Bij FiringSquad hebben ze ook eens gekeken naar de Hidden Surface Removal feature die bij de laatste beta drivers voor de Voodoo5 is ingebakken. HSR zorgt ervoor dat onzichtbare delen voor de gamer niet gerenderd worden, wat erg veel geheugenbandbreedte bespaard. Net als RivaStation constateerde het vuurpeleton dan ook een flinke snelheidstoename, met name in de hogere resoluties. Toch is het goed merkbaar dat er nog veel bugfixing nodig is, er traden namelijk nog zeer veel visuele fouten op. Laten we hopen dat deze er uitgepoetst kunnen worden, want de scores liegen er niet om:
The new 3dfx 1.04.01 Voodoo4/5 beta drivers do have HSR. The feature is, however, still very beta, and we were only able to get it to work in Quake3. If anyone can help us with the other games, feel free to share your insights.
Yes, the benchmark numbers are impressive, but they are misleading. The HSR glitches make the game very hard to play, and they may be the cause of the inflated scores. We couldn't accurately judge the framerate at the more aggressive settings because the flickering was too great. One way to reduce the flickering is to cap the framerate, but you have to set the cap fairly low.
Even with these less than impressive results, it would be stupid to label 3dfx's HSR as a failure at this point in time. It's an undocumented, unfinished feature. We just have to step back and accept this beta HSR feature as an indication of things to come. It'll be interesting to see what kind of playable framerates HSR will yield once 3dfx officially releases the feature.
![]() |