3dfx Voodoo 5 gets a wide aspect ratio driver

For those of us who have been involved in hardware twists and turns for a long time, 3dfx Interactive feels familiar and might appear even with a good dose of nostalgia. The manufacturer was responsible for the hugely popular graphics cards in the Voodoo family, which with their Glide interface surpassed competitors in terms of 3D performance in the 1990s.

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The last series was the Voodoo 5, and the last model officially launched was the Voodoo 5 5500 with two VSA-100 circuits and a full 64MB SDRAM at 166MHz. When it was launched, CRT monitors were the norm, as drivers reflect it. In its original version, there is no support for the wider image formats that are now standard, and connecting a modern monitor can be difficult. Innovative enthusiasts now have the therapy with their very own chauffeur.

Despite the fact that 3dfx is long gone, the dedicated community has continued to develop drivers and this time it is paying off in the form of a “3d wide driver”. The driver was posted by Dolenc user on 3dfxzone As the name indicates, it is in short an engine that offers support for wide image formats.

The driver includes support for both 16:9 and 21:9 and works on the Windows desktop and with three interfaces: OpenGL, Direct3D, and Glide. The driver is based on a previously developed community variant ported from Project Mesa. For OpenGL and Direct3D applications, the resolution can be scaled in relation to the aspect ratio. However, sliding applications require more hand position from the user and can be installed to a maximum of 1600 x 900 pixels in 16:9 or 1920 x 800 pixels in 21:9.

Drivers have been developed for Windows 98 and Windows ME and are available for download at the time of writing 3dfxzone forum.

source: Hothardware