PHA8x128 arrived today!

[a_h]

@Leech: I was happy to change back from nVidia to Matrox, because I always had the problem to find a decent driver that supported at least OpenGL 1.4, featured a working TV-out (with 30.x it was completely broken) and decent speed (50+ are just optimized for Geforce4/FX) at the same time.

Sure I'm happy that that old card was still supported, but that kind of support is not really a great thing. Besides that there's no place where I can contact them to report bugs.

Cheers, Hannes

[Belwarrior]

Why cant Matrox release drivers NOT based on .NET like every other graphics company? we have already seen problems where the drivers have problems when the .NET version changes..

[Nicram]

Couse writing software with .NET is much faster & need not so many people like with normal drivers

[magog]

Originally posted by Nicram
Couse writing software with .NET is much faster & need not so many people like with normal drivers

This is not true.
You have to do the same things you had to do with older versions of the development tools.
Matrox only jumped on the latest MS development software that's all.
".NET" is only a the latest buzzword from MS not more not less.

[leech]

Though it would be interesting if Mono was used to create a Powerdesk like driver for Linux.. So far I've used Muine which is .net based (using the Mono Framework) and it works quite well for an MP3 player.

@a_h

Yeah, what are we, as consumers, to do? We're bascally all but screwed. Either we have the Matrox cards, which really are not good for newer games, and have a lot of problem for linux users. Or we have ATI with kind of OK drivers for linux and sporadically good drivers for windows. And then we have nVidia, who have excellent support for linux/BSD, but still have driver issues for both all platforms.

Hell, if I didn't like to play the occasional game, I'd consider just selling off my PC hardware and getting a Mac. Though, I think as far as 3D support, I'd still really only have a choice of nVidia. Anyone have a lot of luck with the ATI drivers?

Leech

[a_h]

@Leech

I'd consider just selling off my PC hardware and getting a Mac.

Hehehe. For work I *have* a mac ;-)).

Cheers, Hannes

[Nicram]

Originally posted by magog
This is not true.
You have to do the same things you had to do with older versions of the development tools.
Matrox only jumped on the latest MS development software that's all.
".NET" is only a the latest buzzword from MS not more not less.

Well i heard it's simpler to add graphic UI etc. But maybe i'm wrong I'm not coder & Maybe You are right

[Richh]

Originally posted by Nicram
Well i heard it's simpler to add graphic UI etc. But maybe i'm wrong I'm not coder & Maybe You are right

Who cares about fancy GUI's? I long for the day when the Parhelia drivers incorporate the core feature set and functionality I took for granted on my G400 Max.

[leech]

Well, I'd hate to say it, but I think the whole computer industry is just going to the crapper. Everything is moving so fast that the hardware manufacturers can't create software to interface with the operating systems fast enough to be stable and full featured, and then the games (that let's face it, drive more computer upgrades than any application ever could) are getting more complex so that a lot of people are having to actually pay attention to system specs before purchasing one. And half the time the time schedules for the games are so harsh on the developers that they release the game so it's so buggy that only 50% can play it properly. And it doesn't help matters that the PC is in no way a standard platform.... granted it has some API's and OS's that could be considered standard, but if the hardware makers don't fully support the standard API's (in the case of games, mostly DirectX and OpenGL) then the game is not going to work properly... oh how great it was back in the Atari ST/Amiga/Mac days when they had a standard HARDWARE platform to run everything on. You rarely had games that had patches to them (though of course there were some...) This I think is one of the main reasons that Consoles are doing so well now.

With the thought of consoles in mind... it almost seems like PC games are like them in some way... For example... some games are more optimized to run on nVidia cards, or ATI cards, or (for the relatively few, but growing Surround games) Matrox cards. It's almost as if it IS like the old days...

Let's take Shadow of the Beast for example. This game ROCKED on the Amiga. The graphics were just excellent, because it used some of the cool Amiga custom graphics chips. The Atari ST version was a port to 16 colors (I think the Amiga version used 64, correct me if I'm wrong here...) A quick example of the detail lost, your character on the Amiga version had a bit of red under his skull, whereas the Atari ST version was brown, as was most of your character (grey in the Amiga version as I remember it...)

Same thing with the PS2 vs. Xbox, where the Xbox supports bump mapping better.

It's a shame, but we probably will never see some features of the Parhelia ever used (like Displacement Mapping, there was one game, though I can't recall the name of it at the moment.) though the same goes for ATI cards (TruForm, which I think only Serious Sam the 2nd encounter used...)

It is as if the PC realm is divided, yet tries to be compatible...

Good thing I have linux to make me feel somewhat better It's just a shame that Matrox's drivers suck for it...

Leech

[Che Guevara]

It's a shame, but we probably will never see some features of the Parhelia ever used (like Displacement Mapping, there was one game, though I can't recall the name of it at the moment.) though the same goes for ATI cards (TruForm, which I think only Serious Sam the 2nd encounter used...) Leech

A game using Parhelias Displacement Mapping ? Does anybody knows about that

[DGhost]

Earth & Beyond supposedly did, although I never saw a difference.

They also canceled it after about a year or two.

[CaineTanathos]

the NV40 has displacement mapping in hardware too. But no Hardware tesselation like the Parhelia. So what Matrox did wasn't bad. Only too early I think

[a_h]

@.Net

AFAIK it should provide software devs with an identical platform regardingless of the used os. Ever heared of the "dll-hell"? That's a feature of the various Win32 platforms out there - every version just a bit different and has therefore to be treated specially.

To stop that nonsense .Net was developed, just to say: "hey install .net on your os and your program works for sure". Basically a good idea I think. The problem that exists now, is that M$ developed .net further and released new versions that are incompatible to the older ones, so you end up with basically the same problems as before (.net 1.0 vs. 1.1 aka Powerdesk won't uninstall with 1.0).

So .Net should reduce software development time & -costs.

Cheers, Hannes

PS: if anyone has a deeper interest in that topic, ask Peter Aragorn, I think he works with .net if I recall it correctly.

[leech]

Originally posted by DGhost
Earth & Beyond supposedly did, although I never saw a difference.

They also canceled it after about a year or two.

Yup THAT was the game I was trying to think of.

Did they cancel it? Never bought it, but was thinking about it...

It's a shame that such a cool hardware feature was never used by anything more than the demos for the Parhelia.

Leech

[Che Guevara]

That's true...