Rendition graphics barely took off and was quickly overtaken by 3DFX and then Direct 3D (what became Direct X), but for sim racers, it is the only way to play certain games outside software rendering. While many titles got 3DFX or Direct 3D support directly from Papyrus, IndyCar Racing II remained stuck as standard SVGA and a 640×480 resolution, and has required real 1996-era hardware to get results like this:
320×240 software, 640×480 software, Rendition hardware, Rendition hardware with updated Rendition track art.
A couple of years after I posted my profile of IndyCar Racing II in Rendition a user began posting replies showing progress of a Rendition graphics wrapper he was writing, and I am happy to say that it already works for all the Rendition RRedline (Windows) titles that ever ran on a Rendition video card including Grand Prix Legends, SODA Off Road Racing and Psygnosis’ Formula 1. Rendition is the only way to run SODA Off Road Racing with anti-aliasing.
What remains, and has recently made major progress (as shown below), is Rendition Speedy3D (DOS). Speedy3D is used by IndyCar Racing II/CART Racing and is a rendering option in both NASCAR Racing 2 and NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition. While other options exist to render both N2 and NR1999, IndyCar Racing II can only have translucent smoke and dirt along with anti-aliasing via Rendition.
The video, posted in our forum this morning and embedded below, shows off what will be an open source fork of DOSBOX that will talk to the wrapper through a named pipe, just like glidos (a 3DFX wrapper for DOSBOX).
It’s work-in-progress, running slightly in slow motion for the video (that could be something as simple as upping the CPU cycles in DOSBOX), but to see this kind of progress for Speedy3D I figured it was worth a news report, even if just to inform that RRedline support for Windows is fully working already (supporting Tomb Raider, vQuake and more, too). Check out the forum thread for more info.
View this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SeWK1FGp_e8 and please consider subscribing to RSC’s main channel.
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