Did 3dfx voodoo cards support OpenGL and Direct3D seamlessly? (in windows)

[Freesurfer]

Back in the days when I was a kid, I bought a used Voodoo 2 3dfx card and installed it in a PC running windows 95 at the time. I installed the driver from the CD and used the passthrough cable that came with it to pass the signal from the 2D GPU through to the voodoo.

However I never got it working. Games I tried were half-life 1, CS 1.5 (before the steam days) as well as some other games. But none of them would run in 3D accelerated mode, only software rendering. Selecting Direct3D in half-life did "work" but I assume it was still just CPU rendering for compatibility.

Maybe I wasn't as tech savvy back then and I cannot remember what I did trying to troubleshoot it. I considered that maybe the problem was that I had not selected 3dfx mode in the games' settings. However reading up on the subject now, there are places stating that the cards would also work with OpenGL and Direct3D "whenever those APIs are called for". Which means that even if I failed to select the appropriate mode, it should still have run with 3D acceleration in those modes. The issue could have been anything, from a broken windows setup to bad drivers.

The reason I bring it up now is that I found the card again and have for some time wanted to make a retro DOS/win9x setup for the nostalgy (even though I know there are emulators for modern PCs etc). And I want to see if I can make use of that card

[KE5FX]

OpenGL support under Windows is a long story.  A very deep rabbit hole that, if you follow it, will ultimately dump you out in a Chinese junkyard full of old tires that somebody set on fire 20 years ago and puddles of noxious liquids that glow in the dark and breed mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds.

TL, DR: there was a colossal pissing match between D3D and OpenGL advocates that was largely fought behind the scenes (google GLSetup for starters).  3Dfx cards supported the subset of OpenGL that was necessary to run whatever id Software was shipping at the moment.   Savvy developers knew not to stray too far off the "Quake path" when deciding what API functions to use.

[mariush]

If my memory is correct, the Voodoo cards worked with Glide, some proprietary 3dfx stuff.
The later voodoo 3 and onwards probably did work with directx and opengl but basically like any other 3d acceleration video card.

[rdl]

I had both the Voodoo 1 and 2. Quake and Half-life definitely worked with 3D acceleration. I don't remember too much about Half-life, but for Quake to work you had to download the OpenGL port, GLQuake and you had to use a specific GL driver that came with it for the 3Dfx cards. It would not work with Glide.

I still have the PentiumPro 200 computer with the Voodoo 2 card that I used in those days. The box the Voodoo 2 came in is on a shelf in a closet and has the Voodoo 1 card it replaced inside.

[james_s]

I don't remember if they worked with OpenGL, but the cards definitely worked. I had an original Voodoo and later a Voodoo II and the difference compared to software rendering was absolutely stunning. I still remember the first time I fired up Quake after getting the Voodoo card, I couldn't believe how detailed and glassy smooth it was. I don't recall having any difficulty getting it going, just pop in the card, install the software and then configure the game to use it.

[MrMobodies]

I had a Voodoo 5500 and it did support OpenGL but slow and barely playable in like Unrealtournament 1999.
It added some decorative shadows under the menus.

I do remember about some specific driver miniport file that was put in the games folder for Quake.


I still got it and a whole load of other graphics cards in a box somewhere.

[mariush]

I think Carmageddon (the old DOS game) and the original Tomb Raider were a couple games that had support for Glide (the 3dfx voodoo proprietary api).
For Carmageddon there's even a patch specifically for it here: http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/utilities/?objid=982

Other games... Turok I'm quite sure, I remember I downloaded a pirated copy and it was ONLY glide, pissed me off because back then didn't have internet at home and went to an internet cafe to get it...

There's a bunch of game titles here : https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Glide_games

but from that list, i'm only familiar with descent, clive baker's undying, incoming, mdk, pod, return to castle wolfestein... i have vague memories of playing these and seeing glide / 3dfx options in the graphics menus.

[radiolistener]

Back in the days when I was a kid, I bought a used Voodoo 2 3dfx card and installed it in a PC running windows 95 at the time. I installed the driver from the CD and used the passthrough cable that came with it to pass the signal from the 2D GPU through to the voodoo.

As I remember, Voodoo 3dfx doesn't have opengl support, if it was even available it was very limited. But on the other hand at the time of 3dfx, there was popular other videocards based on 3Dlabs Permedia 2 chipset. I have it and it has good OpenGL support with full scene antialiasing which was missing in 3dfx card.

I know that because my friend have Voodoo 3dfx and he was very impressed how Quake 2 looks on my videocard with 3Dlabs Permedia 2 chipset.  He said that his Voodoo 3dfx doesn't have full scene antialiasing and has less frame per second in Quake, than my 3Dlabs Permedia 2 card.

I was surprised because in those days everyone was obsessed with Voodoo 3dfx and I thought that it gives some amazing results, and my seemingly simple card turned out to be an order of magnitude faster and gave a better quality of 3D scene rendering.  What surprised me most then was that Voodoo 3dfx did not fully support OpenGL.

[james_s]

At the time it came out, there was nothing better than the Voodoo card for games that supported it. Back in the DOS era we were already accustomed to needing to tweak and configure games for the specific hardware being used, nobody played games like that in Windows. This didn't really change until DirectX came along.