Paul wrote in message ...
I guess we have different perceptions about computers. What I miss
are the days before scroll throttles and the like, where when you
got a faster processor, the desktop would snap to attention. If you
were scrolling a document, it would scroll so fast, you had to adjust
your technique, to be able to navigate a document without overshooting.
We do,...Still love my Word95 for that matter
I especially remember "lunar lander". I first saw that on some kind
of vector display device. My next opportunity was at work, years later,
on a Sun3. The lander behaved nicely, and you could fly it without
problems.
I've always been a great fan of the original Lunar Lander arcade.
MAME now serves me well. But later I got a great 3D game that
ran fabulously well on an old 3DFx 3D card. From Psygnosis
Training modes are stunning.
http://www.game-over.net/reviews.php?id=120&page=reviews
This is just for the records.
http://www.eaglelander3d.com/
http://www.megagames.com/news/html/freegames/eaglelander3d.shtml
Now, the program had no idea about frame rate, so as my employer
got faster computers, I would fire up the lunar lander demo, and it
would react so fast, that my "spacecraft" was always stuck to the
top of the screen. It took nerves of steel to land that thing,
as any misstep results in a "crash". That demo never failed to
impress.
LOL
New machines now, once you use a processor faster than a certain
MHz, the only time you really see it, is if you are doing something
with a long compute time. That, and handling games with more detail.
You must be joking Paul,
What happened in the 3D scene is not only added polygons and details
that slowed-down the whole process, making latest machine look barely
enough for the tast; But added tons of physics simulations that must
impress. Getting back old JediKnight1 and playing it 1600x1200 full details,
is what you can get with our 2004 ASUS boards and matching 3D cards.
Oh my god, I see the difference.. Not to mention Quake or simply the original
Unreal who used to run at 12fps on a 400Mhz celery + 3Dfx.
Today, these older games are running exactly like I expected them back then.
There are also games like "Grand-Prix" up to "Grand-Prix 4" who are
CPU and 3D hungry; Yet under a P4 3Ghz FSB 800Mhz run like hell.
And from my small game collection, I can tell you that you don't have to
go as far as LunarLander to see a difference.
Yet, M$ combat Flight sim is sluggish even on a 3Ghz machine matched
with a 9800Pro. That has to do with microsoft 3D engine al little bit
over the top.. But I expect it will be superb on a futur dual 128bit cpu.
My 9800pro seems to only be able to do 1024x768 truely smoothly, and
higher resolutions seem to tear a bit. Maybe I should have gone
AMD instead
Paul
If you are talking about Combat Flight Sim3, then I can give you a tip.
Try 16bit depth. It does not make a huge picture quality loss for a sim
but improves the framerate (probably due to Micro$oft engine computations).
But CFS3 is not the only one to be a sucker for CPUs. Morrowind as well.
And looking at the upcoming Doom-3 screens; I'm prepared for the worst.
The CFS3 framerate is unstable, and performs well for a few seconds, then
stutters a little. Dropping the resolution does not help much I'm affraid.
But I still own my old SVGA F22 Novalogic.
Otherwise, I'll read plenty from them:
http://www.combatfs.com/index.php?page=news&loc=news&newsid=5
http://flyawaysimulation.com/article542.html
And d/l the patches from Micro$oft.
http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs3/
http://www.microsoft.com/games/combatfs3/downloads.asp
http://www.simviation.com/cfs3_misc2.htm <-underground patch nocd
Hints & Tips of how to get CFS3 to run smoothly
http://www.simviation.com/files/2cfs/CFS3complete.zip
Who knows.. I just love the new P4 performance, and ASUS quality motherboard,
and a good Intel chipset at last !
Regards.. Wishing you all a great time (I'm done here, ecceeded my OT limits.)
BTW, Doom3 pre-order box available 10$ with small demon figurine (good for evil worshippers)
LOL
B