So, I had a really stupid idea today and figured that this thread was a good place to post it (don't take that the wrong way! 😁).
I was looking at some early 3D accelerators and thinking about how they gave them these exciting sounding names(Laguna3D, Tasmania3D, Virge etc.), but realistically there was no way that most of these early products would ever actually be useful for 3D games before they were made obsolete... things were moving incredibly fast back then. BUT... without the constraints of trying to make a competitive product on a tight schedule, what would they have been capable of? Look at the amazing things that have been done with old hardware over the years, like the 8088mph demos for example.
My idea is this: are any of the very early 3D accelerators documented well enough (maybe even with source code for drivers, APIs, etc.) for some hobbyists to make them live up to their flashy names, or to achieve some of what the manufacturers originally promised? What if one of these early cards could be used alongside a much faster CPU (let the fast CPU do what it does better) and a proper driver to far exceed what it was originally capable of?
Yes, this is really pretty pointless other than to simply test the limits of some very obscure and obsolete hardware, but I think it would be interesting. Obviously the teams behind "decelerators" like the Laguna3D, Tasmania 3D and Virge were VERY short on time and funding for them to have performed so poorly or had so little software support. It'd be interesting to see what a modern look at 3D graphics programming could do with cards like these.
Possible candidates not mentioned above: Chromatic Mpact! series, early Matrox cards, Trident 3Dimage\Blade3D, NumberNine Revolution series, 3DLabs Glint or Permedia etc...
Maybe it's more feasible with something slightly less obscure? Perhaps expanding the usefulness of early PowerVR, ATi or Intel graphics chips...
Disclaimer: I am just thinking out loud. I have no graphics or driver programming experience.
