3Dfx seeking Linux developer 153
PowerPC sent us
a post from 3dfx.glide.linux asking for someone interested
in working at 3dfx. Specifically to work on developing,
evangelizing and maintaining 3dfx under Linux. Glad to
see another vendor joining the fray. I've attached the
full request and contact information below.
From: Marty Franz <mfranz@141.com>
Newsgroups: 3dfx.glide.linux
Subject: Linux Job Opening at 3dfx
Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 20:35:58 -0700
Organization: 3Dfx Interactive
Reply-To: mfranz@141.com
All,
I'm looking for a hard core Linux/3D programmer to join the Voodoo Porting Group at 3dfx. This person must live/eat/breath Linux and 3D graphics. Imagine working all day every day in Linux....Sound cool ? Think you have what it takes ? Email your resume to the email address below.
Voodoo Porting Group Job Description
- Answer developer questions in a timely manner.
- Evangelize 3D API?s and 3dfx hardware to developers.
- Develop tools to ease development on 3dfx platforms.
- Develop 3D demos and technologies to promote the use of advanced graphic techniques.
- Help maintain and improve the quality of 3dfx software distributions.
- Develop and present technical presentations at 3dfx developer conferences.
- Help maintain 3dfx developer web site.
- Publicly promote 3dfx and the use of 3dfx hardware under Linux.
Skills Required
- Strong C/C++ experience required. Assembly experience a plus
- Must have a minimum of one year 3D graphics experience.
- Glide and OpenGL experience a plus.
- Strong math background a plus.
- Strong written and verbal skills required.
Marty.
--
Marty Franz
Director of VPG
3Dfx Interactive, Inc.
mfranz@3dfx.com
They're not "clean room" (Score:1)
To put yourself in their shoes, reverse the situation and say some commercial company violated the GPL for Linux -- say a certain Redmond company using the CODA filesystem with modifications and no source release. Wouldn't you want to have the copyright vigorously defended?
Re:Whoa, enough with the negativity! (Score:1)
to closed source *JUST* because 3dfx is hiring
some Linux programmers to build binary X drivers
and libraries.
Only way for Linux to become mostly closed source
is if some company used the kernel (as is) and
then just rewrote all the user-level tools (or
used BSD's stuff). And I doubt we will see that
occuring. If you want to start yelling I'd suggest you look over at www.thirdpig.com where
they hacked a linux kernel for "security" and
they plan on selling it. No talk of returning
the code to the public.
Programmers Charity (Score:1)
i will be looking for my check soon, and then i will freely release all the R&D we invested our time and money into so other companies can still my ideas and make money without having to invest into R&D, and also i will not have to my programmers anymore...they will just waste it on food, rent and living expenses anyway....
Re:Glide, 3dfx, and binary-only drivers (Score:1)
Linux stands for:
Open source
Linux DOESNT stand for
Open Ideas
Its like, when ever a linux user says something "different" or a company does something that "inst the linux way" you guys flame them up the ass.
I can see linux falling on its arse cuz of this.
But who am I to say? I'm just a lame useless windows users. windows users are stupid. Windows users opinions arent valid.
Whatever, put your ego aside and think Openly.
Easy does it, folks (Score:1)
I've been using Linux, exculsively, as my development platform for over a year now. My day job is developing 3D games. These two would be mutually exclusive, if it were not for Daryll's glide drivers. (My latest creation, called "Savage Quest", is currently shipping to arcades all over the US).
Thanks to those glide drivers, I can play Quake 2 alongside my Windows-using co-workers.
Thanks to those glide drivers, we can all play Quake 3 while our Windows-using co-workers look on with envy.
Thanks to those glide drivers, we can all play the few commercial 3D games that are making it to Linux (such as BFRIS and Fire&Darkness).
Thanks to those glide drivers, we can play the unfinished Golgotha and Tux: Quest for Herrings, and fledgling game programmers can browse the source on their Linux boxes.
All of these things are still written with stock OpenGL, so as soon as other GL drivers come availible (come on, MetroLink & Xi, what's taking so long?!) we'll be able to run them on that hardware instantly.
I can't see any way that the binary-only Glide drivers have hurt the Linux community. I'd say they have helped it tremendously. Sure, it's not *ideal* - but you have to start somewhere.
what if 3Dfx were reading this? (Score:1)
Speak for yourself (Score:2)
Re:Speak for yourself (Score:2)
It really irks me when some jerk speaks for the WHOLE linux community.
I will live with binary drivers, and i am on an SMP machine as well, which probably means no threaded binaries for my lame ass. Do I care? Yes, but I'm not going to say "Screw you and your lame binary drivers" just because they don't fit my needs.
They don't want to release the specs on it, because they are worried that another company might use this to help better there own product, because those documents are a complete reverse engineer report. The 3D industry is very vulernable to this. Who ever chews out the best card for less then $200 is generally the one who is on top. nVidia TNT sales skyrocketed as soon as people found it there was finally a card that was cheaper, and faster then the voodoo2. Voodoo3 sales went up becuase there was this card that was faster then the TNT (allthough, it supports smaller texture size... but thats a nother story).
And the TNT2, will probably fight against the Voodoo3 for marketshare, until a vendor chews out a cheaper/faster 3d card.
Thats how it works sadly.
We should concentrate on education on open source, and help it become an accepted norm, rather then spit in there face and say "you suck unless you provide OS drivers".
Anyway, just MY (as in me, not the linux communities) $0.02
You just don't get it. (Score:1)
You know, I don't think the kernel needs to be GPL'ed, Linux would rule if it was a proprietary system! Oh wait, not it wouldn't.
Would you use a binary-only kernel? If not, why would you accept a binary-only video driver? Sounds like a double standard to me.
Grow a brain (Score:1)
Couldn't have said it better (Score:1)
You know, linux wouldn't be here today if it wasn't free. Get a clue.
Re:Grow a brain (Score:1)
Re:Couldn't have said it better (Score:1)
If we start compromising ideals just for 3d drivers, where do we start next? "Oh, that's fine, binary only drivers for XXXX scsi card, it's better than nothing!" Is it though, how can you gaurantee the quality of that driver? How can you improve it, how can you fix bugs? Well, even if YOU can't, the source is still important because someone else WILL.
Looks to me like you are a simple 'Anything but Microsoft' person, which is imho, the wrong reason to run linux. Linux is great due to it's openness,once you start taking that openness away it becomes just that much worse.
You are the fucking hypocrite, you say you wont accept binary kernel mods but you do acept binary only 3d drivers. YOU are the one with double standards.
Huh? (Score:1)
You are full of *hit (Score:1)
You need to get your priorities straight.
WRONG (Score:1)
There are some issues of them not releasing the docs on the geometry processor but that issues is going to be resolved sometime soon...
Little do you know.. (Score:1)
Currently, there are drivers for the G200 in development. And guess what, we are proving you wrong.
http://lists.openprojects.net/mailman/listinfo/
Re:Programmers Charity (Score:1)
--synaptik
Re:Dude, he was joking. (Score:1)
And I was agreeing with him.
--synaptik
Re:Dude, he was joking. (Score:1)
--synaptik
Re:What we really need... (Score:2)
Re:Take my Job, PLEASE! (Score:1)
Re:Why so negative? (Score:1)
Re:Take my Job, PLEASE! (Score:1)
If you're so smart, why don't you do like Darryll is doing, and sign an NDA with 3dfx and port Glide to the Hurd yourself? 3dfx isn't charging anyone for the Linux version of Glide, they just don't want to publicly release the source code. If someone were seriously interested in porting Glide to some other OS or platform, they should get in touch with 3dfx and do it, not sit back and bitch because they don't get their way.
Re:Take my Job, PLEASE! (Score:1)
Yep, kind of ironic. But the decision to only have open-source drivers is GNU's, and if that decision limits the number of devices the OS can support then that's something they have to live with.
We can rail all we want against vendors that decide to release binary-only applications, drivers, etc. But at least in the near term, they will continue to do just that because, right or wrong, they see it in their best interest. It's better for us to welcome what they do release and try to convince them to release more, than to angrily turn them away because what they release isn't "free enough". Linux's market share increases because it supports more hardware, and the vendor's market share increases because its hardware works in more places. In time they'll see that releasing source only increases the amount of hardware they can sell; until then it benefits everyone to support and encourage them to at least be compatible.
Mr. Positive is correct, but so is Mr. Negative (Score:5)
:-)
Re:Tell me when 3Dfx gets with it... (Score:1)
It hasn't been as much as we might like. However, it is certainly greater than the big fat ZERO from the rest of the industry.
You can at least use that Monster3D versus a Permedia or Riva based card...
GPL coders get paid Less? (Score:2)
There are probably some good people out there who would take a pay cut to be able to GPL everything they write and be able to show a friend for some input here and there when they get stuck, I can understand that, becuase it would make the "job" more fun. But I wonder what the acutal numbers are.
Re:Take my Job, PLEASE! (Score:1)
Re:3dfx is NOT supporting Linux...well (Score:1)
Re:excellent! (Score:1)
Re:Yeah... doh... (Score:1)
Re:3dfx the last real evil (Score:1)
Really now, do you expect a college student to muster the financial resources to take on 3DfX legally speaking? What have you been smokin' lately?
A few comments on a comment... (Score:2)
2. Yes releasing full specs would be better
Matrox has done it. Which means that 3Dfx can be convinced to do it. We do need to fight the culture of hardware secrecy that permeates many parts of the electronics industry
While Matrox released most of the specs, they omitted some rather critical pieces that provide the peak speed for the G200. It's the same story with the Millenium/Mystique- it'll do busmastering DMA on data transfers and seems to have texture caching, etc. Try finding anything other than a passing mention of any of that in the Millenium or Mystique specs. While they're better than most of the rest at what they should be doing by our standards, they're still infected with that same culture- just not as bad as companies like ATI or NVidia.
3. But binary only is fine for now
At least they're making an effort at OS support. It's their hardware, and Glide is their code. They should have a choice about how they want it used. Why should we turn down binary support for an important API?
We shouldn't- but by the same token, I'm not going to be as inclined to accept them because they didn't go far enough with programming info for their chips. In this regard, they're only slightly better than ATI. Today, we'll accept them because they're the only game in town for 3D. Tomorrow, that's another story altogether- it's up to them how the play goes down.
4. Writing our own drivers, even from the specs, is hard
I know they're doing it for Matrox with GLX. It remains to be seen whether it will ever be a usably fast GL tho. 3DCards are about the most complex peripheral you could put in your computer. Writing drivers for them isn't trivial, and the drivers need to be really good to be usable -- right now the G200 drivers aren't even near there yet. I would like to see the Open Driver movement prove itself with truly excellent G200 drivers before we go demanding the right to write drivers for other hardware.
It is hard- not so much the complextity of driving the 3D functions, that's moderately easy. It's pushing all that data to the card in a way that's fast. I know- I've been working at the Millenium GLX driver (the baseline for the G200 work) and I'm working on a driver for the SiS 6326 chip. (Time permitting, of course- work's got me doing a Linux version of our product and I want to win that design win!)
I agree, we need to come forward with one or two winners before we really start putting the screws to the other vendors for open sourced support- but I don't know how far we're going to get with the G200. Like I said, some critical info's been withheld from us. Some of it is Matrox's doing- we're missing some tech data in that release of the G200 programming specs, like the information to drive the WARP triangle setup engine. Some of it is Intel's doing- try prying details of the GART's programming from them (hint: it's needed to at least some extent to be able to really use the AGP spec to it's fullest for system memory textures, etc.). Without these, I don't know how fast we're going to get it. I'm hoping 30-ish fps with a decent PII or equivalent running against Quake II or III. As for my efforts on the SiS, I don't know how far I'm going to get- I'm looking at having to do the X server fixes (No X accel is not acceptable- we've had the specs for this chip for a while now!) and the driver files as well as doing my work during the day- time will tell.
I am really disgusted (Score:5)
1. Glide doesn't suck
It's not a perfect API, but at least it's fast, easy and flexible. In fact, as far as we can tell (using VTune to benchmark) it's actually physically impossible to make a D3D card faster than a V3-2000 running Glide -- M$'s code is slower than Glide, so even if the card was infinitely fast, it the program would run only as fast as Glide on a V3 (it turns out D3D runs code in two chunks, the M$ part and the card driver part).
2. Yes releasing full specs would be better
Matrox has done it. Which means that 3Dfx can be convinced to do it. We do need to fight the culture of hardware secrecy that permeates many parts of the electronics industry
3. But binary only is fine for now
At least they're making an effort at OS support. It's their hardware, and Glide is their code. They should have a choice about how they want it used. Why should we turn down binary support for an important API?
4. Writing our own drivers, even from the specs, it hard
I know they're doing it for Matrox with GLX. It remains to be seen whether it will ever be a usably fast GL tho. 3DCards are about the most complex peripheral you could put in your computer. Writing drivers for them isn't trivial, and the drivers need to be really good to be usable -- right now the G200 drivers aren't even near there yet. I would like to see the Open Driver movement prove itself with truly excellent G200 drivers before we go demanding the right to write drivers for other hardware.
The way I see it, the ball's in our court, not theirs. I'm sure they'll find the right person with all the resumes they'll get after a
Re:v3 (Score:1)
Re:Take my Job, PLEASE! (Score:1)
I'll take anything Daryll says at face value.
Thanks for the Monster Fusion support, man!
Re:Scott Cutler? (Score:1)
3dfx the last real evil (Score:2)
First off I see references in all of the postings to negativity... I didn't read any negative replies... but my theshold is set to 1.
Secondly 3dfx is evil here is why: Glide is a propriatary protocol. 1) My roommate is the author of the GLIDE wrapper for windows and the G200 (it now supports all cards but the G200 was his goal.) They have retro activly aplied a licence to there SDK to make it illegal to use to write glide wappers and sent cease and desist orders to all glide wrapper authors. 2) Most Windows games that use glide Don't use glide wrapped around OpenGL they use straight GLIDE. This means 3DFX had a monopoly. I say had becuase most new games support GL or D3D. 3) 3dfx doesn't embrace the linux ideals. They sure as hell won't open source there drivers and no they make no indication of doing so in there post. 4) The 3d produced by a 3dfx card is at the bottom of the visual quality spectrum yet all anyone talks about is the frame rate.... the frame rate when frame syncronization is turned off!
The thought of 3dfx joining in linux development scares me. If linux gaming gets locked in to 3dfx I think I'll switch to console games only! I think this is one of the few vendors linux would be better off not working with. Their products though fast are visually the lowest quality.
Re:excellent! (Score:1)
----------------------
Re:They're not "clean room" (Score:1)
http://www.angelic-coders.com/kshaikh/Article_G
http://www.glideunderground.com/
Although I can't seem to find any references to it anymore, I seem to recall that there *was* at least one "clean-room" Glide wrapper. If I find the URL, I will post it.
In any case, unless the wrapper developers are modifying and distributing portions of the SDK itself, your analogy of someone ripping CODA itself and making it proprietary is highly flawed. I believe that the courts have found that software written with the aid of developer tools (such as compilers) are considered original works owned by the authors of the code, NOT the authors of the compilers/developer tools. It is certainly possible for a compiler/SDK vendor to make agreeing to certain restrictions a prerequisite to a copyright license, but, as far as I know, that is not (or at least was not) the case with 3dfx's SDK.
3dfx is NOT supporting Linux... (Score:3)
Re:Oh well... (Score:1)
- |Daryll
Take my Job, PLEASE! (Score:5)
3Dfx is serious about wanting to work with Linux. This isn't marketting fluff. They've appreciated the work I've done, and they understand the value.
Glide is a hardware abstraction layer. They use it for their in-house applications. You don't have to write to it if you don't want to. Mesa talks through Glide and that's a fine way to access the hardware. There is essentiantially no performance hit for doing so.
Linux users complaining about Glide only games don't know what they are talking about. Most of the "Glide only" games you see are OpenGL games, that need Glide only to talk to the hardware. They won't be Glide only when more hardware has OpenGL support under Linux. Hopefully that'll be soon.
No, Glide will not be Open Source anytime soon. That might be less than optimal, but I take the position that having it be well supported by the vendor is almost as good. (As an example, do you have the source to the BIOS on your PC? Why don't you complain about that?) Having their own team in house to work on Linux is the way to get it well supported
I asked them a while back to start looking to hire people in house. They really wanted to hire me. I seriously considered their offer, but decided to work for Precision Insight instead. I figured being vendor neutral was better. I hope to continue working with 3dfx and whoever they hire in house.
If anyone from here is interested in the job with 3dfx, please feel free to contact me. They are a great group of people. They want to do some really cool work. I believe it'll be good for Linux in general.
- |Daryll
Some thoughts on 3dfx (Score:2)
Even in the Windows world, 3dfx has not been particularly well behaved. Their packages have been claiming OpenGL support for a long time, but they aren't delivering (and I suspect that's a strategic decision rather than inability to deliver). And recently, they pulled out the rug from under all the board makers that used to use their chip sets by deciding that future 3Dfx boards would be done in-house.
There are also technical issues. The 3dfx APIs look to me like they are designed to give the company a short-term competitive advantage on 1998 model PCs. But in the long term, I'd much rather see more powerful APIs like OpenGL widely supported.
There are a lot of nice 3D boards out there that don't have Linux drivers yet, and there are several nice 3D APIs. There is a lot of useful 3D work to be done on Linux. A 3dfx API driver for 3dfx boards would be near the bottom of my list of priorities.
Re:3dfx is NOT supporting Linux... (Score:1)
Well doh. They try to make money - that's what _ALL_ commercial companies do. Do you really think companies like RedHat and VA Reaserch are in it just beacause they want to "contiribute to the Linux community"? Glide wrappers - of course 3dfx wants to stop wrappes that hurt theit business, it is their responsibility towards shareholders. Nothing 3Dfx has done is illegal or immoral, so stop whining.
excellent! (Score:1)
i have a voodoo rush card, and much to my surprise, a couple of weeks ago, freshmeat posted a link to their pages for drivers for linux. turns out they have an x server that supports rush! unfortunately, i'm not able to test it because my $@#&! motherboard hasn't been able to boot the kernel. but i'll fix that soon enough.
anyone else have a rush? (i think i might be the only one). any luck with the x server? is it worth my time to replace the mb to get linux to work here?
- chris
Glide helps Voodoo GL (Score:2)
Besides, there are still a number of games being produced specifically for Glide. This can only help them in getting possibly ported to Linux.
Games are still 99% of the time designed for Windows and then ported. I don't think many companies are going to throw out their OpenGL versions and just make a Glide port for Linux.
Re:Glide, 3dfx, and binary-only drivers (Score:1)
Now, consider a certain hardware company (creative labs) who just released their sblive driver, binary only of course. Guess what? It ONLY works with the 2.2.5 kernel. Now, excuse me, but if this isn't broken, what is?
Companies like 3dfx don't release hardware specs because they are either scared of what we might learn about their boards (they suck), or have an irrational fear of what other companies might do if they knew something about them. Heaven help us if Montego ever found out how to write drivers for a sblive!! Oh no!!!
And, btw, if you think closed source drivers are okay as long as they work, then you aren't really part of the linux community. This community is based on openness, and solid code design. Not the fear, uncertainty and doubt 3dfx is slinging around.
Re:3dfx is NOT supporting Linux... (Score:1)
--
Re:excellent! (Score:1)
QuMa
Re:no complaints here (Score:1)
QuMa
Re:Yeah... (Score:1)
So I can't see fault in this. And you HAVE to expect them to want Glide experience. Even if they decided to go whole hog OpenGL (right) Glide still exists out there in both Win and Linux worlds.. and needs to be supported.
What we really need...Correction on my thoughts. (Score:1)
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
Off-topic note... (Score:2)
Ellis-D> real humans are cannibals."
No! This is not wholly correct, as cannibals who ate non-cannibals would therefore not be cannibals. The only real humans would be those cannibals who only eat other cannibals, who in turn must only eat other cannibals. (And unless the cannibals had some non-ingestive means of gaining energy -- photosynthesis, perhaps, or direct injection of nutrients -- they would all die, as the laws of entropy dictate that the system would burn itself out.)
Thus we see that when the act of eating becomes an act of definition ("we are what we eat"), the undecidability problems inherent in all formalized systems of definition pop up.
3DFX and lawsuits (Score:3)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/08/134
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=98/12/31/115
oh ye of short memories
Re:Take my Job, PLEASE! (Score:1)
ROTFL. For the sake of the people who encounter you on a daily basis, I hope you're trolling
Whoa, enough with the negativity! (Score:5)
"Blah blah blah, now that they do - they suck!"
This is really p*****g me off. ANY exposure of the name Linux on any high profile product is FANTASTIC NEWS - even if the support actually sucks. Other compnaies will see what they are doing and follow their lead. Competition then ensues, one day someone will take the extra step we all hope for.
Why do some advocates insist that if it's for Linux then it must be utterly free and open from day one, or they shoudn't bother? Have you no sense of history? - Openness *GROWS*, it doesn't magically appear!
I think this is top news (regardless of wether they achieve anything). PHB's and marketing exec's will take notice of this.
Tell me when 3Dfx gets with it... (Score:1)
Nowhere is it told what exactly you would be developing. It is purposely vague, obscure, and uncertain.
Why? Because 3Dfx knows Linux is getting big. So they need to answer it somehow. So they answer it the easiest way possible. Make it look like they're doing something for it.
What will you be doing at 3Dfx? Well, most likely, developing another binary-only GLide for Quake III Arena. (Which is amazing, BTW.) Maybe some cheezy demos that measure your general FPS so you can brag about it. Perhaps a binary-only XFree86 that works better with the Voodoo (Rush,Banshee,etc) chipset.
But if you're looking to actually *contribute* something, I hear anybody can be a kernel developer. 3Dfx? They're just out for more marketshare, probably. I'll upgrade from my dual Monster3D 4Mers to dual Monster3D II 12Mers when 3Dfx stops being overzealous pricks, and actually contributes something to the software end for real. (Demos do not count. I used to be a demoscene whore. I am not impressed by a rotating cube with multiple textures and light sourcing.)
Thank you, drive through.
-RISCy Business | System Administrator, Nexbell Communications
Re:Whoa, enough with the negativity! (Score:1)
We can either stand our ground, and demand only opensource/GPLed drivers, except nothing less, and continue to advocate GNU/Linux for ideals.
Or we can accept comprimising options, and go for binary only/non GPL drivers.
IMHO, nothing less than free (as in speech). It is nice to see companies acknowlaging the free-unix system, but being based on money, free doesn't have the same meaning as it does for the linux community.
As slashdotters, we have a large influence as to what is acceptable or not.
Come on http://www.blacklist.org/ -- where are you? Its not yet trivial enough to find GFX/other hardware thats 'fully' supported under linux.
--
Re:How typical... (Score:1)
"Windows drones" is far more appropriate.
:)
Nvidia ya reading this? (Score:1)
Re:Creeping, nameless dread. (Score:1)
How typical... (Score:1)
Re:Open Source Compromise (Score:1)
You save money in the long run. (don't have to continually support old products)
Your products remain useful for longer
By the time the specs become public, it is too late for them to be useful to the competition anyways.
Misplacing the blame... (Score:1)
If you yell at anyone, it should be 3dfx's competiors - if NVIDIA broke into linux with a good OpenGL implementaition, 3dfx would be forced to at least give it a shot.
Also, if you hate GLide, yelling at 3dfx won't do anything. They LIKE having a proprietary API. It makes them money, and gives them a competitive advantage over the other companies out there. The people who have control in this matter are game developers. If no one develops for glide (and more developers are going towards openGL or D3D every day), then 3dfx will have to change their strategy.
And by the way, console development is an even worse nightmare than 3dfx. Would you rather use an API (ie GLide or openGL) for free, or pay over 50K for an SDK? Seems like the console strategy is even more despicable...
---------
Re:What we really need... (Score:1)
It would certainly make porting games easier... but it would only encourage the use of DirectX instead of open standards. And do we really want to promote Direct3D? *shudder*
Re:Nvidia ya reading this? (Score:1)
Re:Whoa, enough with the negativity! (Score:1)
And one day we will see new Windows - a lot of binary drivers and no source, no datasheets. Why do you think Linux is much more stable than Windows - because people writing kernel and drivers understand drivers interoperation and if there is any problem you can always look at the source. Do you think Linux will be more stable if there will be a lot of binary drivers?
no complaints here (Score:1)
Re:Oh well...glidin' (Score:1)
Re:no complaints here (Score:1)
Re:v3 (Score:1)
When it comes right down to it, I'm sticking with 3dfx (even using my V3 3K as we speak). I like what Matrox is doing, but I'm reserving judgement until the G400 is released -- besides, they could just switch to the dreaded binary-only support.
v3 (Score:1)
Re:3dfx the last real evil (Score:1)
MS is buggy... and too expensive...
AOL is spam... and too expensive for what they offer (30 hours for 30$... ohhh... I've got 300 hours for 25$ from my local ISP)
3dfx is crazy... and they don't have the perfdormances for the price...
3dfx: Frame rate, frame rate... it's why why do not know what is 32 bits and 2096x2096 texturing... we only use 16 bits and 256x256 texturing to have frame rates..
But frame rate... what if your eyes only decode 24 frame per second? What if Hollywood movies and no more that 30 frame per second... do we really need 124 fps for Quake3?
Hey... I'm happy with 20 fps... and I have a TNT, I'm happy with my 40 fps (CPU: K6 210 MHz)... so... If I have to choose between 32 bits, 2096x2096 textures, 32 bits Z-Buffer, FOG, anti-aliasing and more @ 68 fps... and 124 fps in 16 bits, 16 bits Z-Buffer, no anti-aliasing, no fog, 256x256 textures pallets and no more... welll, my choice is the first.
3dfx: We don't need 32 bits graphics, no game are made for this... now... but what is for tomorrow... will we be under 3dfx control... no real colors... [because we don't know how we can do it]?
I don't have 3dfx in my heart, like MSFT and AOL... the same for me... evil...
Re:excellent! (Score:1)
-Jason