoo 2.

Insanity!

[NeuralAbyss]

Absolute insanity... although, I guess this proves that Voodoo cards aren't just legacy hardware.. they're supported..

Good old glide... RIP

[ZubinTavaria]

I remember the good old days, when you got a free copy of POD Racer [wikipedia.org] with your 3DFX Voodoo card, and then your eyes popped out with the visual brilliance of the 3D accelerated graphics :)

Even today, very few games have made me react like I did ("OMG lookit that!") to the Voodoo driven games of yesteryear - did anyone here run Unreal 1 in "software" and then in "glide" and compare the experience?

Back then, we thought that the Trident, nVidia Riva TNT and Cirrus Logic graphics cards were crap compared to the 8 MB overpowered Voodoo 1, which let you run games full screen at 512x384 :) //ends nostalgia trip and thanks the lord for his nVidia 7400 Geforce Go

Re:Daryl Strauss would be proud

[pnewhook]

I'd argue that's not a very much utilized benefit. If you have old hardware you'd be more likely to keep the old software as well. Old software and old hardware will work exactly the same now as they would have 5 or 10 years ago.

If you are going to get new software, you'd probably get new supported hardware as well to get any benefit out of it.

3dfx lost their way

[Namarrgon]

32bit colour and T&L may not have set the world on fire when they were released, but that's hardly surprising. Since the hardware was new, no software yet took full advantage of them.

It's different today. Try running modern games without T&L today, even on a modern CPU, and watch your game crawl - if it plays at all. And see if you can get a gamer to play in 16 bit without noticing the difference (and complaining). The TNT and GeForce chips set the scene for modern graphics, just like the Voodoo & Voodoo 2 did in their time with real 3D acceleration, dedicated texture units, SLI etc.

3dfx made many mistakes, which resulted in them simply being out-innovated and out-executed by the competition while they struggled with their consequences of their poor business decisions. They showed the way, but Voodoo 5/6's multichip approach was never the right direction for the mainstream future.