dgVoodoo2 VS qemu-3dfx

Parts of DX5 and previous, such as the "retained mode", are missing from current versions of Windows entirely. Much of the remaining implementation is buggy and introduces render artifacts.

Open source projects such as dgVoodoo offer a solution to run old games, by re-implementing old DirectX and Glide on top of current DirectX [1], similar to how Wine runs DX games on Linux on top of OpenGL or Vulkan.

[1]: https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2

I have not tried this myself, but there are two compatibility wrappers that implement old graphic APIs for modern systems - nGlide and dgVoodoo2.

Voodoo2 for added stability in old games

It's a wrapper for old DirectX 7/8/9 games that makes them use DirectX 11/12/Vulkan instead: https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2

This... here's a link to the github. Click on Releases to get the latest build (it'll be the first zip file without _dbg (debug) in the title).

Try using dgVoodoo2. https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2/releases

You can always use dgVooDoo [0] to translate Glide to DirectX. With great performance, too.

[0] https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2

How to install DGVoodoo2 for use with Windower: download the latest non-dbg, non-api, non-source-code: .zip https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2/releases Unzip it. Move dgvoodoocpl.exe and MS\(x86)\d3d8.dll (just the d3d8) into -- playonlineviewer folder for retail or the same folder that your loader exe is in for private server (you can overwrite any old one in there if you like). Right click on dgvoodoocpl.exe and run as administrator. At the top right press Add and select the same folder as you selected earlier (playonlineviewer folder for retail and/or the folder of the private server loader). On the General tab, set your Adapter(s) to use / enable to your graphics card (note that, if the game won't launch after these steps, then try going back, selecting the same folder again in the dropdown menu at the top, and change it back to All, but it should work most of the time with your graphics card selected and will make sure that graphics card gets used. -- known to be necessary with SurfaceBook laptops, and maybe with external graphics card enclosures as well (untested)) On the DirectX tab, set VRAM to 512 MB (higher if you're using HD textures) and unckeck dgVoodoo Watermark at the bottom.

There is also https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx pass-through 3D acceleration for qemu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e34mSBxDm7s

I've been porting this to Nixos all week. Handles glide emulation pretty well

https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx

As for 3D acceleration, I've seen this repository (no idea if it works) https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx, and I've also seen that QEMU added the "ati-vga" device, which supports the Rage 128 Pro and Radeon RV100, but those seem to be a bit WIP.

And, here we also have the 3rd option which is less well-known than CrossOver and Parallel Desktop while targeting older Windows games with compatibility issues on modern Windows, QEMU featuring qemu-3dfx for Apple Silicon https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx

You can check out qemu-3dfx for Apple Silicon macOS. https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx/wiki/Apple-Silicon-macOS-Prerequisites

If you are a true gamer from the late 90' s though, you can and probably will run into an old game that doesn't work on modern windows. PCem is really the only good option IMO, but performance is very limited. Especially with glide and 3d acceleration, even the fastest CPUs aren't able to emulate much faster than a pentium II 200mhz at voodoo 2 at full speed (if you are emulating MMX on top of that forget it). Virtualization is possible but not likely to help as win95 virtualization is very basic and doesn't do much gaming things very well. With that said, there are some pretty crazy virtualization projects out there; here is one that requires you to compile everything from source yourself for basically no reason https://github.com/kjliew/qemu-3dfx (have fun).