PC Gaming in the Early '90s

We all know PCs get the best ports of games (theoretically at least) because of the openness of the platform.

Which is why I don't understand how PC games were made in the early '90s. 3DFX's Voodoo wasn't even out. Yet systems like the PSX and Saturn already had 3D graphics. Since those kinds of advancements usually develop on PC first, how did computers of the era draw those early 3D games like Doom, Descent and Microsoft Flight Simulator? Through software?

I started taking an interest in gaming around the turn of Voodoo3, I missed the earlier era. Anyone around that played PC games back then?

It was usually done with the CPU in software.

Uhh, the PS1 wasn't out yet in the "early '90s". The PS1 didn't release in Japan until the end of 1994 and the West until late 1995, which is the mid '90s. By the time the PS1 and Saturn released, the early '90s were over.

As for 3d games in the '80s or early '90s, the few that there were, like the early Microsoft Flight Simulator versions, Wolfenstein 3D, or Doom, do it in software of course. The framerate you get is entirely dependent on how powerful a computer you have. Many flight simulators and racing games were in 3d, even though they ran at ABYSMAL framerates. The same is true on other computers like the Amiga.

3D was indeed done all in software without hardware acelleration in those days. As PCs had the fastest CPUs compared to other systems at the time and were also somewhat easily upgradeable, they were best suited for 3D games compared to consoles or less modular systems such as the Amiga.

Those 3D engines relied on brute CPU force and fast calculations only so if you were a PC gamer in the early 90s, you'd mostly play somewhat smooth-running 3D games and mostly choppy as hell 2D games, as PC video cards had absolutely no support for scrolling, sprites and the likes.

One of the big things about the advent of 3D accelerator cards was texture filtering. I only know of one game that did texture filtering in software and ran at a terrible framerate as a result. Maybe some of you remember Outcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMePgitDers

Games like Doom used 2D raycasting to render the environments, not polygons.

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Originally Posted by magicalsoundshower

as PC video cards had absolutely no support for scrolling

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VGA supports scrolling just fine, a lot of developers just didn't use it since it wasn't documented.

PCs were still occasionally running 3D games without hardware accelerators well into the late 90's. Lots of games still offered a software mode. Even stuff like Half-Life.

There was a big 3D accelerator boom in the mid-90's though with loads of companies entering the fray. Most of them came with their own specific version of MechWarrior 2 as well, designed specifically for that card. It was kind of a compatibility nightmare in those pioneering days until the dust settled around NVIDIA and ATI. The same thing happened with sound cards in the early 90's until stuff like Wing Commander 2's speech pack helped the Sound Blaster come out on top.

I remember a friend of mine had a Voodoo 3 that caught on fire.

The early days of 3D acceleration for PC's was an era of chaos and confusion.

The early "graphics accelerators", were introduced around 1995 and these were mostly "fixed-function" devices. That is, they had specific graphics algorithms hard coded into them. This was a time when not all 3D cards supported each other either, some games only supported certain 3D accelerator cards, if you didn't have that particular card then the game would run in software mode all because you didn't own that specific brand the game was programmed for.

In 1995, S3 designed the ViRGE series which was a proprietary 2D/3D all in one solution, and was one of the first chipsets to combine both 2D/3D support. It was great for 2D and VESA functions and has extremely good MS-DOS games support, but was lack luster for 3D.

It wasn't until 1996 that the Rendition Vérité V1000 came to the scene and was one of the first consumer 3D accelerator cards truly capable of delivering playable performance with significantly improved graphics quality. I mean the Rendition Vérité V1000 was more advanced and even faster than Matrox Millenium, ATI Rage, ATI Rage 3D, and all the S3 Virge cards. The only card that was faster than the Rendition Vérité V1000 at rendering 3D was the original 3DFX Voodoo Graphics card, however the Rendition Vérité V1000 was an all in one 2D/3D solution and the 3DFX Voodoo wasn't. The caveat for the Vérité V1000 was that while the 3D performance was decent for the time, the 2D performance was a total joke, it was horribly slow, so Rendition had to create a special utility for it called, renutil, which bypassed the cards slow VGA core and pushed the path through equivalent VESA modes.

So yeah... that era of PC gaming, especially for 3D gaming was a hot mess, and nothing at all like today.

I miss some of the early 90's PC gaming tbh . They were really some great PC games in the dos era and in the early 90's they were some great PC polygons racers and flights sims - Games like Indy Car Racing, TFX, F1 GP II really did look amazing back in the day

I absolutely loved the shareware era. Many of my favorite games of all time came out of it. Some of the indie development of today gives me the same vibe.

Space sims are finally poising to make a comeback in the coming years.

Looking back on all those early 3D cards, those were pretty exciting times. I like 3Dfx best for graphics cards of that time. I guess that's kind of meaningless to say unless you actually bought a Voodoo at retail. I have a Voodoo 1 card and it really is amazing for the time. Heck, it's pretty impressive even today.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Looking back on all those early 3D cards, those were pretty exciting times. I like 3Dfx best for graphics cards of that time. I guess that's kind of meaningless to say unless you actually bought a Voodoo at retail. I have a Voodoo 1 card and it really is amazing for the time. Heck, it's pretty impressive even today.

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My dad bought a Voodoo3 3000 for our computer in the late '90s. That thing was a beast. I could play games like Frogger and Toy Story 2 in ridiculous detail compared to before. It was still competent towards 2002 when we bought a new machine. What 2D card do you use with your Voodoo?

Did the PSX and Saturn ever have the edge in 3D quality against PCs, or was it always a bloodbath in favor of PC? PCs were certainly pumping out more detail in the same games in the late '90s.

That being said, do the PSX and Saturn do 3D in hardware or software?

Currently I'm using an ATi Rage II+, I got it because it had TV out but I ended up just using a regular CRT VGA monitor. The built in 3D of the Rage II+ goes unused most of the time, but it's there if I ever find a game that doesn't have a Glide wrapper. The 2D of the Rage II+ is very good, probably because it's a relatively newer card.

I figure the PS1 and Saturn were quickly eclipsed after their Japanese launches. I wouldn't be surprised if they were already outdated by the time they hit US shores.

PSX and Saturn both do hardware-based 3D rendering. The PS1 does things with triangles while the Saturn does it all with quads. They have their uses, but as you might have figured, triangles became the standard. Some PC cards did use quads however, I think the PowerVR line is one of the few.

I missed out on the '90s when it came to PC gaming (unless you want to count the Atari XEGS as a PC). I used to see those big boxes for the Amiga, C64, IBM PC and all that on the shelves, checked out the images on the backs of them, and watch the games that would occasionally be on display in the store (Wing Commander and Battle Chess we memorable ones). Some cool stuff that was way beyond what the Genesis could do, but also way beyond any wallet that myself and my relatives had. So it wasn't until 2001 that I got my first PC in 2001 with Windows ME and a Pentium III 1.0 GHz.

My first PC game was Unreal, which ran pretty well on that machine... especially given that it had no graphics card. It was supposed to come with a PCI TNT 16MB card, but it didn't (which I found out when I tried to install drivers for it about a week later). After getting things fixed at the CompUSA that lied about what was inside the case, I ended up with a PCI TNT2 32MB card for cheap since they didn't have the advertised card model anymore. Once I got that into my PC, then I was enjoying the likes of Quake, Unreal, Half-Life, Quake II, and such with better resolutions and visual goodies turned on. I didn't have to go through the hellish driver issues with no support that others did in the '90s, but I did have the "fun" of learning how to do proper installs and uninstalls with the drivers. I also got to play with the user-made updates that tried to make the drivers perform better (anyone remember Omega Drivers?).

As has been mentioned, most early 90's PC games made use of rather heavily modified 2D assets/rendering techniques in order to "mimic" a 3D look.

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Originally Posted by Obviously

I absolutely loved the shareware era.

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Yes, glory to the shareware era. Never again will I be able to play through 1/3 of the entire game in a demo like Doom.