Author Topic: What do that Voodoo do? (Read 1502 times)

Lephturn · « **on:** October 17, 2000, 06:12:00 PM »

Heh, sorry about the title, I couldn't resist.

Just wanted to post a link to a web page I just threw up to demonstrate why I love my Voodoo 5 and what Full Screen Anti-Aliasing does for AH. Check it out:
http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/fsaa/

The effects are much worse when the picture is moving, but this will give you an idea of why I will NEVER buy a card that won't do FSAA. Also note, the nVidia implementation of FSAA doesn't look nearly as good to my eye. The visual quality of the V5's 2x FSAA image is better, and nothing holds a candle to their 4x.

FYI, I play AH at 1024x768 32 bit color and 2x FSAA and get 30-50 fps pretty solid. 4x is just a little too slow, getting down into the teens around a main base. I'll need the V5 6k to make 4x work.

Athlon 700
128 Mg of ceap-ass RAM that won't OC for beans.
Voodoo 5 5500 64 Meg

Also, I've snipped out small parts of the picture and indexed them down to 256 color GIF89a's for size so they don't look quite as nice as they should.

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs http://www.flyingpigs.com

"My P-47 is a pretty good ship, she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip.
Just thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip, always got me through so far."
- Steve Earl

fradim · « **Reply #1 on:** October 17, 2000, 07:24:00 PM »

Really great :-)

I also have some shots taken by vila (Aces High) and llama (Warbirds), using voodoo5, at benchmark site: http://www.grandeavenida.com/fps/shots.cfm?Game=2

Looking at these different shots I thought it might be useful to define a "protocol" to take them so that we can compare different video cards.

fradim

[This message has been edited by fradim (edited 10-17-2000).]

Staga · « **Reply #2 on:** October 17, 2000, 08:37:00 PM »

Heres few shots from Prophet MX2 card. These are 1024*768 32bit screenshots with fps

It really could be helpfull if we could compare different vid-cards and maybe other hardware too using AH as a "Test-bed" ?
Certain plane in a certain place ???

btw: Here's my tests with 3D Mark 2000. As you may notice over-clocked cpu and double ram didnt really help in that test. Guess I need to practise little more

[This message has been edited by Staga (edited 10-17-2000).]

Lephturn · « **Reply #3 on:** October 18, 2000, 07:20:00 AM »

Yeah, a standard location/plane and view type thing for some testing would be great.

fradim, the problem with the shots you posted are that they are jpegs. The visual anomalies and loss that results from the jpeg compression really doesn't do it justice. I posted stripped down GIF89's because although there is color loss through the 256 color indexing process, it doesn't add the graphical crap that Jpeg compression does. GIFs are much better suited to what is still basically line art in these games. I'll grab some screenshots and leave them as bitmaps, feel free to use them if you like.

Staga I didn't post screenshots because they are just too freakin' big! I snipped these parts out of the middle to save size. The screenshots are about 600k per shot. I'll snap some tonight and add them to the site as downloadable options.

BTW, regardless of speed, I think the V5 wins on pure visual quality. I don't really notice the difference between the two forms of 2x FSAA until I am moving though. The crawling and flashing that you get in a moving image is handled much better in the Voodoo implementation from my point of view. Unfortunately I have no way to demonstrate that.

That Prophet is a great card though. Anything that can do 1024x768 32 Bit and 2x FSAA is a huge step over vid cards that can't do it. What's the pricetag on that puppy?

The first card that can do 1024x768 32 Bit and 4X FSAA at a playable framerate will be my next purchase if it's anywhere reasonably priced.

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs http://www.flyingpigs.com

"My P-47 is a pretty good ship, she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip.
Just thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip, always got me through so far."
- Steve Earl

hblair · « **Reply #4 on:** October 18, 2000, 08:11:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Lephturn:

FYI, I play AH at 1024x768 32 bit color and 2x FSAA and get 30-50 fps pretty solid. 4x is just a little too slow, getting down into the teens around a main base. I'll need the V5 6k to make 4x work.

I tried the voodoo5 for a few hours one night several weeks ago, that was all I needed to confirm that that my old viper 770 ultra could hang with it, for a LOT less money. I'm not trying to ruin your thread, just warning people.

BTW, Lephturn, don't you get blue lines in the borders of all the textures? and a blue cross in the middle of the map? 90% of the guys I've spoken to with voodoo5's said they had this problem.

Eagler · « **Reply #5 on:** October 18, 2000, 08:34:00 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by hblair:
I tried the voodoo5 for a few hours one night several weeks ago, that was all I needed to confirm that that my old viper 770 ultra could hang with it, for a LOT less money. I'm not trying to ruin your thread, just warning people.

BTW, Lephturn, don't you get blue lines in the borders of all the textures? and a blue cross in the middle of the map? 90% of the guys I've spoken to with voodoo5's said they had this problem.

No blue lines here. Much better frame rate than my v550 Diamond.

Another happy voodoo 5500 customer

Eagler

Fariz · « **Reply #6 on:** October 18, 2000, 08:58:00 AM »

Leph, pls. tell that ppl. who help you to pay for you account, that I also need some money, so I can advertise that vodoo stuff along with you. I started already, check it bellow

---
Vodoo 5 is better than... hummmm, vodoo 1. Buy it, it can make planes look more... planish, trees more treeish, and will make cubic heads of pilots in AH less cubic. But beware, in the midnight it will turn back into a pumpkin.

---

Fariz

Lephturn · « **Reply #7 on:** October 18, 2000, 12:53:00 PM »

No prob hblair.

The V5 isn't the best value in the market for sure. However, if you are aiming for top image quality, I think it is THE card to have. I posted the web page to help demonstrate why I think Full Screen Anti-Aliasing is the #1 feature a video card needs for flight sims. I think the V5 does the best job and has the best image quality at an acceptible frame rate. Just wanted to point out that although many review sites pan the FSAA because "it's not fast enough in Quake 3" etc., that is just not the case if you are a diving or flying sim enthusiast.

The blue lines thing was fixed in the driver update to 1.03. I used to get those for a while, but it was not constant, just the odd little crack in the textures and a flickering clipboard if you used FSAA. To let you know how serious it was... I flew with FSAA on anyway.

Fariz... um... whatver.

I'm not trying to advertise anything. If nVidia's next product can do a better FSAA implementation at higher framerates than 3DFX's product, then I'll buy nVidia's. However, I'm just pointint out that I think FSAA is the "killer app" if your main game is Aces High, and I think that the V5 5500 does the best job of it from the cards available right now.

BTW, the reason I posted all of this was that some of my squad mates were asking about what vid card to get next. They pointed out that most of the hardware web sites had kindof panned the V5, and had basically said that FSAA wasn't useable. I posted the web site to show them why I use FSAA and what it did for you in our type of games. Since some of my squad mates appreciated the information, I thought there would be some folks here who might like to see it as well.

------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs http://www.flyingpigs.com

"My P-47 is a pretty good ship, she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip.
Just thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip, always got me through so far."
- Steve Earl

[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 10-18-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 10-18-2000).]

Mark Luper · « **Reply #8 on:** October 18, 2000, 06:29:00 PM »

I appreciate the post myself Lephturn. It was informative and brought to light something I was not aware of concerning the V5. I have been very happy with my Viper 770 though I wish it was an ultra. I used two voodoo2 cards in sli mode for a long time because I use glide in a couple of my racing games.

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MarkAT

"It is not the critic who counts,
it is the man in the arena..."
Teddy Roosevelt