Can someone recommend a driver for Il2 Forgotten Battles, running on a Voodoo 5500, on W2k, in DirectX Mode.

Paul

Hey Paul,
Try the amigamerlin 3 first, if thats a no-goer, try the last oficial drivers from 3dfx, if no-go again, try the 3dhq beta 10 drivers.

directx mode? why?
i haven tried FB, but do have IL2... i usually ran it with wickedgl (opengl mode), but i probably would use mesafx by now...

any luck? what exactly was the problem?

Well It seems to work with Amigerlin 3.0 although it does tend to hang when I quit the opening video. Why does Amigerlin 3.0 not report any hardware acceleration capabilities to the DX 8.1 SDK applications, although it does seem to wrok with a DX 8.1 game.

Paul

this is because the VSA-100 does not support AGP accelleration, it runs at AGP 1x (66mhz), and doesn't support texture accelleration either. Basically, it uses the AGP slot as a 66mhz PCI slot. It should still report Direct3D and DirectDraw, though.

I think that you are wrong there, I am talking about running the sample apps supplied with the DX8.1 SDk, and them refusing to run, because they claim the card doesn't support the required level of acceleration, if you run the same apps with the original W2k Voodoo 5500 i.e. DX7 driver, but running under DX8.1 runtime, they run ok, and obviously use hardware acceleration, it looks like the Amigerlin 3.0 drivers to me, if the driver fails to report what acceleration features it has, when running with an app comiled for DX8.1, I am surprised that the apps work. I think that all of the Direct3D samples fail.

Paul

hmm, sounds very odd. Can't say that I know anything about it. I thought you meant the stuff inside dxdiag.

Paul: cant you use opengl as renderer in IL2-FB? i know it is possible in IL2 (predecessor of IL2-FB). that would probably run better, especially when using wickedgl.

I probbaly could use OpenGl, but I would like a DX8.1 driver that works properly.

Paul

well, since even the latest 3dfx production model (VSA-100, used on voodoo4/5) isnt directx 7 compliant. it lacks a few features in its hardware to be directx7 compliant. so we should be happy with all the compatebility we can get. i do believe amigamerlins directx core offers the best compatebility, and 3danalyze adds even more.

however, when you can run a game in opengl, and it runs better, (faster/no artifacts) why not use that for a renderer?

i mean, there is no point in running counterstrike in directx mode.... sure it works, but looks worse and runs worse then opengl or minigl.

i'd say, try to run Forgotten Battles in opengl mode. for some reference tweaking: http://www.papadoc.net/Voodoo5vsIL2.html

also, try replacing the wickedgl opengl32.dll with the mesafx opengl32.dll, perhaps that brings even more speed...

Quotebut I would like a DX8.1 driver that works properly.

Lol, we all would like that Paul!!

I am not sure what you mean by DirectX 7 compliant, as I understand it,the DirectX versions simply incorporate support for more functionality with later versions, you don't have to support all of the functionality to be that version complient, you simply have to correctly report the bits that you do support. So that the runtime, can emaulate any functionality that is requested by an App in the runtime, if it isn't supported by the driver, at least were possible. The problem semms to me to be that Amigerlin 3.0 claims to be a valid DIrectX 8.1 driver but actually isn't, it doesn't seem to report it's capabilities correctly when a Directx 8 app is being run. In conclusion you don't need to invent new hardware compabilities for the card for a new version of DirectX, you simply need to report what the card does correctly. DirectX 8 is a redesign of DirectX, it does the same things in slightly different ways, I suspect that this is were the problem lies.

Paul

In a perfect world, you would be correct, game developers would create games that only optionally used features from newer versions of DirectX. Unfortunately, this is the imperfect, Microsoft-run world we live in. Game developers create games that absolutely must have cards with compliance for the latest DirectX or OpenGL revisions. Amigamerlin might "lie" to the computer to fool it into thinking directx 8 or 9 compatability, this is only to allow the running of newer games, which require these APIs. So, in my conclusion, if the driver "tells the truth" about what the card does/doesn't support, the game will come up with a nice little message with something like "DirectX 9.0 support not found, please consult your manufacturer for the latest drivers for your hardware", which of course in the voodoo's case, is impossible.

Unfortunately with Amigerlin 3.0 the opposite situation appears to be true, it simply reports that it can't do anything, this has to be wrong. It seems to be a problem with DirectX Apps that are compiled for verion 8 or later. It seems to report its capabilities correctly to DX7 and earlier apps. You don't need a DirectX 8 driver to run on DirectX 8 anyway, you can run a DX7 driver, and DirectX 8 maps the differences for you.  simply think that Amigerlin 3.0 has a problem, I don't have a problem, with the idea of emaulating new functionality in a driver, when the runtime won't do it for you.

Paul


Paul