Glide Wrapper

A Glide wrapper is a software which allows to use a different 3D accelerator graphics card instead of actually necessary 3dfx graphics card. Glide wrappers are emulators of the Voodoo Graphics graphics card and the Glide library, which act as wrappers to other 3D hardware and 3D accelerator APIs such as DirectX.

Background

The company, founded in 1994, 3dfx could first develop with its 3D hardware accelerator card within a few years for the first leader and was instrumental in that hardware acceleration has become the standard in 3D games area. 3dfx sat on a custom graphic interface called Glide, which was limited in contrast to other standards such as Microsoft Direct3D and OpenGL on the open house chipsets. This shortcoming was like 3dfx so again that if multiple interfaces supported within a game, with the 3dfx version often the best quality was achieved. In some games, a 3dfx card was the only supported 3D card, again a part hereof, this necessarily presupposed to play and thus no longer provided for a software mode. Shortly after 3dfx had established itself as the epitome of 3D acceleration, but it went downhill with the company. The once cutting edge 3D accelerator cards have been gradually surpassed by superior competitors, which also translated to the two overarching standards mentioned above. The acquisition of 3dfx by the competitors nvidia in December 2000 marked the end of the further development and manufacture of 3dfx cards and thus the Glide based graphics cards at all.

Motivation

There were no longer available from now on 3D maps with Glide support, had in older games, in which there was no equivalent alternative to 3dfx -based acceleration can be made to have appeared later graphics cards smears, depending on the degree of specialization in Glide diverse as. If multiple interfaces were supported, it happened occasionally that only with a 3dfx card, all effects were switched on and therefore having to be technically superior cards graphically less than was offered with a 3dfx card. Was the 3dfx -based hardware acceleration, the only option besides the software mode, so had to be dodged to the latter. In these cases, where games do not even without a 3dfx card started, had to be completely dispensed with the corresponding game.

Operation

In this breach now jumped tools for the rapidly the designation Glide wrapper naturalized, which abbildeten the Glide commands the 3dfx cards to the other 3D APIs. These tools were developed before the end of 3dfx, but then suddenly gained in importance. With emulation provided by the wrappers, it was now possible again to the old games to play on new graphics cards so as to befände a 3dfx card in the PC.

Projects

The various Glide Wrapper mainly differ in the supported operating systems, interfaces and settings options. So the wrapper Glidos for example, specializes in MS- DOS games, but supports both Direct3D and OpenGL and allows, for example, high-resolution textures, with Tomb Raider, while another wrapper, dgVoodoo, only uses Direct3D, but equally for Windows and MS- DOS is designed.

Some of the wrapper can be downloaded for free or open source. Glidos contrast is commercial, it is a spinning logo appear in the game that can only be removed by purchasing the program.