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The most important new features of the new voodoo as
I stated before is full 32Bit color integration for 2D and 3D games, 2048x2048 pixels textures, FXT1 (texture compression), Soft Reflections
& Shadows and most importantly Full Scene Anti-Aliasing. Furthermore thanks
to V4/5's new propriety T-Buffer the VSA-100 can handle movie/cinematic effects
like Depth of Field and Motion Blur. I can explain these features very detailed but it really
is of no use since not one single game will likely support these features in the
Voodoo4/5 short 6 months time span. Here's the short version:
Focus: depth-of-field blur
Depth of field is a technique where different parts of an image can be
focused upon. It is widely used in film, where the director can force your
attention on a specific part of a scene by un-focusing the rest. 3dfx's T-Buffer
enables depth of field effects in hardware.
Motion: motion blur
Motion blur is where an object in motion on screen is blurred to trick your
mind into thinking it is actually moving. Instead of just having crisp positions
for every movement of an object, blurred in-between steps are added to make the
movement seem more realistic. Remember Neo in that great movie 'the Matrix' where he is standing on
the roof dodging bullets ? That's Motion Blur.
Soft shadows and reflections
Real shadows and reflections is a thing that we rarely see in games, 3dfx
has built hardware support for such effects into the Voodoo4 and 5 through usage of the T-Buffer.
The stencil buffer creates a sharper shadow that is casted from the object. Soft
shadows creates a “softer shadow” by smoothing out the edges of the shadow. Basically,
it's in the name.
As I said not one single game company will
probably use one of the above
effects in the Voodoo 4/5 lifespan. To this editor's opinion 3dfx is well aware
of this and focuses on the best feature of the Voodoo5, Full Scene Anti Aliasing.
However, it's good to see new
technologies surfacing the water. Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day you
know. It took me five days !
Texture compression
The VSA-100 carries support for FXT1, DXTC and Narrow Channel texture compression in hardware.
Texture compression reduces the amount of memory required to store each texture, which allows
game developers to use many more textures at higher resolutions with increased performance. As a result, games and applications
which use FXT1 texture compression will run at faster frame rates with enhanced visual quality.
FXT1 compression is turned on by default for OpenGL titles when the title specifies that a particular texture be compressed.
The VSA-100 does not compress all textures but those that the API requests.
Texture compression is a good and useful
feature, I'm glad that 3dfx pursued and integrated it into the Voodoo
4&5.
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