/vr/ - Retro Games

Flight Simulator 98 is an interesting case. Up close, it often looks better in software mode because most of the textures are from FS95, which was software-only. So if you're flying low and slow, that's great. But if you're flying up high in a jet, everything becomes pixellated very quickly in software mode, while in hardware mode terrain looks about the same regardless of distance.

Interestingly, subsequent versions of FS (2000, 2002, 2004, FSX) all have a problem with terrain blurring even in hardware mode. If you could get the texture to render at full resolution but all pixellated, it would often look a much better than the blurry terrain they actually generate.