chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-09, 00:45:

I know NFS4 benefits from a card that supports table fog.

I recently wrote a mini guide for NFS3 and another one for NFS4. With those, you get full fog effects and can use higher resolutions even on Radeon cards.

On my X800 GTO, I use 1600x1200 with 4xAA + 16xAF and it still runs great. This works fine on Win98SE, so you can get proper EAX effects too, if you have a SBLive/Audigy card. The final result is shown below. Both screenshots were taken on Radeon cards, using stock Catalyst 6.2 drivers:

NFS3

NFS4

During my testing, I've compared this to Glide mode running on my Voodoo3, and it looks almost the same. There is a slight variation with how clouds are rendered (due to 16-bit dithering) with the fix, but only in NFS3.

Man thats awesome! NFS is pretty high in my troublesome games list but now with this fix not only do I not have to worry about hardware but driver versions as well.nuty
Your a real asset to the retro community!

chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-10, 01:13:

Man thats awesome! NFS is pretty high in my troublesome games list but now with this fix not only do I not have to worry about hardware but driver versions as well.nuty
Your a real asset to the retro community!

Heh, thanks, but I can't take all the credit here. Someone discovered the base method way back in 2002. I just refined it further using the renderer from the Modern Patch made by Evgeny.

It does feel good being able to play these games fully maxed out on a real retro rig while still having the proper visuals and EAX sound. 😀

chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-09, 00:45:

and NFS Porsche is actually better in D3D
Re: Best hardware for Need For Speed Porsche 2000 / Unleashed

You need a Voodoo 4/5, if you want the best texture quality in NFS Porsche with 3dfx cards, also in Glide Mode, because Voodoo's up to the 3 cards only support a texture resolution size of 256x256, and so has more washed out textures in NFS Porsche. I think Porsche can use 512x512, also games with the Quake 3 engine look better with a Voodoo >4 card (more texture details). VSA 100 can support up to 2048x2048 texture resolution size and has texture compression.

Hmmm, the Matrox G4x0 series supports 32-bit source textures (with support for texture sizes up to 2048 x 2048) and table fogging. Is it supported by NFS3 or NFS4?