MAME now fully open source - time for Voodoo 3 emulation in WinUAE?
 

Hey Toni,

It looks like MAME finally went open source with a decent license:
http://mamedev.org/?p=422

Maybe it's time for that Voodoo 3 emulation in WinUAE? :crazy

Duh, just saw http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...&postcount=125

I suppose this can be closed :blased

Separate thread is better because it is practically guaranteed there will be no Voodoo emulation in 3.3.0 and beta threads are closed when official version is out.

But yes, I already knew, even before beta thread posts.

It is much easier said than done, so many dependencies...

Ah right. Great, at least there's a possibility now!

It might be a fun project to tackle when you want some new challenges ;)

Thanks for your work, Toni!

I wonder where is the relationship between MAME and the voodoo 3 on the amiga

Some of the emulated games in MAME use an emulated Voodoo 3 - Toni can (hopefully) re-purpose that code to enable Voodoo 3 emulation in WinUAE.

Does any 68k software use voodoo3 (specifically) or is it ppc only?

Anything that uses Warp3D - you'll also be able to use it as an RTG device as an alternative to uaegfx. I believe Toni was interested in Voodoo 3 because it was a nice compromise of functionality for both AmigaOS 3.9 and 4.1 with sufficient video RAM to use it with HD displays.

Exactly. So far MAME Voodoo 3 emulation is the only license compatible display card that:

- "All AmigaOS" supported. Including linux, netbsd etc..
- Full HD resolution support (=enough VRAM)

- 3d is only a bonus and is not in my requirements list (but I don't think there are any >=8M VRAM capable display chips that don't have any kind of 3d hardware..). It is also software emulated in MAME code. So don't expect anything fast.

(CyberVision/BlizzardVision would have been sort of better choice because there are demos that only work with those boards. But Permedia 2 is not emulated and it is far too complex to code from scratch just for "fun"..

@Toni

Would a Permedia 2 wrapper of sorts be possible instead of a full on emulation? Or am I just talking nonsense (most likely)? :)

Slowly, MAME devs are starting to add real 3D acceleration via hardware, but it will take a loong time before we have something to play games with.

There is a way to use a 3Dfx Glide wrapper to use the video card to render graphics of 3D games (Glide to Direct3D wrapper). I don't know how accurate would a wrapper be though or how hard it would be to implement this. I don't know how to do it.

Would a uae Warp3D implementation be easier? Directly using the host 3d acceleration.
I have no idea how complex this is, just asking :)

>Would a uae Warp3D implementation be easier?
Already exists in WinUAE 68k as WaZp3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCis7ZbAjd4

Alain Thellier - Wazp3D

"Somebody else's problem" again.

I only do hardware emulation. I don't do drivers, especially 3D drivers. I don't want to know what 3D drivers need to do. They just work automatically when emulation is good enough.

Good point.

AOS4.1 needs a lot more than 8MB VRam though ? Or would you be able to emulate this card with more VRAM ?

I don't care.

It is OS4 supported card (and everything else) and it has enough VRAM for full HD. My checklist is complete.

Only if you're using compositing and that requires Radeon hardware anyway.

Sorry to reopen old thread but I've been gone for a while - @Toni - were you able to make any headway emulating the Voodoo 3?

I am hoping that PCem implements it someday (or some other single system emulator), MAME separates it in dozens of different source modules with dozens of dependencies. It is practically impossible task to merge.