3Dfxgl is a 3-D graphics library with an API which is very similar to that of OpenGL(1. It was developed entirely by 3Dfx Interactive based on freely available information about the OpenGL state machine and interfaces. This release is intended to give developers an early opportunity to gain experience with this API on 3Dfx Interactive hardware. It is important to keep in mind that this is an ALPHA release. Not all features are supported; features supported may not offer complete functionality. No attempt has been made to run any conformance tests. Furthermore, please note that performance optimizations are incomplete; no inferences should be drawn about the fundamental capability of 3Dfx Interactive hardware based on the behavior of applications executed with this library.
Unsupported Features
* Polygon/Line Stipple: enabling GL_LINE_STIPPLE or GL_POLYGON_STIPPLE will be treated as a no-op.
* Texture Coordinate Generation: glTexGen*() functions are stubbed out. Applications depending on this functionality will most likely fail.
* Texture Subimage Functions: gkTexSubImage*(), glCopyTexImage*(), and glCopyTexSubimage() functions are stubbed out. Applications depending on this functionality will most likely fail.
* Evaluators: glEvalCoord*() functions are stubbed out. Applications depending on this functionality will most likely fail.
* Stencil Buffer: enabling GL_STENCIL_TEST will be treated as a no-op.
* Pixel Transfer Functions: glReadPixels() and glDrawPixels() are not implemented. The behavior of applications depending on these functions is unpredictable.
Known Problems & Restrictions
* Under Windows(2 95, the sample applications may fail to set the pass through mode correctly. In general, any console application (i.e. not utilizing a Windows event loop) is susceptible to this problem. The workaround is to manually toggle the pass through mode via CTRL-F9.
* Textures in some programs (e.g. steam) are rendered incorrectly.
* Resizing a window so that the client area becomes zero or iconifying the window causes a DirectDraw error.
* A banner appears in the lower right hand corner of the screen when a 3Dfxgl application is running to signify that this is an Alpha release. This banner may not be suppressed.
Bugs Fixed in this release
* Texture caching does not fragment memory
* Texture names > 512 work correctly
* wglGetPixelDescription() now returns correct data
* Line and polygon stipple implemented
* Flashing line at the top of screen during quake fixed
* 3Dfx Interactive Voodoo Rush based 2D/3D Accelerator
* 3Dfx Interactive Glide Version 2.3 or later
* Microsoft OpenGL must be installed to supply needed library files. This is the default on Windows NT, but only on some Windows 95 systems. To verify that OpenGL is installed on a Windows 95 system, check for the existence of the file named \WINDOWS\SYSTEM\GLU32.DLL. OpenGL for Windows 95 can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/oglfix.exe. For further information read the Knowledge Base article Q124556.
Using the Driver
The name of the 3Dfxgl alpha driver is OpenGL32.DLL. IMPORTANT: this driver should only be copied to a user directory containing an executable to be evaluated. Under no circumstances should this driver be copied to any system directory, including \WINDOWS\SYSTEM under Windows 95 or \WINNT\SYSTEM32 under Windows NT. Similarly, do not put any directory containing OpenGL32.DLL into your path.
To use this driver, copy it into the same directory as the application executable (.EXE). For example:
