Glide wrapper
A Glide Wrapper is a software which allows another 3D accelerator - graphics card instead of actually necessary 3dfx to use graphics card. Glide wrappers are emulators of Voodoo Graphics graphics cards and the Glide - library , which as a wrapper to other 3D hardware and 3D accelerator APIs like DirectX act.
backgrounds
The company 3dfx , founded in 1994, was able to develop into the first market leader within a few years with its 3D accelerator cards and made a decisive contribution to hardware acceleration becoming the standard in the 3D game area. 3dfx put on a custom graphic interface called Glide , which unlike other standards such as Direct3D from Microsoft and the open OpenGL was restricted to in-house chipsets. 3dfx compensated for this shortcoming with the fact that, if several interfaces were supported within a game, the best quality could often be achieved with the 3dfx version. In some games, a 3dfx card was the only supported 3D card, some of which again required it to be used in order to play and thus no longer even provided a software mode. However, shortly after 3dfx established itself as the epitome of 3D acceleration, the company went downhill. The once technically leading 3D accelerator cards were gradually outperformed by superior competing products, which also rely on the two above-mentioned overarching standards. The takeover of 3dfx by the competitor nvidia in December 2000 meant the end of the further development and production of 3dfx cards and thus of the graphics cards based on Glide in general.
motivation
Since from now on 3D cards with Glide support were no longer available, older games, for which there was no equivalent alternative to 3dfx-based acceleration, had to cut back on graphics cards that were released later, depending on the degree of specialization on Glide turned out differently. If several interfaces were supported, it occasionally happened that all effects could only be activated with a 3dfx card and therefore graphically less offered with technically superior cards than with a 3dfx card. If the 3dfx-based hardware acceleration was the only option besides the software mode, the latter had to be used. In the cases mentioned, where games did not even start without a 3dfx card, the corresponding game had to be completely foregone.
functionality
Tools now jumped into this breach, for which the name Glide Wrapper quickly became established, which mapped the Glide commands of the 3dfx cards to the other 3D APIs. These tools were created before the end of 3dfx, but then suddenly gained in importance. With the emulation provided by the wrappers, it was again possible to play the old games on new graphics cards as if a 3dfx card were in the PC.
Projects
The various Glide Wrappers mainly differ in the supported operating systems, interfaces and setting options. For example, the Glidos wrapper specializes in MS-DOS games, but supports both Direct3D and OpenGL and enables high-resolution textures for Tomb Raider , for example , while another wrapper, dgVoodoo, relies exclusively on Direct3D, but equally for Windows and MS-DOS is designed.
Some of the wrappers are free to download or are open source . Glidos, on the other hand, is commercial, a rotating logo is displayed in the game that can only be removed by purchasing the program.
See also
Web links
- Glide wrapper
- nGlide - nGlide translates all Glide commands into Direct3D (active, as of 2019)
- dgVoodoo - another 3dfx emulator for Windows with extensive setting options (active, as of 2019)
- Glidos - 3dfx emulator for DOS (last update 2017)
- Openglide - free 3dfx emulator for Windows (last update 2004)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Ahlf: Glide Wrappers Return ( English ) www.glideunderground.com. August 22, 2011. Retrieved May 31, 2012.