/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5228462]

Should old PC games be played with hardware acceleration?

[Anonymous No.5228470]

If you like it better. It's for YOUR entertainment, anon.

[Anonymous No.5228481]

>>5228462
A crisp 4k anti-aliased quake is always better looking.

If you're playing on a 386 then nothing wrong with some grittier visuals.

[Anonymous No.5228513]

Subjectivism sucks.

[Anonymous No.5228528]

>>5228462
>Should
Shit thread OP

[Anonymous No.5228584]

>>5228513
>comparing a vodoo 5

By the time that card came out voodoo was done and going bankrupt. Almost nobody bought voodoo after the voodoo 3. Hell I was still using a geforce 2 to play morrowind.

[Anonymous No.5228585]

>>5228462
Depends on the game
Generally software mode because early 3D acceleration looks like crap
Quake for example looks like shit accelerated while beautiful in software mode
Quake 2 looks better accelerated (although still issues but fixable)
Early Need for Speed games looked better accelerated while NfS 3, 4 and 5 is dogcrap in software mode

Some games look like shit on PC, eg Tomb Raider 1 to 5, accelerated or not, they are meant to be played on PlayStation

>>5228481
That's like your opinion
Quake shouldn't look crisp, it should look rough and dirty

[Anonymous No.5228593]

>>5228462
I don't like the texture smoothing but I DO like being able to play 640*480 at a decent framerate.

That said GLQuake doesn't really want to play nice with my Rage Pro for whatever reason. HUD won't render. Fuck if i know why, maybe the problem's that the only driver still findable on the internet is a crap version that came boxed with the card or something.

[Anonymous No.5228608]

>>5228584
Well, the filename is ironic and says something about the Voodoo 5.
Its reliance on AA and 16-bit color made it struggle in apples to apples comparisons. The lack of TnL also made it short-lived with the myriad of DX7 games released that year.
>>5228585
What's wrong with Tomb Raider 4 on PC? It even has unique features like bump mapping, albeit one of those shitty DX6 techniques.

[Anonymous No.5228624]

>>5228608
>What's wrong with Tomb Raider 4 on PC?
Personal opinion but I find the block based world of Tomb Raider looks bad when combined with PC high resolutions
I prefer how the game looks in PlayStation

[Princess Sevenleaf !IT2uZpX.Ic No.5228875]

>>5228481
>crisp
>anti-aliased

[Anonymous No.5228958]

>>5228462
I play in high-res but turn off texture filters...you have to do that in Quake 2 with some command line bullshittery, but that way you get the nice lighting effects without the washed out textures.

All the filters of the old games pretty much make them look like shit...once you start getting into more modern stuff like AVP 2 or ST Voyager Elite Force, they actually make the game look better rather than worse.

[Anonymous No.5228981]

>>5228624
If only you were able to change resolution in PC games.

[Anonymous No.5229030]

>>5228958
It's because of texture bit depth.
Interpolating from an array of 256 colors looks like ass, but once you go higher, you can blend between colors naturally.

[Anonymous No.5229034]

>>5228981
What's this trying to convey?

[Anonymous No.5229102]

The only time I prefer software renderer is with games like Doom and Duke, as sprites tend to clip really badly with geometry in hardware rendering.

[Anonymous No.5229112]

>>5229034
It can be played on PC at Playstation tier resolution. With most of these old games, many people actually played them that way, too.

[Anonymous No.5229140]

>>5228875
Proper anti-aliasing like MSAA is crisp.
It's more performance-lighter solutions like TXAA and FXAA that blur the image and textures, but most modern games use those because cantsoles.

With old games on a good modern hardware you can just use supersampling however (rendering at higher rez, then downscaling to your monitor).

>>5228958
Unreal had some kickass funky texture filter for software that looked... Unique (not in a bad way)

[Anonymous No.5229226]

>>5228462
Whatever works to you.
However there might be some practical concerns. One thing I remember is that Flight Simulator 98 and 2000 will patellate the hell out of terrain at heigh altitudes if you don't have it on, and also severely cut the draw distance of objects/take them off screen faster, which may have practical implications for flying rather than just making an aesthetic change.

[Anonymous No.5229227]

>>5229226
>patellate
pixellate. (And also yes I spelt high wrong)

[Anonymous No.5229257]

>>5229030
>It's because of texture bit depth.
Wrong. It's because older 3D engines weren't designed for the limitations of old cards and so use textures not designed for power-of-two limitations. The engine then poorly resamples the texture into power-of-two (even if you use a modern card) turning it into mush which then gets smeared by texture filtering

[Anonymous No.5229317]

>>5228462
Another comparison

[Anonymous No.5229889]