Supersample antialiasing WinGlide

Last updated February 28, 2000

General information
The WinGlide release with support for supersample antialiasing can be found on this page. This WinGlide release supports four sample antialiasing and is designed to work with various versions of the 3dfx MiniGL. The maximum resolution it can support is 320x240 antialiased with a Voodoo Graphics based video card or 400x300 antialiased with a Voodoo 2 based video card. Performance even at 320x240 antialiased will be fairly low. There are two main reasons for this. One is that it is necessary to render at 640x480 to get the necessary samples for 320x240 antialiased. The second reason is that the 640x480 pixels must be read back from the 3dfx card which is very slow.

Installing this WinGlide release is fairly complicated and should only be attempted by those who have used WinGlide before, can handle the complex installation procedure, and who are interested in seeing the details of how four sample antialiasing works with this implemenation. Although performance is low, it will still be much faster than using a software render to render equivalent quality images on typical hardware.

This release was tested with GLQuake and Quake 2 on my system. It may or may not work with other applications. It is likely to work with a bunch of the 3dfx MiniGL releases but I have tested it primarily with 3dfx MiniGL 1.46 and 1.47. I still use 3fdx MiniGL 1.46 frequently because 1.47 has Alt-Tab problems.

Like many of my other WinGlide releases, this one will only work when SLI mode is disabled. See the WinGlide FAQ for more information about why many of my WinGlide releases do not work with SLI mode.

Installation instructions
The following installation instructions are for use with GLQuake. The installation procedure may need to be modified some to work with other applications.

The files
This WinGlide release requires that two DLL files and their initialization files be installed in the Quake directory. One file intercepts calls to glide2x.dll and is installed like the glide2x.dll from other WinGlide releases. The other file intercepts calls to opengl32.dll (the 3dfx MiniGL in the case). Installing this file requires that the 3dfx MiniGL in the Quake directory be renamed so that GLQuake will loads this patch file and then it can load the renamed 3dfx MiniGL from the Quake directory. These files should be installed and uninstalled together. Note that having the two files from this WinGlide release installed will prevent normal full screen operation of GLQuake until they are uninstalled. This is unlike other WinGlide releases which enable windowed video modes and still allow full screen video modes to function normally.

The two packages needed to install the supersample WinGlide release can be downloaded below. The installation instructions for these packages are listed further down on this page. Make sure to read the installation instructions carefully before installing the packages. Also make sure to backup any files that may otherwise be overwritten so that uninstallation is possible.

The supersample WinGlide package: sswg100.zip.
The supersample WinGlide fix package: sswgfix100.zip.

Before installing these two files in the Quake directory, the 3dfx MiniGL in the Quake directory must be renamed. This creates a backup of the 3dfx MiniGL needed to uninstall the supersample WinGlide fix and it also allows the opengl32.dll intercept to work. Rename the opengl32.dll (3dfx MiniGL) in the Quake directory to opengl32.mini.dll (This name is configurable but opengl32.mini.dll is the default name entered into one of the ini files that comes with the release).

The supersample WinGlide fix package can be installed next. To do this, put the opengl32.dll and wg_gl.ini file from this package in the Quake directory. Installing the opengl32.dll file from this package should not overwrite another opengl32.dll since it was renamed in the previous step. Remember that this only completes half of the process. The supersample WinGlide package still needs to be installed.

Before installing the supersample WinGlide package, you will want to rename the files glide2x.dll and wg.ini to backup names if you already have WinGlide installed in the Quake directory. This way, you can easily restore normal WinGlide capabilities when uninstalling the supersample WinGlide release. Then put the glide2x.dll and wg.ini files from the supersample WinGlide package in the Quake directory.

Installation is now complete. To run GLQuake windowed with four sample supersample antialiasing, start GLQuake windowed with a command line such as glquake -window -width 320 or glquake -window -width 400.

Installation with Quake 2
Installing the supersampling WinGlide release with Quake 2 is similar to installing it with GLQuake except that the opengl32.dll must intercept calls to 3dfxgl.dll instead of opengl32.dll because Quake 2 loads this DLL when using 3dfx OpenGL. Appropriately naming the opengl32.dll from the supersample WinGlide fix package when installing it with Quake 2 will allow the supersampling WinGlide release to work with Quake 2. As noted above with GLQuake, make sure to back up any files that may be replaced so that the supersample WinGlide release can be uninstalled.

Contact information
If you have any questions or comments about this WinGlide release, you can send me an email at cwdohnal@ucdavis.edu

 

Copyright 2000 Chris Dohnal