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I have a Voodoo 5 and I am trying to get UT2003 demo to work. You probably know my error if you have been reading on the UT2003 forums:
OpenGL renderer relies on DXTC/S3TC support.
So... does anyone know how I can get DXTC/S3TC support without buying a new video card? I'm using Red Hat 7.3, and I haven't messed with the video drivers at all, cause I have no idea what to do.
Daedra
09-22-2002, 12:23 PM
I believe that nivida's drivers are the only ones that will support UT2003 at this time, check the UT2003 website
bwkaz
09-22-2002, 01:00 PM
The problem is that S3 claims S3TC is patented by them. If anyone wants to pay them license fees to use it for the Voodoo drivers (heck, if anyone's even working on the Voodoo drivers any more), please step forward...
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That's what I thought. Sorry, but I don't think it's going to happen... which sucks, I know, but the V5 is a few years old by now (it's just 2 V4's in SLI mode on one board, right? that's what I remember them being...), so perhaps it's time to go to a GF4 MX? They can be had for ~$60 or so...
There is no way to legally implement S3TC without a license from the patent holder. It's not going to happen. DirectX for Windows does it, in software (unless the card does it in hardware), because MS paid $$$ to S3 to be able to do that. So AFAIK, there is no way to do it short of using drivers that work with S3TC, which at the moment, is only the nVidia ones.
You might be able to reverse engineer the way S3TC works (for example, by looking at the way the format appears in files, and figuring a way to decompress that data before sending the texture to the card), and (questionably) legally put some software support into something... but I wouldn't count on it.
Ok, I guess its time to give in and get a new card. Its too bad, cause this thing isn't very old. What nVidia card is roughly equivalent to the Voodoo 5?
bwkaz
09-22-2002, 05:14 PM
My GF2 GTS 32MB was bought as a part of my Dell (my server ATM) at about the same time as the Voodoo5's were being sold. I bought the computer a few months before 3dfx ended up going under.
So I don't know if that means they're equivalent or not, but IIRC, they were released at about the same time.