More on T-buffer

T-buffer continued

Since the jury is still out on T-buffer, we asked 3dfx if they planned to offer an option to disable it in the control panel. Fortunately they answered in the affirmative, they do plan on offering some form of control panel for enabling T-buffer effects, but the exact functions in the control panel are still unknown.

Hopefully it will have some array of options for enabling only certain effects. A good example would be panel options to turn on full-scene anti-aliasing and depth of field, but disable motion blur. Just think how cool Microsoft's NFL Fever 2000 would look if the entire screen was anti-aliased and the fans in the stadium appeared slightly out of focus!

One thing is for certain, some gamers like eye candy and others don't. For gamers who enjoy playing games with the visual quality set to the highest settings, 3dfx offers their T-buffer technology; gamers who enjoy high framerates can turn the visual settings down and enjoy the smoother gameplay.

The gaming aspect of T-buffer

At Comdex 3dfx was showing motion blur effects in Quake3. At the time, we took it for granted that Quake3 would therefore support 3dfx's T-buffer technology or at least parts of it. Unfortunately, it turns out that this line of thinking is incorrect, for Quake3 to support T-buffer id Software must release a patch for Quake3. While 3dfx can encourage developers to use T-buffer in upcoming games, it's entirely up to each developer to determine the merit of T-buffer technology - at least motion blur and depth of field. Full-scene anti-aliasing works with every game regardless of T-buffer support.

With this in mind, Bob pressed 3dfx for information on which upcoming games will support T-buffer technology. Since no official announcements have been made, 3dfx remained tight-lipped concerning which games will support T-buffer.

Along similar lines, we next asked 3dfx about their FXT-1 texture compression algorithm and which games will support it. Needless to say, we received a similar answer to the T-buffer support question - no specifics. We were assured that 3dfx is working hard with developers to help them implement T-buffer and texture compression technologies but at this point they can't make any rough estimates on the number of upcoming games that will support either feature.

Since FXT-1 is open source code we expect some developers will likely jump on the bandwagon and support it in their upcoming games and hope it is supported by future versions of DirectX. However, only time will tell the tale on both technologies.