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Hi there fellow mythlers,

While trying to replay my old fav game (Myth II) on my new PC, I became irritated because of the textures of the terrain. As I've heard, there is a thing with all the new Dx10-Graphiccards - from both ATI and NVidia - with the old dithering-technics: They removed it and for that, we are forced to play some old games in a drastically decreased quality of graphics. I am far from being an expert on such matters - I just want to play the good old games again and again. So my question: Is this serious matter with the dithering-thingie responsible for lower quality of graphics? And - if it is - is there a way to force the game using a higher bit configuration? Or will there even be a wonderful new Magma-Patch for Myth II? As I said, I'm a complete nut in these kinds of technical matters, so I ask you kindly for your knowledge

My graphiccard is a ATI Radeon HD4870

Best wishes

Have you tried OpenGL rendering?

Are you running the latest update (1.6)?

yes I have, but it's the same result. I compared it with the graphic quality on my old pc (with a GF6800) and there is a difference. Its even nicer to play it in software...

... and yes, also the latest version of the patch...

Can you show us screenshots? There are places you can upload like photobucket.com .

Hi,
Finally, I managed to get some screenies. Here they come:

http://i640.photobucket.com/albums/uu12 ... ur22-1.jpg

http://i640.photobucket.com/albums/uu12 ... extur3.jpg

http://i640.photobucket.com/albums/uu12 ... extur5.jpg

http://i640.photobucket.com/albums/uu12 ... extur6.jpg

Especially the water is ugly, as I think. Or the soft sandhills in the once (back in those happy voodoo2-times...) beautiful desert...
Even the ground in the crow's bridge-mission.
Or am I just chasing phantoms?

Hi there,
I compared and compared... and it seems, I was wrong. Even the earliest screenshots of M2 has the same graphic quality under D3D. Under glide, there was a slightly but clearly visable better dithering though. There is no way to restore this old quality, I presume?

Glide should still be supported, if you have the right hardware.

But for that, I would need an old 3dfx-Card, didn't I? There's just opengl and that one looks similar to d3d. With zeckensack's glide wrapper, myth 1 used to look like in the old days, but unfortunately, in magmapatch 1.5 there is no way to play it in 3dfx with a wrapper. And without the patch 1.5 there seems to be no way to avoid the memory bug (there was once a bypassing exe or bat, but it worked just up tp 1GB ram)...

You're correct about the dithering issue with new cards, BUT, your screenshots do not display this issue! Probably because you are running OpenGL, and we already fixed the problem under OpenGL mode. Try running the D3D renderer, and see how much worse the terrain looks then.

actually here are some screenshots so everyone can see what i'm talking about without having to launch myth

OpenGL renderer:


D3D renderer on a new card that doesn't do dithering:

Really Myrd glide is still supported? because nothing runs myth better then how i have seen it run on voodoo 1 and voodoo2 cards back in the day. I thought 1.6 and 1.7 didnt support glide. Since you cant select it on the prefs screen (its D3d and OpenGL only)

Then again i dont have a glide 3D card installed!.......YET!

If this means i can get that super awesome smoothness from the glide drivers for myth 2 and play 1.6 and 1.7 then WOO HOO! Looks like ill be buying myself a 10 year old PCI voodoo 2 card!

(BTW 3DFX enginers worked directly with bungie during TFL and SB development to make Glide drivers that ran myth REALLY smoothly)

@ Melekor: I can see the difference, yes. It seems, I confused something there. The memory on the good old 3dfx times is still too strong, I think.

But is there really no way to emulate Glide through a wrapper tool or something? As Renwood TWA said, it was still much smoother back then (it's not meant as an offense; your work is incredible and I wouldn't be able to play the games without your great patches).

I played it (Myth TFL) with zeckensack's wrapper

=> http://www.zeckensack.de/glide/

two years ago with my GeForce6800 and it was like in the old times, but with higher resolution. If I install this wrapper now, I get the option to choose 3dfx in the game menu of 1.5, but there it's just a graphical desaster, if I activate it ...

If you have a card that supports 3dfx/glide, it will work.

Trying to emulate it depends on how good the emulator is. Even if it works - you might just end up getting the same results as OpenGL since in the end it translates glide calls to OpenGL.

I still have a Voodoo 5 monster card lying around somewhere...

I also have a Voodoo2 somewhere, but I don't want to use that old thing in my new pc. But I assure you, the results of the zeckensack-wrapper are similar to real glide. Landscape is filtered as fine as a baby's ass. Why is it not possible to use the wrapper AND the patch 1.5 together?