Environmental bumpmapping, great img quality etc.???

[Eek!]

I've bought the G400 a while ago, especially because of the image quality. But I don't see that environmental bumpmapping and all other eyecandy in my 3d games (Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, etc.). Of course I tried the latest drivers, TurboGL, running in D3d etc.
I really don't see a big difference in image quality between a Viper 770 and my G400. Any idea? Or post/send screenshots made in games you played and not those advertising shots from Matrox.
Thanks!

[nosuchluck]

bumpmapping will only work in games that support it.

compared to my banshee in my 2nd system, the max looks quite better, cleaner, and MUCH more vibrant colors.

pretty fast too, but i can't wait for their next generation.

i hope it smokes, nvidia is looking kinda nice.....

[Eek!]

Yeah but name some games that support bumpmapping then.

[ArP]

I naturally presume, that since you've bought the card, you've also visited the Matrox site

Here's an url that'll take you directly to the 3d gaming section, that has the whole shebang about Matrox and games ... http://www.matrox.com/mga/3d_gaming/home.htm

One of thecurrent titles supporting bumps is Battlezone II (Heard it looks kinda neat)



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Octek Rhino II BX,P3/450, 64Mb PC100,G400DH 32Mb, Sb64 PCI, Belinea 17", IBM Deskstar 16Gb
Generic 36x CD, Acer CDRW and some additional crap.

[billko]

Dungeon Keeper 2 was *supposed* to support it, but it got hosed in version 1.6. We'll have to wait until 1.7 for it to work properly. The screen shots suggest this is (will be) an excellent application of the technology.

Drakan supports it, also. You can see it in the water. Looks cool, unless you look closely at the edges. Then you'll notice that the water is flat, even though it *appears* to be 3D. In my opinion, it was a very primitive implementation of the technology.

Sports games like NHL2K could sure use it. I had reflections turned on until I noticed that the stadium light reflections at Madison Square Garden were RECTANGULAR and ARRANGED IN ROWS, even though the real light patterns are CONCENTRIC CIRCLES (which, incidentally, are fairly accurately rendered in the stadium). When I saw that the reflections and the lights didn't match up, I said, "what a bunch of fake bull crap," and turned it off. Environmental bump mapping sure would come in handy here.

Bill


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People call me a computer god; I remind them that I am merely a minor deity...

[Muad'Dib]

billko -

Drakan supports it, also. You can see it in the water. Looks cool, unless you look closely at the edges. Then you'll notice that the water is flat, even though it *appears* to be 3D. In my opinion, it was a very primitive implementation of the technology.

The fact that the water is flat is not because it is a poor implementation of EMBM, it is because the water, in order to be "3d" must be designed of polygons in a "3d" manner. What EMBM does is simply make the water look much cooler. It allows the water to have various lighting effects and to give the ellusion that the water is "smoother" and in my opinion, cooler looking. This misunderstanding is what caused many people to think the water in 3dMark2000 was using this technology, when it was in reality just the use of polys.... Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Eek!]

Ok I understand. But I'm still wondering why Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament (very popular games!) don't support it.
And other question: is it true that the G400 has some trouble with overlapping polygons? I'm having that problem myself. When I look in the distance in some games, I can see polygons or models (= players) through other (non transparent) polygons. This is very annoying.

And will most of the games that have yet to be released support EMBM?

[This message has been edited by Eek! (edited 01 February 2000).]

[gobrob]

The developers of the game must include(or add)bumpmapping to the game.I would guess that possibly the dev of q3 and ut maybe didn't want the hassle of including code that only 1 video card supports or that development was quite a ways done before the bumpmapping feature was even released.
???gobrob

[Kruzin]

Q3 does not support EMBM for one simple reason:
EMBM is a function of D3D.
Q3 is an OpenGL game.

It's not in UT because (IMO) Sweeny and his boys are to incapable of putting out a product that works right, much less hassling with adding more features. UT is just Unreal patched up again, with a few minor changes and some new maps. If you look on the UT forums, you will see people are taking parts of UT, and using it to patch the original Unreal to the latest build of the game engine. Even the NaliPali Unreal add-on will work on UT. They just patched it, re-boxed it, and sold it to us again. I kinda wish I hadn't bought the game (although I do like it's bots for single player games)

Anyway...To add something new like EMBM to the Unreal graphics engine would take more effort than Epic can handle.

Other games...they are coming out. Alreasy we've had Drakan, BZ2, Descent3, Slave Zero, and other. Many more are on the way...take this pic for example (from the upcoming "Hired Team"):


[This message has been edited by Kruzin (edited 01 February 2000).]

[Eek!]

Well I installed Dungeon Keeper 2 and Draken, but EMBM enabled or disabled makes no difference!

[FaRaN]

The dragon and water in Drakan are bumpmapped only

In DK2 you'll have to patch to 1.61 to get bumpmapping working. Only Lava and water are bumped here.

If you don't see it, go see a doctor and get your eyes checked. OR do some research on EMBM since you probably don't know what it is, and looks like (see pic above, notice anything?).

[nosuchluck]

you need to do some research on the homepages for the games, this will tell you how to enable bump mapping on supported games.

dungeon keeper-dosen't work
drakkan-works fine, bumped scales on the dragon and the water.....

[CalCsc]

Eek!

There is a simpler way if you just want to see the sort of effect bump mapping can have, when more games support it.

Run up the Matrox demo and use the function key to turn bump mapping on and off (F5 or F6) as the fairy goes over the water and around the Matrox logo at the end. Very dramatic differences in the realism of the image.

[Eek!]

Relax guyz. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you and your Matrox cards
Of course I did some research on EMBM and I think it's very kewl, but I was only wondering why I didn't see it in my games. And I played the tech demo and hell it looked great on just a 64 mb pc.

[DuRaNgO]

try slavezero, it looks great, the robots are bumped, you turn it on or off as well to compare
jim