| Wicked3d 2 by Leonard Hjalmarson |
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Metabyte is a software company best known for their software driver implementation. They seem able to work magic with resolutions, speed, and stability - good words in the 3d accelerator business! I've been quite curious to get my hands on the Wicked3d-2 because Metabyte has garnered a lot of attention with Winbench 98 numbers in comparison to other mainline Voodoo 2 board makers like Diamond. Metabyte uses a proprietary Transformation & Lighting Engine which can generate up to a 40% increase in performance. However, at the moment the improvement is theoretical because no published game makes use of the necessary transforms. In spite of that, the Wicked3d-2 is a solid performer which should give you superior performance when the software catches up. Since dynamic lighting and reflection effects are becoming more common and more sophisticated, a driver improvement in a simulation like Falcon 4 or MiG Alley would be great. In the meantime, their software expertise has resulted in the kind of features and flexibility usually reserved for high end hardware makers like Canopus. For example, you can set your choice of refresh rates and resolution modes for gaming. A single W3D board will allow you to reach to 1024x672, and two boards (SLI mode) can actually generate 1024x1024. Impressive! Test System:
This is a 12 meg reference board design and installation was a snap, as it is with any V2 board. I've run all my Glide games without a hitch as well as some D3d titles. I cranked clock rate to 95 MHz and performance was solid, actually surpassing my Orchid R3d-2 by a few fps in almost every sim I tried. Metabyte also sent me a pair of H3D LCD glasses. Since they are pushing this technology beyond past limitations they aren't waiting for native support for stereoscopic imaging. Instead they have been working with H3D Entertainment to support a variety of APIs (D3D, Glide and Open GL) at the driver level. This means you won't have to wait for Microprose, for example, to release a patch for M1 Tank Platoon II; Metabyte will take care of this all by itself! I tried the H3d glasses in Battlezone and in Descent: Freespace. The overall effect is impressive, and quite a bit beyond what we saw last year with Simuleyes. The WickedVision software allows adjustment of a variety of parameters including stereo separation to get the performance that is just right for you. Here is part of Wicked3d's FAQ: Previous implementations of stereovision had certain problems and limitations, all of which detract from the appeal of this technology. The glasses themselves were fairly low quality producing ghosting effects (this is when the blocking of the eye is not complete and you do see a little of the wrong image). They all tend to be geeky looking in an attempt to make them appear to be full head mounted displays, which they are not. |
Other limitations like only supporting low resolution and/or low refresh rate also detracted from the value. It is also possible to create a bad implementation of stereovision in software. Any one of these alone and especially in combination can produce eye strain, headaches or at best a disappointing stereovision experience. Lastly, very few games supported stereovision and usually not the most popular ones. However, Metabyte aims to change this! Overall, image quality with H3d is solid and flicker is much reduced over previous implementations. It seems that certain graphical problems can also be worked out at driver level. Metabyte explains: When combined with Metabyte’s Re2Flex technology on the Wicked 3D board we can do 1024x672 resolution stereovision at a whopping 79Hz (per eye, 158Hz total) on a single board! With 2 boards in SLI configuration we can do 1024x1024 resolution stereovision at 68Hz (per eye, 138Hz total). This is the best stereovision available anywhere in the world at the consumer market level.
Metabyte has also applied its’ considerable 3D experience to make needed corrections to the images being displayed. In general, there are distortions introduced when viewing stereovision on display monitors that have been corrected. On a more specific note, the crosshair used in Quake type games is not a 3D object and as such is completely incorrect for stereovision. This has also been corrected. In fact we have implemented a laser sight type crosshair which works very well for targeting objects. Where specific corrections have not been applied, HUD data becomes difficult to read, especially at higher resolutions. However, Metabyte is at work on new drivers which improve text quality greatly. There is no software bundle, but most sim fans won't mind. If you shop around you can find the Wicked3d-2 as low as $189, an excellent price for a 12 meg board. Adding a pair of H3D glasses will add another $100 to the package. Metabye has also announced their new Banshee based board: The Wicked3DTM Board Company, a division of Metabyte, Inc., today announced the new Wicked3D VengeanceTM graphics board based on 3Dfx InteractiveTM Inc.'s Voodoo BansheeTM 128-bit integrated 2D/3D video accelerator. With a full 16MB of SDRAM memory, the Wicked3D Vengeance will be available in both AGP and PCI configurations with the option of TV-output. Consistent with the Wicked3DTM Board Company's mission to deliver a truly immersive gaming experience, the Wicked3D Vengeance will also support Metabyte’s WickedVisionTM stereoscopic eyewear system and Re2FlexTM variable refresh rate and resolution utility. |
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