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To: Daniel P. Dwyer who wrote (13271)6/14/1999 5:04:00 PM
From: Greg S.  Respond to of 16960
 
I think the fault lies in not pushing it. I'm not a Glide developer so I wouldn't know, but what has 3dfx done for developers recently aside from send them a CD with the new version on it and say "here ya go, hope you use it," if even that? It pays handsomely to be good to developers if you want them to be good to you.

-G



To: Daniel P. Dwyer who wrote (13271)6/14/1999 5:11:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu  Respond to of 16960
 
I will have to work hard to dig it up, so I pass for now. But as long as I remember (going back to '98) I was saying that Glide's survival depends on having many games for it which in turn depends on its user base (read various cards and platforms). So from where I stand, the fault lies in not enlisting support for Glide from others.

Glide should be able to survive for another year. But my guess is that is about it. BTW, enlisting support for Glide would not have been an easy job anyway. For one thing, the focus should have been changed from Glide is the best API for Voodoo to Voodoo is the best hardware for Glide. But it was (and still may be) doable. When Glide was the king, no one gave a damn for D3D. That was the best opportunity 3dfx had for pushing Glide. Now it is tougher to do so.

3dfx dreams big and says all the right things. But when it comes to strategic execution, they fall apart. If they had had a good foot hold in consoles, set-top boxes, Apple, and Arcades, then Glide would be in a much stronger position. What 3dfx should realize, is that the rest of the world is not going to let them swallow the interactive entertainment business. Nor is 3dfx capable of doing so by itself. So if indeed they want to be an entertainment platform, they will have to do it via cooperation rather than litigation.

ST



To: Daniel P. Dwyer who wrote (13271)6/14/1999 5:20:00 PM
From: Eric Howard  Respond to of 16960
 
The issue is not one of Glide versus DirectX but one of Glide versus OpenGL. OpenGl supports multiple operating systems, Linux, Windows, Mac is non proprietary and every new graphics card that comes out will support it. If 3dfx was in Dreamcast instead of PowerVr like it was supposed to be than Glide would probably have a future as there would be a huge market (Dreamcast ) and an easy port to the PC.
In the past the argument was Glide versus DirectX and that was an easier sell because 3dfx owned the 3d market and DirectX was horrible. If I am developing a game which comes to market sometime next year why would I want to try and guess which 3d card will be in everyones machines? Glide has no advantage over openGl except that it may run a little faster on one brand of graphics cards. That is not a very compelling reason for a company to spend alot of time to rewrite their rendering API or two support two different rendering API concurrently. If 3dfx comes out with some new whiz bang graphics feature then they will make it available through openGL as well as Glide. Glide may be strategic for 3dfx but it will probably only used on the arcade front in games such as Hydro Thunder. A pc developer will not spend the time to code up his game in Glide.

Eric