Descent Destination Saturn on Nvidia NV1 3D accelerated card

[vetz]

I made a video about this pretty unknown Windows 95 port of Descent that runs on the Nvidia NV1 card (Nvidias first 3D accelerated card from 1995).

Thought it might be interesting for you guys.

Youtube link:

[Duper]

PyroTech?!!?? Is that you??

great vid!

[Alter-Fox]

What midi card are you using? I don't recognize that sound set.
I'll take a more thorough look when I get home, I'm leaving for class right now.

[vetz]

Nope, I'm not PyroTech.

There is a textbox in the video that says MIDI is captured from the Nvidia NV1 (it could do 3D acceleration, sound, MIDI and had connection for Sega Saturn controllers). It sounds different, but it does a good job on the Descent tracks. I'll be adding MP3 files of the first three levels in the video description since another comment-er have requested this.

[Alter-Fox]

That must've been quite the video card.

[vetz]

That must've been quite the video card.

While it was one of the first 3D accelerators on the marked in 1995 (before 3DFX) it was a failure. Performance wasn't mindblowing (in Descent it is dreadful as you can see in the video) and it only supported 6 games, 3 of them from SEGA.

[Duper]

did the NV1 use the S3 compression back then? i know the Monster card was coming onto the scene then too. Lots of different takes on acceleration back then; long before bumpmapping existed.

[Krom]

So I had to go snooping around wikipedia a bit to remember what kind of PC I was using back then. I was using a system based on a Cyrix 6x86 P166+ CPU (133 MHz) that I overclocked to 150 MHz. It had 32 MB of RAM, which was quite generous at the time and ran Windows 95 on a 2 GB hard drive, the video card I had was either an ATI 3D Rage, or ATI 3D Rage II (can't remember which), it had a 2 MB frame buffer standard, but I eventually upgraded it to 4 MB, and I had a sound blaster AWE sound card. 1024x768 with 24 bit color on the desktop seemed pretty awesome at the time. The only game I had that even supported its "3D" function was MechWarrior 2 and aside from trying it out in "3D" mode once I didn't even use it. I can't even remember why, I know the card did filtering on textures and used mipmaps, but I think it was so slow that I gave up because using software rendering was faster. According to wikipedia it was a directx 5 card...heh. I forgot directx was even a thing that far back...

I kept using that ATI card for quite a long time actually, all the way up even after the release of Descent 3 in 1999, but by then I had picked up a Diamond Monster 3D II 8 MB card (Voodoo2) and a new AMD K6 CPU and was only using the ATI card for 2D desktop rendering. Eventually that pair gave away to a single Voodoo3 16 MB card.

Heh! Digging around in my closet, I still have that voodoo2, voodoo 3 and sound blaster (and as far as I know they still work). But the K6 system (and a bunch more generations that followed it) is long gone.

[vetz]

did the NV1 use the S3 compression back then? i know the Monster card was coming onto the scene then too. Lots of different takes on acceleration back then; long before bumpmapping existed.

S3 compression? Not sure what you mean here. You mean the priopritary technology that S3 made that was available in the Unreal games and later became standard in DirectX? In that case the answer is no. The Nvidia card came out in November of 1995, before S3 came with their first 3D accelerator (summer 1996 with the S3 Virge). The 3DFX Voodoo cards (which was the Diamond Monster) wasn't really crowned the best card untill GLQuake came out in 1997. It blew every other card to bits in Quake, which was the game everyone cared about when looking at benchmarks.

So I had to go snooping around wikipedia a bit to remember what kind of PC I was using back then. I was using a system based on a Cyrix 6x86 P166+ CPU (133 MHz) that I overclocked to 150 MHz. It had 32 MB of RAM, which was quite generous at the time and ran Windows 95 on a 2 GB hard drive, the video card I had was either an ATI 3D Rage, or ATI 3D Rage II (can't remember which), it had a 2 MB frame buffer standard, but I eventually upgraded it to 4 MB, and I had a sound blaster AWE sound card. 1024x768 with 24 bit color on the desktop seemed pretty awesome at the time. The only game I had that even supported its "3D" function was MechWarrior 2 and aside from trying it out in "3D" mode once I didn't even use it. I can't even remember why, I know the card did filtering on textures and used mipmaps, but I think it was so slow that I gave up because using software rendering was faster. According to wikipedia it was a directx 5 card...heh. I forgot directx was even a thing that far back...

I kept using that ATI card for quite a long time actually, all the way up even after the release of Descent 3 in 1999, but by then I had picked up a Diamond Monster 3D II 8 MB card (Voodoo2) and a new AMD K6 CPU and was only using the ATI card for 2D desktop rendering. Eventually that pair gave away to a single Voodoo3 16 MB card.

Heh! Digging around in my closet, I still have that voodoo2, voodoo 3 and sound blaster (and as far as I know they still work). But the K6 system (and a bunch more generations that followed it) is long gone.

That system you describe was fairly common in 1996/1997. You must have had the ATI 3D Rage II since you could upgrade it. The first card only had 2 MB non-upgradeable memory. It pretty much sucked in Mechwarrior II unless you had a quick CPU. I imagine with that 133mhz it didnt run very well. You can check out my Mechwarrior 2 comparison video if you wanna see how it looked on the ATI 3D Rage II (and a bunch of other competing 3D cards): .

Keep those Voodoo cards incase you think of getting an old computer again. Prices are on the rise

[Krom]

Aye, and I still have the VGA pass-through cable for that voodoo2 even...

Nice find on the video, yeah it must have been the 3D Rage II then. That was pretty much the infancy of hardware accelerated 3D game rendering, although it didn't really take off till the voodoo 1. I remember the Z-buffer was a recent concept at the time and everyone used their own proprietary APIs.

[Duper]

S3 was a texture compression algorithm that Diamond MutliMedia made. They were the makers of the Stealth cards back in the day.