MesaFX

[FalconFly]

The Voodoo2's Texture RAM unfortunately does not double in SLI, only the  Framebuffer does.

So a Voodoo2 12MB SLI will still have only 8MB of total Texture RAM available, Voodoo2 8MB SLI only 4MB respectively.

[Shogakusha]

I apologize for going off topic, I just erased a long post when I realize I was cluttering up the MesaFX thread.  MesaFX, Woooot! It, like, makes games run, and stuff.

[dborca]

@Shogakusha


@ps47
doom3 beta?
<_<
>_>
what doom3 beta?

ps: FalconFly is right. V2 SLI doesn't double texture RAM. same thing applies to Napalm SLI... unfortunately, may I add...

[Shogakusha]

Is it a hardware issue, or a software issue?  Just curious, could a properly written driver get them to share texture memory?  Anyway, I don't think texture memory would stop you from running doom 3, since you can set it to resize the textures, it defaults to 512x512, or 256x256, but if you dropped it down to 64x64, or 32x32 it shouldn't be a problem, and that's before you look to mesafx to resize textures.  In the end, it comes down to why RtCW: ET won't run on my voodoo 1, and day of defeat won't run on a voodoo 3, no 32 bit color support.  MesaFX can only do so much.  Unless their's some way to force downsampling, and I have no idea if that's possible, then we're stuck.

[dborca]

it's hardware. you can't make them to share memory. since one scanline is rendered by one chip and the other scanline is rendered by the other chip, then both chips must have the same data loaded (yes the textures are replicated for each chip). you'd have to tweak the HW to make the texture memory a "common pool".

about software rescaling... it doesn't work that way. you tell mesafx to rescale ONLY if the application starts throwing too large textures to the OpenGL driver. some games are well-behaved, and query the OpenGL for max texture size. some are not well-behaved and throw the texture without looking back. BUT, cheating max texture size for well-behaved applications yield unnecessary pain... OTOH, mesa currently doesn't go below 256. sure, it COULD go below, but what for? if the driver runs out of texture memory, it starts swapping textures. indeed, it's slow, but that won't stop an application from running...

about the 32bit issue. that can be resolved. OpenGL works that way. contrary to some opinions, Voodoo3 cannot handle 32bit textures; but if you look at the OpenGL spec, it says that texture format required by the user should be retained as a hint, and the driver decides which internal format the texture will be transformed in. of course, the ideal case is when the OpenGL meets the user requirements, but that's not compulsory. having that said, MesaFX always transforms any 32bit texture into 16bit texture for non-Napalm cards...

[ps47]

Originally posted by dborca

@Shogakusha


@ps47
doom3 beta?
<_<
>_>
what doom3 beta?

the doom3 official beta-test version was released and used for testing/benchmarking purposes,it can be downloaded from the net (mostly p2p,official links are down now).the beta is (obviously) not as unforgiving as the full thing,when running on older cards..ask me,its not actually worth the trouble (I dont want to speak for Doom though)..

anyway,I have one question (please dont kill me[B)]):
would it be possible to port the mesafx sw rescaling hack to D3D?in some form of mini 3danalyze perhaps (app that creates modified dll's in game folder blahblah)..
I mean,I have no idea how such apps/hacks work,but if sw rescaling works so well under opengl,than it could work under d3d as well..could it?
large texture support for voodoo3/d3d is the last feature that is still missing..if you ran the thing or igi2 on a v3,you'll know what am I talking about..
thumbs up;)

[Nightbird]

anyway,I have one question (please dont kill me):

Sounds that tb didn't answer to your question elsewhere

[ps47]

..did I say never to d3 full/voodoo2?check the last screenshot here..
in$ane[:0]

NEVER say never,Diamonds Are Forever[8D]

[Shogakusha]

How ironic, the program he used to get it running is the same .dll stub that I found and posted to a couple of boards about.  It's what got the game working on my old, now my brothers, kyro 2.  I imagine the stub combined with mesafx would probably get any voodoo card to load it up.

[dborca]

@ps47
primo, i don't have enough pipe to download a monster demo just for fun.
secundo, d3d is really not my area. in fact, i don't like it, never liked it, and probably won't ever like it - unless i'll have to do it for a living . never say never, but postpone, yes...
tertio, ok, doom3 could be run on a v2 - perhaps without shadows... i dunno, i have to check again the rendering pipeline... but is it worth it?

@whom it may concern
I uploaded a package containing Glide3x libraries for V1/VR/V2/VB/V3 on my Voodoo/Glide page (at my situ, of course). Please give it a try and give me some feedback, especially in combination with MesaFX.

[ps47]

Originally posted by dborca

@ps47
primo, i don't have enough pipe to download a monster demo just for fun.
secundo, d3d is really not my area. in fact, i don't like it, never liked it, and probably won't ever like it - unless i'll have to do it for a living . never say never, but postpone, yes...
tertio, ok, doom3 could be run on a v2 - perhaps without shadows... i dunno, i have to check again the rendering pipeline... but is it worth it?

probably not.you are 100% right,as always:D

[ps47]

..got bored for a bit,so I tried homeworld2 with the doom 3 version of mesafx (I know its only for doom3,but a small test cant hurt anybody,can it[:I]).the game runs slower and looks worse,but mesafx_d3 DOES fix the engines & the transparency probs.dunno what to think..(cant provide a screenshot,the game crashed once I hit scrolllock-using hypersnap..)

[Flash]

Tried to run Worms3D w/ MesaFX.  And it's extremely sloooooooooooooooooowwww ! Looks like full software rendering.  Doom3 runs waaaaaaay faster, at least not 0.3 fps like Worms...

[dborca]

@ps47
your experiment shows that - sigh - hw2 uses features that are not supported by the driver. why, oh why... damn poorly written applications...

@Flash
Worms3D *DEMO* used to run fine on my machine. Please enable both MESA_DEBUG=y and MESA_FX_INFO=r and send me MESA.LOG.

[Flash]

here's the log

Voodoo Using Glide 3.10.00.40404
Voodoo Board: 1/1, Voodoo5 5500 (tm), 2 GPU
Voodoo Memory: FB = 9445376, TM = 2 x 11483136
Voodoo Screen: 1024x768:32 RGB, no vertex snapping
cpu vendor: GenuineIntel
MMX cpu detected.
Not testing OS support for SSE, leaving enabled.
SSE cpu detected.
Voodoo TMU0 configuration:
Voodoo   00000000-22966256
Mesa: User error: GL_INVALID_ENUM in glDisable(0x1802)
Mesa: User error: GL_INVALID_ENUM in glDisable(0x1802)
Misc Stats:
 # swap buffer: 364
Textures Stats:
 Free texture memory on TMU0: 22966256
 Free texture memory on TMU1: 0
 # request to TMM to upload a texture objects: 72
 # request to TMM to upload a texture objects per swapbuffer: 0.20
 # texture objects uploaded: 72
 # texture objects uploaded per swapbuffer: 0.20
 # MBs uploaded to texture memory: 3.39
 # MBs uploaded to texture memory per swapbuffer: 0.01
Pixels Stats:
 # pixels processed (minus buffer clears): 1708030
 # pixels not drawn due to chroma key test failure: 0
 # pixels not drawn due to depth test failure: 193198
 # pixels not drawn due to alpha test failure: 13286212
 # pixels drawn (including buffer clears and LFB writes): 2231188