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> if you want to experience GLQuake that looks like software-rendered Quake, that's a simple settings change in your GPU driver, overriding the texture sampling mode. That's literally the only difference.

Is that the case?

https://fabiensanglard.net/3dfx_sst1/ has a side-by-side screenshot comparison of the two, and software Quake's colours and lighting look way more rich and vibrant; it's not just smoother textures. It's possible that GLQuake/one of the many source ports since has improved on this though.

Of course I know this is a particular quality of GLQuake and not an actual limitation of hardware rendering. And I agree with in general with the contention that this article is talking about a particular art style associated with mid 90s software rasterizers rather than about "software rendering" itself.

by adastra224 hours ago|

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In the caption under the image it explains that the 3Dfx card lacked gamma correction, which is why it looked so saturated. The Voodoo was a pass-through card: it had its own DAC for generating display signal when a full screen 3D game was running, but otherwise your 2D accelerator was used. So on the same machine a software rendered game and a 3D accelerated game had different output even if the frame buffer was identical, due to different circuitry (and the Voodoo card’s circuitry lacking gamma correction made it hella saturated as you see here).

This could have been corrected on the art side, by recalibrating the texture maps to the voodoo gamma levels, and that’s why there are great arcade machines from that era with wonderful graphics (designed for the hardware they were running in production), but GLQuake looks all washed out.

by chocochunks3 hours ago|

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It's not just the gamma correction. Things like water are different in GLQuake.

DF Retro has good comparison of software Quake, GLQuake and VQuake (for the Rendition Verite).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KxRXZhQuY8

by onli8 hours ago|

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Are you sure? I haven't played enough Quake to know either way, but I did play Deus Ex in software mode (unreal engine), and that had a lot of differences to the other renderers. I very much doubt texture sampling mode alone would reach a similar result.

(It even had graphic errors, green textures in the faces etc giving everything a very alien look. But that's not what I mean).

by swinglock7 hours ago|

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It's not correct. A notable example is the water effects.

by seba_dos17 hours ago|

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It depends on particular renderer, obviously. Not all software renderers were being given appropriate care.

by paulryanrogers7 hours ago|

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May be a couple settings. IIRC full bright textures didn't translate well in early GPU renderers. Often they'd appear shaded as if they weren't light sources at all.