CS09 3Dfx Voodoo
Description
This item is from the PC 3D Graphics Accelerators FAQ, by Blair MacIntyre with numerous contributions by others. (v1.2).
CS09 3Dfx Voodoo
The information in this section was taken from various press releases about the Voodoo Graphics chipset. I have no contact information for 3Dfx, and no email to 3dfx.com has yielded a response.
3Dfx Interactive, Inc. has released information on Voodoo Graphics\u2122, a 3D graphics accelerator specifically designed for 3D entertainment applications in the coin-operated/arcade and home consumer markets. Designed to enable a new class of realistic and highly interactive 3D games, Voodoo Graphics offers expanded capabilities above and beyond the basic 3D functionality that will be found in commodity Windows and multimedia accelerators. Major consumer and coin-op OEMs and developers have announced support for the chipset.
3Dfx Interactive has announced that Orchid Technology and FMI Graphics Products, a business unit of Fujitsu Microelectronics, Inc. have signed OEM agreements to develop consumer 3D game boards based on Voodoo Graphics.
In addition to elementary 3D functionality, including perspective correct polygons with point sampled texture mapping, Z- and double-buffering, Gouraud shading capabilities and standard VGA resolution, 3Dfx Interactive has also included level-of-detail (LOD) MIP mapping, bi-linear and advanced filtering and SVGA resolution support. In addition, the chipset delivers realistic imagery through sub-pixel correction, alpha blending, and anti-aliasing. Most importantly however, unlike other multimedia accelerators that suffer significant performance degradation when available 3D features are used, Voodoo Graphics was designed to simultaneously offer all of these features at real-time frame rates.
Voodoo Graphics also support per-pixel effects such as fog, translucency, and transparency, texture compositing, a variety of lighting techniques, texture morphing, animated textures, and reflection mapping.
The Voodoo Graphics chipset supports full screen games under popular PC operating systems including Microsoft Windows 95, MS DOS, and Microsoft Windows 3.1 using 3D APIs including Microsoft's Direct3D, DirectDraw, 3D-DDI, and Reality Lab 2.0, as well as Intel's 3DR. The chipset also supports embedded operating systems for coin-op/arcade platforms. Development environments supported by the chipset include MS DOS, WindowsNT, Windows95, and Silicon Graphics' IRIX. Important development tools and APIs supported by Voodoo Graphics include Silicon Graphics' IRIS GL and OpenGL, AutoDesk's 3D Studio, MultiGen's GameGen, and Gemini Technology's OpenGVS.
Packaged in a two-chip set, the Voodoo Graphics architecture is a PCI Bus 2.1 compliant device that operates transparently with existing VGA and Windows accelerators via analog pass through or shared frame buffer implementations on Intel or RISC-based PCI platforms. The Voodoo Graphics chipset is priced at less than $75 in 20,000 piece quantities. On perspective correct, texture mapped, Z-buffered, filtered, LOD MIP mapped, fogged, alpha blended, 50-pixel triangles Voodoo Graphics delivers more than 45 megapixels per second fill rate and over 350,000 triangles per second polygon rates on a Pentium 90. The first chip, pixelfx, is the primary graphics controller and contains interfaces to the PCI bus and companion texture processing unit, texelfx. The 3Dfx Interactive pixelfx graphics controller is packaged in a 240-pin PQFP. texelfx, the advanced texture processing unit, is packaged in a 208-pin PQFP.
For more information, contact: 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. 415-934-2400
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