
3dfx Oral History Panel [video] - da02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MghYhf-GhU
======
beloch
I remember buying the Diamond Monster 3D based on 3DFX's voodoo 1 chipset. The
hardware was a total hack job! It didn't do desktop 2D graphics at all, so you
still needed a separate card for that. To avoid forcing users to swap plugs on
their monitor every time they fired up a 3D application, the Voodoo included a
pass-through plug. Yup. You took a short VGA patch cable and plugged the
output of your 2D card right into the 3DFX card, and then your monitor into
the 3DFX card! Next, games had to be written specifically to take advantage of
the 3DFX API (Glide), so gaming support was _far_ from universal. If something
as unrefined as the original vooddo was released today it would probably be
scoffed at.

However, it's also worth noting what a huge leap forward in quality the
original voodoo card offered. The original quake was ported to GL so that it
could work on the voodoo, and it was a revelation. Many games were
subsequently released with wildly different software and Glide (3DFX's API)
rendering modes. The original "Grand Theft Auto" in particular looked vastly
better under Glide than under software. Before long, game developers started
requiring Glide hardware support rather than trying to build software rendered
versions of their game. The voodoo cards were such a big leap forward for
gaming that they were universally adopted in spite of their problems.

After 3DFX folded and the voodoo series fell into obsolescence, it was
difficult to play an entire generation of glide-only games for quite some
time. Fortunately, despite the fact that Glide was proprietary, a host of
different people made glide wrappers, and we can now enjoy Glide optimized
games from the comfort of a standard DOSBOX install!

~~~
wtallis
NVidia's G-Sync is almost as kludgy as Voodoo Graphics. In theory it _can_ be
properly taken advantage of by a well-written preexisting game engine, but
there are also a ton of games out there that assume a fixed limit of 60FPS and
will see no more benefit than if Direct3D were to start doing triple
buffering. And the idea of ripping a PCB and power supply out of your monitor
and replacing them is definitely as uglier than a VGA patch cable.
Fortunately, commercial G-Sync monitors will become available a lot quicker
than the 2D-capable Voodoo 3.

~~~
anon4
> _a fixed limit of 60FPS_

These days it's 30fps:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1yn5OD5WbM#t=107](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1yn5OD5WbM#t=107)

------
brownbat
Tech moves fast. Sure, Moore's Law yadda yadda, but sometimes it's hard to get
a sense of what that really means.

For me, what's astounding is thinking back on all these business wars in tech
in the 90s that seemed so crucial at the time. Half a decade later, one or
both sides were absorbed, dead, or irrelevant.

~~~
psgbg
Yeah.

Palm's vs Pocket PC's. Nokia vs the world. Sega vs Nintendo.

Not many wars where decided by technology itself but other things.

Nokia trusted his middle-end low-end market share then android and iPhone came
out.

Palm lost it's way when the smartphones came out.

Sega lost because bad decisions. Nintendo also had bad decision but now is
staying behind because the ferocity of the fight between Microsoft and Sony.

Kodak had amazing products but it's perfectionist way to do things let them
lagging behind.

Kodak and Nokia are really sad stories because both had amazing products but
didn't understood the changes around them. (yeah both more recent examples)

Microsoft won their previous wars because understood the previous reality
"feature complete but mediocre solutions". I mean, what the people need want
but no more just the essential part. So they dethrone Lotus, Wordperfect etc.

~~~
agumonkey
About Kodak failure to imagine a world without analog technology :
[http://petapixel.com/2010/08/05/the-worlds-first-digital-
cam...](http://petapixel.com/2010/08/05/the-worlds-first-digital-camera-by-
kodak-and-steve-sasson/)

Very surprising.

~~~
dagw
Kodak also demoed the first professional DSLR in 1988, and released the first
commercially available DSLR in 1991. In fact Kodak, with their series of Nikon
based DSLRs, basically owned the professional digital photography market
throughout the 90's.

~~~
maxerickson
This surprised me and I ended up at this nicely informative page:

[http://eocamera.jemcgarvey.com/](http://eocamera.jemcgarvey.com/)

By way of these:

[http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/4382994](http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/4382994)

[http://www.digicamhistory.com/1988.html](http://www.digicamhistory.com/1988.html)

------
swax
I remember well upgrading my computer with a 3dfx voodoo card. Nothing short
of revolutionary. It's hard to explain, but imagine going from what was at the
time normal - incredibly pixelated, slow gameplay, to crisp, clear, and fast
gameplay which up until that point never really existed. Not buying the card
wasn't even an option, there was nothing remotely like it at the time.

------
tragic
My abiding memory of the first 3dfx cards - apart from total envy - was that
you then had a spate of games that went way overboard on the coloured lighting
effects, so whatever you were playing had this acid-fried psychedelia look to
it.

Fortunately, Quake II was able to stick to that famous brown-on-brown palette.

Also: 640x480 being unimaginably high-resolution...

~~~
mickeyp
No. 16-bit, as I recall, was the upper limit for Voodoo cards. Resolution
wasn't a problem. I played Unreal (the original) at 1600x1200x60hz on my old
17" CRT monitor. I had a Voodoo 3 card back then.

I still remember staying up all night playing Deus Ex on that rig.

The late 90s truly was the golden age of PC gaming.

~~~
tragic
I'm talking Voodoo 1 here. ;-)

Voodoo2 I think was 800x600, but you could push it up to 1024 if you had two
chained up with SLI.

Of course, when I first got a Voodoo card, it was plugged into a 15" cheapo
CRT which couldn't even handle anything north of 800x600. So it wasn't an
enormous problem.

------
staunch
I have one of those 3dfx shirts from 1998. Some employees were handing them
out at a Quake tournament I participated in. Good times.

