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Creative ports Glide
Taliesin writes "From this ZDNN article: The new technology, dubbed Unified, will allow games written to run on 3dfx
graphics accelerators to also run on competing boards made by Creative Technology Ltd. ... Creative's new technology basically acts as a phrase book, allowing Microsoft's DirectX programming interface to understand Glide commands. DirectX, in turn, accesses the accelerated features of Nvidia's TNT family of chips. "
There are already tons of these "Glide Wrappers". Xglide is one that comes to mind.
You mean 3d windows GUI?
;) Thats all I can say about that.
Not that long
didnt 3dfx went after every glide emulator calling it a bad thing?
warent the two conspiracies:
1. 3dfx doest want other cards to work like 3dfx, and want games to be made for 3dfx cards, not glide cards?
2. nintendo forced them to cut it off due to ultraHLE?
The s/n is just to download, and it's mirrored everywhere. It works on all TNT/TNT2 hardware. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as good as some of the other wrappers already available. MGlide and XGl200 both have better speed and compatibility.
Creative license the tech? As has already been pointed out, there are as many as half a dozen glide wrappers out there, written for the most part by college students, that are totally legal (don't use the SDK) and work better than Creative's. The difference here is that 3dfx can't bully someone that actually has cash for legal defense into stopping development. *Any* hardware outfit could put something like this together in a matter of weeks.
no, unreals support for d3d and opengl is just that shitty! However, when using glide on the tnt, you will get a better quality than you will with a voodoo! Voodoos don't support a lot of the rendering!
What are thousands of TNT, ATI, and other 3D card users using linux waiting for? A way to use their card with linux. Either register level specs to allow a driver to be written, or a higher level, closed source API. The point is, like any hardware, people need some kind of interface to use the card.
Now glide is just that: An interface to 3dfx hardware. It doesn't give you access to the registers, but it my opinion it's the next best thing. Glide is a thin layer over the cards registers, it has very low overhead, and it allows you to do anything you want. And I really like to be able to do anything I want with something I gave money for.
Now, considering you can access the card at a low level with glide, you can put any layer over it by yourself. You want OpenGL? Write a glide driver for Mesa. Considering you can do anything with your card, you can certainly do that (and in this case it has already been done, of course).
If the TNT finally gets linux support with an OpenGL driver, it won't let you do things another way. If you'd like to use your card to do something it could do but OpenGL isn't designed for, you're stuck.
Then with a Voodoo, if you want to do some standard 3D stuff, you can use OpenGL through Mesa (or any OpenGL implementation that supports glide, for that matter), and if you want to do something else (like fooling around with the alpha blending modes of the voodoo), you can also do that.
In my opinion, glide is a Good Thing because it lowers the amount of proprietary code needed to run the hardware. You get the low level stuff and the rest can be open source.
It also gives more freedom to the hackers we are. When I get a piece of hardware, I want to play with it! I'd prefere register level access, but 3D cards companies don't seem to want to give that.
Of course, I realize that doing stuff that works for more people is better, so I use the higher level APIs available for each particular project I have.
"Creative is very bold in doing this"
No it isn't. AFAIK There are quite a few glide wrappers out there and most of them are written by individuals. Call them bold.
"I have to start buying more of their products."
Don't. Creative is just another of those big companies that don't release any specs for their products eg. Live!. The funny thing is that they don't wan't to release programming specs for SB Vibra16X (2 8-bit DMA's) even though it's an ancient product.
I have been messing around with unified and trying to find bugs! He was going to use opengl instead of directx but he told me that it would lower cpu cycles if he were to use directx! There are a good bit bit of bugs right now but it's looking good and has potential!
I have spoken with the creator "michael songy" and I was told that he plans on porting it to linux! He also told me that some of his friends are working on tnt drivers for linux and that they should have them out in june! I was told by another source that nvidia might release the tnt drivers for linux next week during the linux expo!
I wouldn't be surprised either considering the fact that a guy from nvidia told me that he was not able to say anything except stay tuned and the fact that creative said they will release "their" version of nvidias drivers in june!
I have used it with several tnts! It doesn't matter as it shouldn't! You only have to have a CL tnt to download it from their site!
Anyone try Unreal with this thing on their TNT? Using the emulated Glide it looks great and it doesn't get choppy as hell like with BOTH direct 3d and opengl. what gives? Is glide that nice?
I think it gives glide a chance to stand on it's own merits. I don't know much about the pros and cons of glide vs openGL but if it is quicker to write something with glide instead of openGL and the game will run fine on my TNT card, well then glide has won one battle. It effectively removes the voodoo monopoly on glide.
Oops, forgot to mention that being a wrapper, it means that the only thing they borrow from glide is the API. This means that there is no need to get the SDK and therefore no "use this for glide games only" license clause to worry about.
My guess would be that this is not an emulator, just a wrapper. It probably wraps around directx to give it the same interface as glide. This is awesome in my mind since glide's edge for forcing users to buy voodoo cards is gone. There should be no legal hassle since it is as legal as writing wrappers around legacy code to give it a different look. Creative is very bold in doing this, I have to start buying more of their products. Think I'll start with the live board when the drivers are done.
I am assuming at this point that the performance will be quite different on the TNT. When the OpenGL renderer for Tribes was being designed, one of the main things that held it up was the fact that the engine works by downloading textures to the card when the player even just starts to turn his head around when he is outside.
The first generation 3Dfx could handle that. The TNT could not. The 3Dfx and TNT have different bottlenecks. Although these bottlenecks still apply for OpenGL games, there is the fact that games written with GLide are not designed for other cards, regardless or not of whether they work with them. This has been like that for all of the past titles, and will most likely be like that for a while in the future, even if GLide is now to catch on as a standard.
Speaking of standards, Microsoft has no qualms about adding very high-level features to the HEL of Direct3D. I saw some info about DX7 having the ability to stream light through a window and have it radiate through. With features like that and NURBs, it will be the API to fear if cards try to move its features from the HEL to the HAL. Nonstandard features and proprietary. Carmack mentioned something about proprietary NURB APIs being A Bad Thing.
Also, there are a LOT of Linux enthusiasts who boot Windows in order to play games.
Lastly, Slashdot doesn't pretend to be predominantly a Linux site -- it says "News for Nerds", not "Linux news"! Articles here are about lots and lots of non-Linux topics, including lots of non-computer topics.
I would be rather sad if, when Microsoft goes out of business, Slashdot refused to run the story because it didn't mention the word Linux anywhere. ;-)
(I'm being so hypothetical as to be far removed from reality, I know, I know: the story certainly would mention Linux, since that would be the reason for the demise of M$)
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Proprietary API's. Yummm.
This has a bad side to it, GLide is a proprietary API, and should not be pushed forward in any way, not even by emulation, in my view. All GLide games should be eradicated. Let's forget them. 3dfx: move on, get a grip, write decent OpenGL drivers and I'll like you, a bit.
/ i got real good bongo drums
Not! I have personally used the unified wrapper on an STB velocity 4400 (TNT based also). You only have to have a valid CL TNT Blaster serial# to d/l it.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
As many of you may or may not have noticed, 3DFX is in the midst of purchasing STB and the Voodoo3 series of cards are only available from STB.
... that's for the lawyers to decide ;)
Creative/Diamond and the rest made a LOT of money selling 3DFX based cards and I bet they were less than happy to see 3DFX go exclusive with the Voodoo3 series. Hence both Creative/Diamond will be pushing TNT2 based cards in an effort to
a) make lots of money
b) punish 3DFX for shutting them out
So, what's the ONLY reason not to buy a TNT2 over a Voodoo3? (its certainly not the speed, check out Tom's hardware) The answer is of course Glide. There's a good percentage of games out there which only run on Glide (Unreal was Glide only for a LONG time) and by developing a wrapper which looks like Glide to games but uses D3D (or OpenGL for that matter) I can play all the Glide games I want on my TNT2.
Will this end up in court, you bet, 3DFX has to protect the part of the market which they have a monopoly on. Who's going to win
Sure, the Glide UnderGround people do this, and they got lawyers sicc'ed on them hard, and it doesn't make any press. But now that Creative does it and its all okay?
Thats real funny.
Where are 3dfx's lawyers? Oh yeah, they're all too busy fighting a bunch of college kids that had this idea first to take on another company that can actually fight back...
Are you talking about Microsoft "Chrome"? If so, it's hardly a big secret, MS demoed it around about a year ago. My understanding is that it's on hold pending faster CPUs.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There were a few Glide emulators/wrappers around before. Let's see how 3DFX reacts. The others were sued, and the Glide license protects the API to be used for anything except Glide game.
Competition amoung chipsets is good.
Standardization of drivers is also good.
But when will we have "Direct X Windows"?
It'll be interesting if 3dfx reacts in the same way as it has to individuals producing Glide wrappers... which is to say, by threatening lawsuits. Since CL is one of their partners, I'll bet the lawyers at 3dfx will be kept on a much tighter leash.
Well, when the little guys did it, all it takes is a threat from 3DFX. If you're a programmer and you're suddenly faced with the threat of losing thousands of dollars of your own money to lawyers, it's enough to make you back down. Right or Wrong, do you want to gamble everything you have?
Creative obviously wouldn't have done this unless they had already assessed the situation and decided that they would be able to fight. Or come to a cross-licensing agreement of some kind. Whatever.
Your rights are proportional to how much money you are willing (or perceived to be willing) to spend in court.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't believe Slashdot is a "Linux-only" forum. There are plenty of Linux-only articles here, and yet when there is a Windows only article you complain?
Ah.. News for nerds.. Nerds also use wind***STOP ....
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
It's good that users of other cards will be able to run 3dfx games. There is a risk however that this will encourage game developers to be lazy and just develop for 3dfx and assume that everyone can just patch their way into making it work for them. Making 3dfx a defacto standard. That would be a Bad Thing.
However the momentum behind OpenGL currently should hopefully fix everything for anyone by providing an open standard that everyone can participate in. That would be a Good Thing. Compatibility is great, but people must more fervently pressure game developers to avoid 3dfx and their proprietary nastyness.
-- Cysgod
The Bad Thing is that Creative will only have it work with their boards (using some sort of internal serial check). So we can now have two vendors instead of one supporting Glide (now that 3dfx makes their own cards). I think that opening this up to other vendors' cards, while not necessarily attractive to the suits at Creative may gain them a lot of respect in the gaming community.
No, they weren't sued.
What happened is they were sent out threatening lawyer letters, saying stop using the 3dfx glide sdk to make these wrappers. Those who didn't use the sdk kept on going, and they still do today.
Precarious position to be sure, but not sued. I really like the fact that I bought a creative labs tnt more & more everyday. Had no idea they start kicking ass, but its been a nice present.
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
>Ummm, do you mean OpenGL OR Direct3D ? Or are you implying there is no difference?
:-)
Oh no! I do realize that there is a difference, a very important one.
OpenGL gets it right, Direct3d Gets it FAST. Both are important for completely different things.
Having read your other posts, I would agree that I would be horrified if you asked me to code your app in D3D.
I personally think OpenGL is nice and clean, but it was my first 3d api (first love and all that). It's also nice and portable, along with various and sundry other advantages, but from the point of view of Edios writing Tomb Raider 4, I wouldn't touch OpenGL with a 10 ft pole.
I've got one of these TNTs, and I'll tell you, under W95 (until NVIDIA gets it's act together) it's got GREAT OpenGL performance, but until all cards can say the same thing, I think we'll live in a world where both Direct3D and OpenGL have their place.
Just my not-so-humble opinion.
Happy Service!
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Q. Is Unified limited to 16-bit color?
A. Actually, most Glide games are limited to 16-bit color when running in Glide mode. Unified will provide an extension to allow a game to display 24/32-bit color, but the games will need to be modified to take advantage of this feature.
So now we've got 3dFX's Proprietary API with Proprietary Creative extenstions, which won't run on 3dFX's hardware!
So, now either
1) Everybody gives up and uses OpenGL / D3D
OR
2) We wind up with 15 similar but slightly incompatible APIs.
Please O Please let it be #1.
But I must admit, I'm not upset that I already own one of these things. Now if they'd just release the *&*((& specs!
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
has anyone tried using creative's unified driver with any tnts other than cl's?
Reminds me of the old Compaq days, immediately following their release of a PC clone.
I don't think that Creative is going to be in any trouble. They're big enough to have the resources to devote to a clean-room emulator. If Compaq could get their PC BIOS approved by a court, I'm sure that Creative can write an emulator in such an environment so that their collective legal asses aren't left hanging out in the open.
And let's face it. This is SOP for companies in this volatile market. 3dfx merges with STB to solidify their position. Creative, Diamond, et al. write emulator software to take the wind out of 3dfx's sails, as far as their proprietary interface is concerned.
Now, if only someone could do a DX6 -> OGL translator!
Has anyone successfully downloaded these? The site simply rejects my serial number from my card, and there is no means of emailing for information. Argh!
________________
'Diamond' Joe Quimby