+So, let's modify dgVoodoo's scaling mode from Unspecified to Stretched, keep Aspect Ratio and run your game again. You should see the game running at a +preserved 4:3 aspect ratio without problems and it's done.
+
+
+ +
+ 
+
+ +
+Files of dgVoodoo can be redistributed freely as far as they are kept together, +remain unmodified and unrenamed. Namely, only the full package can be +redistributed in the form as it is! +
++If you would like to utilize them in publicly available custom solutions or +packages, like game patches or anything else, then PLEASE ask me for permission, +furthermore mention its original source in your package along with the following +download link: +
+http://dege.fw.hu/ ++Official dgVoodoo forum where you can contact me and the dgVoodoo community is at: +
+http://www.vogons.org/viewforum.php?f=59/| ---------------------- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ---------------------- |
|
+ +Very BIG THANKS must go to the community of Vogons for helping me a lot in +testing during the development! Thanks Guys, I couldn't have proceed so far +without such a great quality assurance! + + |
|
+ +And I append a new sentence here to emphasize it again, especially for testing +my D3D8/9 implementation and supplying me with ideas, tips and various informations +on several games!!! + + |
| ---------------------- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ---------------------- |
+dgVoodoo 2 is a set of old graphics API's implemented for Windows Vista/7/8/10.
+
+They are implemented on Direct3D 11/12 and they can use different device types as wrapping output:
+
+For both Glide and DirectX, dgVoodoo pushes as many emulation work to the GPU as
+possbile. Thus, the entire internal 3Dfx GPU logic is mapped to pixel shaders
+for Glide emulation, and all the fixed function vertex & pixel processing
+pipeline is implemented by shaders for DirectX emulation (when possible).
+Glide libraries basically can work in two ways:
+
+If dynamic shader compiling is available (see Usage) then dgVoodoo can work
+with specialized shaders requiring much less GPU power, providing much better
+performance, especially on weaker video cards.
+
+We can examine this in two aspects: +
+
+There is no installer for dgVoodoo beacuse you can copy its dlls anywhere
+you want (to use). If u like it and want to use as the only global Glide
+wrapper on your machine then copy Glide dlls to the system folder. Glide dlls
+are available in both 32bit (x86) and 64bit (x64) versions. x64 version is for 64 bit QEmu (and maybe
+64 bit DosBox) builds.
+For native usage you always need the 32bit (x86) version dlls.
+
+For DirectX emulation only a local installation is possible since the
+DirectX dlls CANNOT be copied to the system folder (see DirectX readme).
+Also, D3D9 has both 32 and 64 bit versions. Always use the proper one, depending on the application type (not the OS type).
+
+A Glide wrapped application can start up either in windowed or full screen +mode (it is controlled by the Control Panel, see later). Also, you can switch between +them during the gameplay by Alt-Enter. See 'Known issues' for more. +
++The same is true for wrapped DirectX applications, but it is a more +complicated case, see DirectX readme. +
++Glide and DirectX dlls can co-work inside a process so the same versions +of them have to be used within a folder. If one of them detects the other +with different version then it refuses to initialize and work. +Co-work is useful for applications that use DirectDraw for some initial +in-game menu and Glide for 3D rendering. +
+
+If you use dgVoodoo on Windows 10 then dynamic shader compiling is automatically
+available because D3DCompiler_47 is part of the operating system.
+For preceding Windows versions (Vista, 7, 8) you need to download it manually and
+then, you can copy this dll into each game folder next to the wrapper dlls but the
+best practice is to copy it into
+
+if it is not already there by the result of the installation of some
+other software.
+Note that dgVoodoo supports both D3DCompiler_43 and D3DCompiler_47.
+_43 is supported only because of compatibility with users having it
+downloaded and copied into their system folder previously.
+
+Utilizing dynamic shader compiling is only recommended for Glide libraries (unlike with previous dgVoodoo versions). +DirectX implementations have their own internal DXBC generator which proved to be good enough +so support for the external compiler has been removed. +(I would like to completely ditch the external compiler once the internal code generator is implemented for Glide as well.) +
+ ++As different options might wanted to be used for particular applications, +I kept the concept of local/global configurations (might be familiar from old dgVoodoo). +Current configuration is stored in a file named 'dgVoodoo.conf'. Its format can either be +binary or a textual INI-file for manual editing. +
++When the Glide or DirectX wrapped application starts, dgVoodoo tries to read +config data. The search paths and the order for the config file are the following: +
+For modifying config files, you can either use dgVoodoo Control Panel (dgVoodooCpl) or edit it manually with a text editor.
+dgVoodooCPL provides convenient GUI interface for all options but only the most important sections are available by default. You have to enable the advanced
+options through the context menu. This is because of emphasizing the sufficiency of the default sections for the everyday usage and leaving the advanced
+sections for practiced users knowing what they are doing.
+In dgVoodooCpl you can choose a folder where you can load (from) and save the current
+configuration. Once you chose a folder, it remains in the list permanently.
+If the CPL application finds a valid config file in its own folder (where the app itself
+is located) then it automatically places the folder into the list and selects the folder.
+Otherwise the user's application data folder is selected, by default.
+
+Note that +
+If an application tolerates losing focus without closing/minimizing itself, +you can configure it dynamically: when the CPL starts up it builds +a list of detected running Glide/DirectX wrapped applications and insert it +into the folder selector combobox. When you select such a running instance +then the current state of the application is read as config and most of the +options can also be changed. So, you can set resolution, msaa, brightness, +etc on the spot without restarting the application (configurable items depend +on emulation type). When an option changes, it takes effect at once. If the +dialog gets cancelled or an other config folder/instance is selected, all the +changes gets cancelled as well. +
++You can always use the 'Apply' button to save the current config to the +selected folder or running application without exiting the CPL application. + +Important to note: +
+ ++ If the wrapped app and the CPL runs on different privilege levels + (admin/nonadmin) then the app won't appear in the instance list or they + cannot communicate to each other. Sorry for the inconvenience.
++ Switching resolution or MSAA can only be performed perfectly if the + application re-renders everything on each frame. If it uses or keeps + previously (once-)rendered things like cockpits or similars then they will + be missing as will not get re-rendered. (Glide only)
+A folder inserted formerly into the list can be removed. Also, list of the +running instances can be refreshed.
+ +
+You can override the application resolution and refresh rate both for
+Glide and DirectX rendering.
+There are three types of resolution overriding, and, the 'Resolution'
+comboboxes contain two types of elements in the enumerated list:
+
+ Those are enumerated by your videocard for the selected display output.
+ Select any of them, and the wrapper will force that one (along with the selected refresh rate),
+ no matter what resolution the application wants to set.
+ Resolution 'Unforced' means always using the current application resolution, so there is no overriding at all.
+
+ First, a little explanation on what the practical problems are with static + resolutions (especially for DirectX applications). +
++ The application may use multiple resolutions for different parts like movies, + menus and ingame. The statically chosen resolution may not have the same + aspect ratio as those of them. For app-resolutions with different aspect + ratios like 4:3 vs 16:9 it's a problem because one of them will be displayed + hugely distorted.
+ +
+ Even if the app uses only one resolution, and you can select or type another
+ one with the same aspect ratio, then selecting the proper resolution is still
+ not an easy task:
+ a) you don't necessarily know what resolution the app uses
+ b) you don't necessarily know what the max resolution your display is capable
+ of
+ c) even if you know both of them, you may have to calculate manually the
+ desired resolution.
+ (My own problem was the following: I sat down in front of a new computer with + a 4K monitor and wanted to try out some stuffs through dgVoodoo. I faced the + fact that I didn't know the exact monitor resolution, I also didn't know what + res the stuffs to try were using. I just wanted the maximum available + resolution to be forced that keeps the aspect ratio.) +
++ Dynamic resolution is the synonim of "let the wrapper choose the current + resolution for you". The maximum, and also the base used for calculating the + current resolution, is your desktop resolution. The base rule is that the + wrapper always calculates the maximum available resolution for the given + scaling mode, but +
+you can restrict the base maximum to FullHD (1920x1080) or QHD (2560x1440) + for weaker GPUs (like low-end cards or maybe, integrated chips) with large-res display outputs, and
you can restrict the scale factor to integer numbers.
+ (ISF - integer scale factor)
+When working with a dynamic resolution, the concrete resolution is unknown (calculated at runtime) hence no refresh rates are enumerated along with them,
+even if enumerating refresh rates is enabled.
+You can still force one (see Custom resolutions below).
+See the API specific readmes to understand the logic of selecting a real refresh rate value for unforced cases.
+
+ A custom resolution is either a static one that is not in the enumerated list, or one that is partially overridden.
+ Defining a custom resolution through the CPL is about typing the string -manually into the combo box- describing the resolution/refresh rate pair.
+ Resolution and refresh rate can be overridden independently on each other. Here are some examples (don't type quotation marks):
+
| D: | desktop resolution |
| F: | FullHD resolution (1920x1080) |
| Q: | QHD resolution (2560x1440) |
| A: | application resolution |
| AS (x, y): | stretched from x to y, with aspect ratio |
| IAS (x, y): | stretched from x to y, with aspect ratio, integer scale factor |
| + | Unspecified | +Centered | +Stretched | +Stretch with AR | +
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max | +AS (A, D) | +AS (A, D) | +D | +AS (A, D) | +
| Max ISF | +IAS (A, D) | +IAS (A, D) | +* remarks | +IAS (A, D) | +
| Max FHD | +AS (A, min (D,F)) | +AS (A, min (D,F)) | +min (D,F) | +AS (A, min (D,F)) | +
| Max FHD ISF | +IAS (A, min (D,F)) | +IAS (A, min (D,F)) | +* remarks | +IAS (A, min (D,F)) | +
| Max QHD | +AS (A, min (D,Q)) | +AS (A, min (D,Q)) | +min (Q,F) | +AS (A, min (D,Q)) | +
| Max QHD ISF | +IAS (A, min (D,Q)) | +IAS (A, min (D,Q)) | +* remarks | +IAS (A, min (D,Q)) | +
+ Resolution is calculated in the same way for scaling mode 'Unspecified', 'Centered' and 'Stretch with AR'.
+
+ Stretched scaling mode with ISF tries to stretch to min([D|F|Q]) and the
+ scale factor for both direction is the integer part of the minimum of
+ min ([Dx|Fx|Qx])/Ax and min ([Dy|Fy|Qy])/Ay
+ (ratios of X/Y directions).
+
+I'd like to say some words about what happens on multimonitor systems with +dynamic resolution forcing: +
++ Glide: when switching from windowed mode to fullscreen then a new forced + resolution is calculated by the wrapper, based on the native res of the + display on which the full screen output will appear. +
+ DX: It's not so flexible at all, unfortunately. Since DX impl doesn't + support changing resolution during its working, it cannot do the same + as Glide when switching into fullscreen. Also, since display outputs + are enumerated to the application, resolution calculation can rely only + on the native res of the output on which DX is initialized (so changing + the output of a running DX emulated app from the CPL application is without avail, + won't affect the next resolution calculation). +
Direct3D12 feature level 12.0
Direct3D12 feature level 11.0
Direct3D11 feature level 11.0
Direct3D11 feature level 10.1
Direct3D11 feature level 10.0
Direct3D11 Microsoft WARP renderer
+ D3D11 with FL10.1 has a little limitation and affects only D3D8/9:
+
+ WARP is a software renderer and can be used as a reference driver. +
+
+ Video card (adapter)
In case you have more than one, then
+
+ Monitor (output)
+ If you have multiple monitors then you can choose
+ which one(s) (connected to the selected adapter):
+
Full Screen / Windowed
+ See section "Usage".
Unspecified/Centered/Scaled/Scaled with Aspect Ratio kept, for full screen
+
+ If the current resolution the wrapped app using does not
+ match any natural resolution your adapter supports
+ then the display can be strethed out to fit all the
+ screen or its size can be left unchanged but centered.
+
+ NOTE that if your video card supports overriding the scaling
+ method of applications, and you'd like to apply a scaling
+ with aspect ratio then it is recommended to set dgVoodoo's
+ scaling method to 'Unspecified' + set the scaling mode on your
+ video card control panel because dgVoodoo's internal scaling
+ is unfortunately not a sterling one. It implies that you may
+ experience various problems like wrong mouse cursor or
+ glitches in rendering in certain applications. Scaling can
+ only be done well (transparently) on the GPU/display side.
+
+ C64-like output: well, if you are not a former C64 owner and fan, don't even try it,
+ I'm sure you won't like it at all. As dgVoodoo is my main hobby programming playground
+ these times I tried some algorhytms as part of it. It's not really a feature,
+ but the result of some former experimenting and can be funny for some scene demos.
+
+
Progressive scanline order
+ Default scanline order is interlaced or progressive. It is
+ up to the output display device which one to choose altough
+ it chooses progressive when it is possible, I think, so
+ that when the device is capable of displaying a given
+ resolution with a given refresh rate with progressive order.
+ Otherwise it might choose interlaced order with halved
+ physical refresh rate.
+ If this option is enabled, you can only see enumerated
+ resolutions that are displayable with progressive order.
+ However, if a custom resolution is defined then it may
+ causes the output device to use lower physical resolution
+ than the wrapper set.
+
Enumerate refresh rates
+ Enables the CPL application to enumerate refresh rates for
+ each resolution and enables the wrapper to override the
+ default refresh rate of the application.
+ However using other than the app default can cause heavy
+ animation lagging or glitches!
+
Color adjustments
+ Brightness, color intensity (saturation) and contrast can be finetuned here.
+ The defaults are good in general so treat this as a
+ cool extra. (I'm using it in some cases for making colors
+ more vital to get a bit cartoon-like effect.)
+
Inherit Color Profile in full screen mode
+ When this option is enabled then dgVoodoo won't change the physical
+ gamma ramp of the screen but instead it solves the color adjustments
+ just like in windowed mode and so your pre-configured color profile(s)
+ for the given monitor(s) remain(s) preserved. Color adjustments are
+ relative to the predefined color profile in that case.
+
+
Keep window aspect ratio
+ In windowed mode, when sizing the window, you can keep
+ the aspect ratio of the current resolution.
+
Capture mouse
+ It's useful mainly (but not only) for multimonitor systems. If this is enabled then the mouse cursor
+ is forced into the application window to prevent accidental mis-clicks outside of it.
+
Center app window
+ When a game controlling the mouse input is being run in windowed mode then
+ it's a pain to move it's window into the screen, so I thought it's a valuable option (was a request too),
+ but it can conflict with the mouse input or the app itself.
+
+
dgVoodoo takes the current desktop resolution as a base to do its calculations for self-done output scaling and other things like automatic pixel multiplying factor value. + There some games however that pre-set the desktop resolution (typically to some low resolution) before dgVoodoo gets in action, spoiling the rendering. + You can define your native desktop resolution here for such cases. If defined then this resolution is used for all outputs of the desktop. +
You can define what screen bit depth should be reported through dgVoodoo. It can be 8, 16 or 32. Empty definition means the current system desktop bit depth. +
When resolution is forced to other than the app default then a black frame is drawn around the output image coming from a wrapped API to remove scaling artifacts - + frame thickness can be defined in pixels (max 16, 0 = disable) (default is 1). +
Integer factor for scaling the output image coming from a wrapped API (pixel multiplying). This is independent on scaling mode. + 0 = maximum available factor. Default is 1 (no multiplying). Separate factors can be defined for horizontal and vertical directions. +
Display region of interest: you can define a subrectangle in forced resolution space (or application resolution if it is unforced) to be the input of the scaling and + image presenting process. It works only for scaling modes where the image processing is done by dgVoodoo itself. Subrectangle can either be +
When the scaling is done by the wrapper for the given scaling mode, you can choose which type of resampling filter to use. + Those are the following, in the order of complexity: +
When enabled, physical mouse is free to move inside the game window when using emulated scaling and/or application and forced resolution differs; + can be useful when a game relies on the physical window size. +
You can force various properties for windowed mode rendering. The following properties can be listed, separated by commas +
Defines the software environment in which dgVoodoo is running. Its value can be +
Very experimental option - when enabled dgVoodoo hooks some GDI functions to achieve displaying game cutscene movies rendered + through GDI (relying typically on the old AVI player lib) +
+Messages and tracing are independent on each other. Tracing is mainly for devs, for quick and average usage only the messages are recommended.
+All of them are written to the debug output, logging to file is not yet implemented.
+
+So, I recommend you to use DebugView or much more DebugView++.
+They are very cool applications for cases when no any debugger is available. Also, if you have more than one monitors then you can watch the log in realtime: put DebugView++ on one display and run the game on another.
+
+Messages have a '[dgVoodoo]' prefix so the best way to check out a game with dgVoodoo's debug layer is enabling filtering to the 'dgVoodoo' substring (Crtl-L in DebugView and F5 in DebugView++). +Every single log output appear in new lines in DebugView/DebugView++ - this is nice, except for some tracing messages written to the output part by part, like D3D8 disassembled shaders. +Unfortunately they appear nastily because of that. +
+ ++It's not really a big problem however because I cannot recommend you to enable tracing. It's much more intended for developers but if you want to use it after all then +do it with DebugView++ or a debugger like Visual Studio 2015 because feedback is so tremendous that only tools +with asynchronous debug output window are able to handle it. Tools with synchronous debug output like DebugView won't be able to keep up with +it and make your game/app crawl at speed near zero. +
+ +I must emphasize: +
+... +[15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3DDevice (0D3967D8)::EnumTextureFormats: Format XRGB8888 is enumerated to the application. +[15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3DDevice (0D3967D8)::EnumTextureFormats: Format ARGB8888 is enumerated to the application. +[15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3DDevice (0D3967D8) is released. +[15500] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: DirectDrawSurface (0D2380C8)::DeleteAttachedSurface: Failed, HRESULT: DDERR_SURFACENOTATTACHED +[15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: DirectDrawSurface (0D2380C8) Plain offscreen rendertarget is released. +[15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3D (0ABC87B0)::EnumDevices: Device enumerated, Name: "Direct3D HAL", Description: "dgVoodoo Hardware A... +... ++ Then the error entry about failed 'DeleteAttachedSurface' is not really an error. The application tried to delete a potential attached z-buffer, just to make sure, and doesn't care about the result. + dgVoodoo however treat it as an error because it caused an error in an API method. It's really impossible to make a decision about classifying some conditions as an error or just a plain warning.
+... +[21964] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3D8 (077BCEC8) Virtual video card is 'dgVoodoo Virtual 3D Accelerated' with 64MB onboard memory. +[21964] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3D8 (077BCEC8): Validation of D3D8 swapchain presentation parameters failed. + Reason: display mode "800x600, 72Hz" is required but not supported by output device: 0, DeviceType: D3DDEVT... +[21964] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3DDevice8 (0EE99530)::Init: Cannot create device implicit swapchain. +[21964] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3D8 (077BCEC8)::CreateDevice: Initializing Direct3DDevice8 (0EE99530) failed. +... ++ Ah, OK. Previously I configured the game to run on a display at 72Hz but now I'm trying to run it on another that does not support this refresh rate at this resolution, + so D3D8 initialization failed in dgVoodoo and so the game crashed due to lack of error checking. +
+ +
+First of all: NEVER COPY DDRAW.DLL, D3D8.DLL and D3D9.DLL INTO SYSTEM FOLDERS!!
+ALWAYS USE A LOCAL INSTALLATION FOR A GAME!
+DirectDraw, D3D8 and D3D9 are still existing and widely used system components in Windows. :)
+
+For clarifying, let's see what dlls MS and dgVoodoo use for DirectDraw and
+Direct3D:
+
| ddraw.dll | - Contains all DirectDraw implementations up to version 7 |
| d3dim.dll | - Contains all Direct3D implementations up to version 6 |
| d3dim700.dll | - Contains Direct3D 7 implementation |
| d3d8.dll | - Contains Direct3D 8.1 implementation |
| d3d9.dll | - Contains Direct3D 9Ex implementation |
| ddraw.dll | - Contains all DirectDraw implementations up to version 7 |
| d3dimm.dll | - Contains all Direct3D implementations up to version 7 |
| d3d8.dll | - Contains Direct3D 8.1 implementation |
| d3d9.dll | - Contains Direct3D 9.0c implementation |
+So, dgVoodoo packs all of its pre-D3D8 implementation into one module, d3dimm.dll,
+which differs in name from the MS one (note the extra 'm' in the name).
+Thus, copying it to the system folder by accident won't cause any harm. In spite
+of that, it is not recommended.
+
+If you want to wrap an old DirectX stuff then just copy dgVoodoo's dlls to the
+application folder and launch that. DirectX rendering is configurable similarly
+to Glide. (See DirectX related CPL options)
+DirectDraw is usable without Direct3D but there are no 3D rendering capabilities
+exposed to the applications in that case.
+Direct3D8/9 are standalone components, no need for DirectDraw to use them. In spite of
+that it is a good idea to copy DDraw.dll along with D3D8.dll (and maybe D3D9.dll) because a lot of movie
+playback system (e.g. DirectShow) rely on DDraw even in D3D8 games. dgVoodoo DDraw
+and D3D8/9 has the ability and internal support to cooperate if the situation requires.
+
+
+All the interfaces of old DirectX (that is, all DirectDraw interfaces and
+Direct3D 3/5/6/7/8/9 interfaces) are almost fully supported, and existing implementation
+is improved version by version by more and more reverse engineering and finetuning.
+
+
+Since DirectX is not a pure hardware-only rendering API, basically two types of
+virtual video cards can be used, like back in the old days, hehe. Four extra
+video card types are added to utilize different chipset features and provide correct
+vendorID/hardwareID.
+Available video card types:
+
+For more detailed capabilities, see the technical info.
+
+Software rendering devices does not use real software rendering in dgVoodoo. I
+think that a software rasterizer has no reason for existence nowadays and didn't
+want to write one just for fun so they use hw accelerated rendering in the
+background. The point is, towards the applications they logically appear as
+software devices.
+
+DirectX renderer needs less GPU power (for general cases) than Glide renderer and
+has its own internal shader code generator for generating specialized shaders.
+
+DX emulation has a method for fast CPU-access of locked surfaces. The current
+method is not the final version and going to be improved later.
+The reason of not using that one all the time but it is up to the user's choice
+is that this method is not 100% safe and can cause crashes under certain
+circumstances. It depends on the wrapped application.
+
+Important to note that compatibility with MS DirectDraw is not completely
+guaranteed, especially with very old applications written in the win95/Win98 era.
+Those applications might utilize DirectDraw/GDI interaction which is not fully
+supported in dgVoodoo. I would like to improve that somehow, in later versions.
+
+I say 'almost fully supported' when talking about DX support because there are
+some functions on certain interfaces of which functionality is somewhat unclear
+or totally unimportant, so they either not implemented at all or just
+partially because I did not have time and patience to figure out their exact
+behavior. Think about a total of 5-6 functions of all the DX interfaces,
+I hardly believe that anything used them.
+
+For D3D8.1 and D3D9, the following features are not implemented but planned to be in the
+future:
+
+................................................................................
+
+
+Internal virtual 3D card has the following 3D hardware capabilities:
+
+
+The other 4 card types are not an exact emulation of the given chipsets with some +real ATI/nVidia/Matrox driver version. They are just present to bias the available +rendering capabilities and properties toward a real ATI, nVidia or Matrox card: +
+ ++GeForce4 Ti 4800 capabilities: +
+ ++ATI Radeon 8500 capabilities: +
+ ++ + Matrox Parhelia-512 capabilities: + +
++ + GeForce FX 5700 Ultra capabilities: + +
+
+................................................................................
+
+DirectDraw and Direct3D objects supports all types of rendering devices that are
+supported in original DirectX.
+Direct3D8/9 support HAL and software device types.
+
+In MS pre-Direct3D8 implementations Direct3D7 is the only one that can be used with
+hardware vertex transformation and lighting, through a Transform & Light (T&L)
+device (but I guess it casually falls back to software vertex processing if the
+device driver does not support the complete vertex operation pipeline that is
+currently set).
+
+In all other cases software vertex processing is used. In dgVoodoo vertex
+processing is always routed to the hardware when possible.
+However, it's not so simple: software vertex processing is unavoidable in Direct3D
+in some cases, for example when an application wants Direct3D to do only vertex
+processing without rendering or to calculate visibility, or, when the rendering
+extent must be updated when drawing primitives through a non-T&L device (this is
+not too important in practice but I included it because of full compatibility).
+Also, vertex processing for Direct3D3 can only be done in software because of the
+execution logic of execute buffers.
+It all means that dgVoodoo has a software T&L vertex processing engine like
+MS Direct3D for such cases, duplicating the hw functionality. However for
+transforming, bending, lighting, fogging and texture coordinate transforming
+calculations dgVoodoo uses fast vectorized SSE2 code instead of scalar FPU.
+
+(It should be noted that in newer DX version like DX7 MS uses SSE2 too.
+ What is more, for software emulation of vertex shader code in DX8/9, MS seems to
+ apply an internal compiler, that compiles from shader code to x86 bytecode.
+ Wow, what a nice feature!! I should do the same, but probably it all is not too
+ relevant on modern CPUs.)
+
+
+
+Phong shading (per-pixel shading) is not supported by MS Direct3D, only
+Gouraud (per-vertex). However the internal virtual 3D card can externally be
+forced to Phong shading through the CPL app but keep in mind that it can cause
+heavy GPU usage because Direct3D lighting is quite complex, typical hardware
+implementations supports 8 active lights with a lot of properties and components.
+Also, Phong shading is only applicable when the application commits all its
+transforming and lighting calculations to the D3D runtime. Unfortunately it is
+very common that games do their own T&L calcs and use D3D as a lowlevel rasterizer
+for the rest. It is especially true when a game is written for multiple platforms
+or multiple 3D APIs like Glide, D3D, OpenGL, etc. Direct3D3 always uses software
+vertex processing so Phong shading cannot be applied there at all.
+
+DX8 is a horse of another colour from the beginning of a new era. Applications
+written for that usually heavily utilize multiple vertex streams through real
+vertex and index buffers along with built-in hw T&L pipeline and/or shaders
+without any calculations done in software. I think I shouldn't detail DX9.
+It's a way too new API compared to the previos ones. :)
+
+Phong shading is only applicable with full fixed function vertex/pixel pipeline
+usage. If an application is rendering through a vertex and/or pixel shader in DX8/9
+then Phong cannot be utilized.
+
+
+
+An application using DirectX can only detect available resolutions and +associated refresh rates by asking DirectDraw/DX8/DX9 to enumerate them. There are two +slight problems with it in practice: +
++To workaround the first case, dgVoodoo keeps a list of 'classic' resolutions. +These are the following: +
+ + +
+If a resolution of that list is not amongst the ones that your modern adapter
+reports then dgVoodoo forces enumerating it to the application.
+
+As for the refresh rates, if an application does not specify one of the
+enumerated ones but specifies 0 (default) then dgVoodoo finds one according to the following precedence:
+
+Choosing fullscreen or windowed working mode is part of the DirectDraw API. Some
+games or demoscene stuffs run only in fullscreen so one could think what cool it
+would be to have them running in windowed mode. I thought the same so wanted to
+enable by default the same method to switch between them as used for Glide.
+There are some problems however: the ways handling fullscreen and windowed mode
+via DirectDraw are totally different in the aspect of the driving code. So,
+forcing an application into an unexpected situation may cause glitches or crashes.
+Also, a game may have its on mechanism for mode switching with which dgVoodoo
+could conflict. Due to those theoretic things, and because I experinced some
+problems with some games, I decided to emulate the original DirectDraw behavior
+by default: when a fullscreen application loses the focus then its window gets
+minimized and when it regains that its window is restored and enters fullscreen
+again and no manual switch is available. Also, there are no changes applied on the
+app window like style and overridden messages, etc.
+
+If you make sure that a given game does not conflict with dgVoodoo's Alt-Enter
+thing then you can enable that in the CPL app. Also, you can force it to windowed
+mode if 'app controlled fullscreen/windowed' option is disabled at the game
+startup (and choose windowed mode in the general settings), without Alt-Enter.
+Forcing a windowed application to fullscreen can only be done by manual switch
+because there is no way to 1) detect when an application begins its rendering and
+2) switch to fullscreen.
+
+(But, think about it, windowed to fullscreen does not make any sense. The
+resolution used comes from the window size but the window may get resized or
+repositioned when switching mode, so..., it's confusing.)
+
+What is more, since DirectDraw was a one-monitor-API in practice, integrating windowed
+applications in a multimonitor environment is already a problem even for MS,
+I think. If such an app is even forced to fullscreen mode then it may crash or
+misworks for reasons I do not want to word here.
+
+Lost mode is emulated in default DX emulation mode, namely when switching
+between windowed/fullscreen mode by Alt-Enter is disabled. This is because some
+DX applications count on losing their surfaces when their window loses focus and
+their code paths can be mislead if they remain 'unlost'. (This is a result of bad
+programming technique as DX SDKs clearly state that an application shouldn't
+rely on window focus lost or any other circumstances.)
+
+On the other hand, there are incomplete or buggy DX applications that can't
+restore when they get reactivated and just get stuck. So, introducing lostmode
+emulation is up to a potential feature loss, as such applications likely worked
+well with older dgVoodoo versions. In order to keep this feature dgVoodoo applies
+auto-restore for the needed elements when such a situation is detected.
+
+ As it says, if you want to disable DirectX without + removing dgVoodoo's DLLs then use this option. +
+ You can select between the internal virtual 2D (SVGA) + and 3D accelerated cards. +
+ Onboard videomemory of the selected videocard. +
+ Various texture filtering modes can be forced here, starting from simple point sampled to high level anisotropic. + Keep in mind however that forcing other than the application default can result in rendering glitches, or it can + completely break some visual effects! +
+ Disabling mipmappig (forcing largest mip texture level). +
+ Here you can override the application resolution and + refresh rate. See detailed explanation of static/dynamic + resolutions in the general Readme. +
+ For 3D rendered surfaces you can force MSAA. + Option 'Application controlled' is meaningful only for DX8. For DDraw/DX it is equivalent to 'Off'. +
+ Since choosing this state is part of DirectDraw, you + must disable this option to control that via general + settings. +
+ To prevent conflicting with an application built-in + Alt-Enter handler. +
+ 2D bitmap copying can involve stretching in DirectDraw.
+ However the applied stretching filter cannot be controlled
+ via the API and early hw used simple point sampling.
+ It can result pixelated appearance here and there but
+ you can force bilinear filtering which looks cooler for
+ most cases. But, it can also introduce various artifacts
+ especially when colorkeying is also applied during
+ blitting.
+ Try forcing bilinear texture filtering for achieving similar
+ effects for D3D8 games.
+
+ See technical info. +
+ Forcing vertical retrace. +
+ Provides an alternative method for accessing video memory + of DX surfaces by the CPU. Try this one if an application + renders at a low frame rate. +
+ Similarly to 3Dfx watermark in Glide, you can use + dgVoodoo's own one to see if something is driven through + dgVoodoo's DirectX. +
You can define what type of driver version and vendor id's the wrapper should report to + the application; Some games rely on that information so it can be useful for them. + It can be defined only for SVGA and Internal3D card types; the others have their own wired + information. It can be undefined (default), nVidia, AMD or Intel. +
+It can be defined only for SVGA and Internal3D card types. + You can overwrite these properties even if a non-default AdapterIDType is defined. + Say, you defined an nVidia ID type but would like to refine the vendor ID. + +
+You can define up to 16 custom resolutions that are enumerated to the application.
+ It's useful for apps that support all or a very special resolution and you want to select that through the app itself rather than force it through the wrapper externally (avoiding rendering glitches).
+ You can also use keywords max, max_4_3 and max_16_9 here along with refresh rates to define maximum resolutions calculated from the desktop resolution with the appropiate aspect ratio.
+ 'Max' defines no aspect ratio so it is practically equivalent to your current desktop resolution.
+
What resolutions are to be enumerated to the application by default: +
You can define what bit depths for display modes are to be enumerated and supported by dgVoodoo. Any subset of {8, 16, 32} or simply All. (default) +
+Max number of vertex shader constant registers (DX8/9 only). It can only be defined for SVGA and Internal3D card types. Valid values are 256 (default), 512 or 1024. The larger value the larger performance loss.
+Some application checks against the Microsoft names of D3D devices (bad practice). If none of found then they probably won't work at all. dgVoodoo's device names differ from the Microsoft ones + but enabling this option forces the wrapper to report MS device names. +
+By default, size of 3D-renderable (rendertarget) textures are internally scaled along with the forced resolution, and also, they inherits the forced MSAA chosen for the rendering. + Rendertarget textures are typically used for pre-rendering reflections, shadows, water and such, but their unexpected size and MSAA type can introduce some unwanted glitches. + If that is the case then you can try disabling this option to have them at their original intended state but this can easily drive dgVoodoo into unresolvable situations producing errors. + The debug layer reports if such a situation is detected and this option is not applicable for the given application. +
+D3D8 only: by default, depth textures gets some additional filtering when sampling them. Depth textures are typically used for rendering shadows so they are smoothed by default. + Disabling this option leads to simple sampling as it is done in real D3D8, getting more jagged shadows. +
+If true the switching to full screen is deferred after the application initialized + the DirectX device; can be useful for games that don't expect rendering window changes + during initialization and crash +
+If enabled then direct changes of the primary surface are batched up to present them one time. If disabled then each change is immediately presented (debug-like mode). + It affects only DirectDraw. +
++ I got reports about cases with dgVoodoo DirectX emulation not starting up. + The story is simple, one copies the DX dll files into the given application folder, + next to the executable, makes sure that DX emulation is enabled on the CPL, and in + spite of that, when starting the application dgVoodoo isn't utilized at all, dgVoodoo + watermark doesn't show up in the corner if the app starts at all. + Thanks to the Guys on Vogons, who are helping me a lot, they come out with 2 reasons: +
++ I know that these details are technical like hell, and I don't at all expect an average user to + tinker the operating system registry by hand. I just write this info here because I think it's useful for + advanced users and experts to begin with. A dgVoodoo tool doing it all would be fine but currently doesn't + exist one. +
++ But don't forget to try the special release version and see the output log if experiencing any problem with dgVoodoo. +
+ + + + \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/ReadmeGlide.html b/ReadmeGlide.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b9585e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/ReadmeGlide.html @@ -0,0 +1,442 @@ + + + + + + + + + ++
+ Selected card type affects the following: +
+ Videomemory without texture memory. Some application + compute by this value that what resolutions are supported. +
+
+ You can force the resolution, the refresh rate and MSAA.
+ If the refresh rate is unforced (or enumerating refresh rates is disabled) then the application selected one will be used.
+ If the application defines a default refresh rate then 60Hz is used instead.
+
+ If the chosen refresh rate is unsupported by your monitor at a given resolution then the closest supported one will be selected.
+
+ Option 'Application driven' for MSAA has meaning only for
+ Napalm build. For non-Napalm builds it is equivalent to 'Off'.
+
+ This version can emulate more than one Texture + Management Units. +
++ Onboard RAM and texture memory are unified video memory on + UMA 3Dfx cards (see table in technical info). Future + versions of the CPL app may not allow to config them + separately. +
++ You can force the texture filtering to either point sampled or bilinear; or simply leave it at application default. +
++ I liked it in some games that looked nicer without mipmapping. :) +
++ See section "Gamma Correction". +
++ Forces at least one vertical retrace before buffer swapping. Use this option if something gets too fast. +
++ see section 'Some techincal info' +
++ see section 'Tips' +
++ Enables displaying the 3Dfx logo during the app animation. + You need the 3Dfx splash dlls for this. If they are + missing, no logo will be displayed. +
++ Enables splash screen at game/app startup. + You need the 3Dfx splash dlls for this. If they are +
++ see section 'Some techincal info' +
++ Glide games/demos can have two bad habits: +
+A gamma correction curve can be set through the Glide interface. Since Glide +uses a linear curve by default it might not match the default or one's taste +and can look ugly (at least in the old days, I remember it looked ugly on CRTs). +For the standard see sRGB on google. +
++That's why the CPL has the 'Enable Glide gammaramp' option: you can disable +the curve coming from Glide and let your monitor use the default. +
++*As taking a closer look into this, I realized that a linear curve is used by +the nowadays adapters by default but they probably post-calibrate it according +to the sRGB standard. So Glide's linear curve won't change anything to wrong. +I'm little confused about this. Back in the old days my real problem could be +that either brightness of my CRT was too high by default or sRGB was not +followed by the adapters therefore some gamma-adjusting game had really bad (pale +and really bright) look. I do not know it by now but won't remove the possibility +of disabling Glide gamma ramp. Test it on your monitor. +
++Color adjustments are supported in both fullscreen and windowed mode however +brightness is always calculated into the gamma ramp curve in fullscreen so +it has effect only if your adapter supports setting up gamma curves. +
+ ++Unfortunately Glide cannot be implemented in practice as a standalone API which +is completely independent on the underlying hardware. If someone looks through +the Glide SDK then it is clear that this API is suited for the 3Dfx Voodoo +hardware and its registers. However there are rules even in Glide (as in other +APIs too) that must be observed in respect of driving the API. An application +should never assume anything about the hardware being driven even if it knows +what hardware it is driving. The application should get all the info from the +API and keep the driving rules. +
++However in practice there are some application violating those rules very hard. +Since Glide provides free direct access to the frame buffer it is typical to +utilize the properties of a real 3Dfx hardware connected to the PCI bus. For +example, writing to the frame buffer while it was requested to lock for reading, +swapping buffers while one/some of the buffers are locked and assuming that the +mapped pointers of buffers remains unchanged, using 2048 bytes as frame buffer +stride, or drawing simultaneously by the 3D hardware and LFB writes through the +PCI bus even when a buffer was locked with idle 3D hardware mode. +Most of them can be workarounded easily but there is one case which can cause +performance drop if emulated perfectly. This case is the mentioned simultaneous +writing. dgVoodoo can emulate this usecase but you must enable it explicitly so +I reluctantly inserted an option into the CPL, named +'Force emulating true PCI access'. This is the only technical option related to +the quality of the implementation. There are only a few games it should be used +for (see 'Tips') so it would be a pity to have it pointlessly enabled for the +rest. +
++There is another strange option in the CPL, namely 'Pointcast Palette driver +build'. Well, early 3Dfx hardware allowed separate texture palettes/ncc tables +for each TMU so this possibility was reflected in Glide 2.11 and 2.43. However, +latter 3Dfx hardware used a unified memory model meaning that only one global +palette/ncc could be set for all the TMUs. Glide3 don't even allow to set them +in any other way. The funny thing is that original Glide2 drivers internally +also forced the global palette/ncc thing despite the API allowed separate ones. +It was because of pushing the programmers towards the future hardware. But, maybe +there were drivers built for custom vendors with the capability of separate +tables. So if this option is enabled in the CPL then such a driver build is +emulated but it has effect only on non-UMA cards. I don't think that any Glide +application in the world requests such a driver build so always keep this option +disabled. It just makes the appearance wrong if more than one TMU are used. +This option is only for the sake of fullness. +
++dgVoodoo exposes the following Glide capabilities according to the selected card +type: +
+| Card type | FBI revision | TMU revision | Glide3 extensions | UMA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ? (unexposable via dgVoodoo) | 0x0001 | 0x0000 | - | no |
| Voodoo Graphics (SST-1) | 0x0002 | 0x0001 | GETGAMMA | no |
| Voodoo Rush (SST-96) | 0x0002 | 0x0001 | GETGAMMA, CHROMARANGE | no |
| Voodoo 2 | 0x0002 | 0x0001 | GETGAMMA, CHROMARANGE, TEXMIRROR, PALETTE6666 | no |
| Voodoo Banshee | 0x1002 | 0x1001 | GETGAMMA, CHROMARANGE, TEXMIRROR, PALETTE6666, TEXUMA, TEXTUREBUFFER | yes |
| Other (greater) | 0x100003 | 0x100002 | GETGAMMA, CHROMARANGE, TEXMIRROR, PALETTE6666, TEXUMA, TEXTUREBUFFER, FOGCOORD, TEXCHROMA, *PIXEXT, *COMBINE, *TEXFMT, *SURFACE, *GETREGISTRY | yes |
+Why is a separate build needed for Napalm? Why not just use it as a plain Glide3 +implementation in general? Well, the answer is about the performance, again. +Napalm has a bit more complicated shaders in order to handle Voodoo4 features +like extended combine modes, 32 bit rendering, 32 bit texture formats and big +textures. So, it would be wasting of GPU resources to use it with Glide3 +applications not requiring these features (that is, all apps except Project64, in +practice :) ). +
+
+Note that there is no significant difference between Glide3 and Glide3 Napalm
+as for performance if dynamic shader compiling is enabled. In both cases, much
+more optimal shaders are compiled and used than the precompiled ones.
+
+Some limitiations:
+
Compressed textures (FXT1, DXT*) are not supported. :(
Reading/writing stencil values via 32 bit aux lfb lock won't work.
T-Buffer writemask can only be controlled by the application if antialiasing + mode is set to 'App driven'.
SURFACE and GETREGISTRY extension are only used by the 3Dfx OpenGL 1.1 driver + which is an OpenGL -> (Glide3 Napalm and DirectDraw) wrapper. Since Glide3 + operates on surfaces created by DirectDraw (3Dfx implementation), SURFACE + functionality cannot be implemented. It means that original 3Dfx OpenGL driver + won't work with a standalone Glide3 wrapper (it would make no sense but would + be nice). + Since OpenGL does not work, GETREGISTRY functionality is also needless. So, + those two extensions are only placeholders, bunch of empty functions.
+Don't forget to set card type to 'Other (greater)' with 2 TMUs in the CPL to +emulate a Voodoo4. +
+ +Forced trilinear texture filtering is not available in this wrapper version + but an application can implement it by 2 drawing passes if one TMU is used. + If more than one TMU are enabled then it can be done by one pass. Since + more TMUs are generally used for drawing the same as with one TMU but with + less passes, enabling multiple TMUs can be useful even if the gpu is loaded + with heavier shader code. It depends. Try out both cases. +
Keep in mind that not all Glide application are usable in windowed mode. Some + of them behave very well while others may not at all. Since they were + designed for an environment with one monitor and exclusive fullscreen display, + an application can get minimized or simply quits when its window loses the + focus. Also, they may capture the mouse into a fix area and you cannot even + move the game window. Or worse: if this fix area is hardcoded and (so) is on + the primary monitor then you can play the game only on the primary monitor even + in fullscreen mode. dgVoodoo tries to workaround these cases by hiding some + events from the application but generally it is not enough. +
DosBox: dgVoodoo works perfectly with Gulikoza's + newest Glide patch. Keep in mind that Extreme Assault needs a 3Dfx card with + non-UMA architecture (see table of exposed caps) and PCI emulation. +
Emulating PCI access is optimized for applications locking and accessing the + LFB very frequently (per frame). Altough it provides faster lfb data access than + doing the normal way, I cannot recommend to use it in general for all apps. + Due to nature of the technique used it can cause slowdown in applications + that access the lfb "regularly", that is, once or twice per frame. + Carmageddon 1, Extreme Assault, Dreams To Reality and Pyl are the only cases + where it has to be used, afaik. +
A strange case: when I tried to run a Glide based scene-demo, TBC,
+ it always crashed at a certain point due to stack overflow. I had to
+ manually grow the reserved stack size of the exe file to get it to run.
+ Probably a real 3Dfx driver required smaller stack than a Direct3D11
+ based driver.
+ (http://xona.com/tobecontinued/)
+
I ran into a problem with NFS 3 Hot Pursuit: ugly z-fighting which is most + noticable with projected headlights. This game does not use depth bias + but utilize the inaccuracy of the 16 bit voodoo depth buffer when rendering + polygons onto each other (I'm not sure if it was intentional or just a bug). + If an app uses z-buffering then using a 16 bit depth buffer in the emulation + provides the correct and exact mapping of the z values, like on a real Voodoo. + And so NFS3 HP also works well with a 16 bit depth buffer. I was thinking on + how to workaround this problem or automate this mechanism but found no way. + So, reluctantly again, I exposed this into an option in the CPL... + This is the second option related to the quality of the implementation, + aaaarrghh. +