by Bubba "Masterfung" Wolford

How It Works

How does it work? In Direct3D when an application creates a textured surface in memory, the application or game tells the hardware if there are any special codes to designate a compressed image, which is referred to as FOURCC codes. If there is a call for a texture to be compressed, the hardware knows this due to this FOURCC code and so it can be decompressed prior to being moved to the frame buffer. In OpenGL textures must be marked with a FXT1 code in the file header. This allows the hardware to know what and when to compress/decompress the textures.

Future of the Next Generation 3dfx board

With everything being equal, 3dfx seems to be in a very good position. Both of their major competitors have already released their specs allowing 3dfx to take a close look at what they have to offer.

3dfx has spoken many times that they expect to have the best card on the market and while wielding the T-Buffer with the new FXT1 and the rumored "colossal" fill-rate, stand ready to pounce on the scene with possibly the first 3D card that'll offer gaming at 1024x768 x32-bit color at 60fps or greater. In fact, 3dfx even hinted toward 1280x1024 x32-bit color at 60fps during the actual phone conversation!

IF 3dfx does manage to take control of the 3D scene before Christmas it will probably be a VERY long year for its competitors in 2000. Rampage (3dfx's next generation chip expected to be released late Spring next year) is rumored to be the "monster of monsters" in 3D prowess. Only time will tell, but since Scott Sellers himself has been working hands-on with this next generation chipset, 3dfx could potentially dominate the market.

3dfx knows that with more textures being implemented in multi-textures per-scene, the increased benefits of using texture compression to render two or more textures per scene is going to really payoff in the end. Since the end-user sees huge benefits to his memory bandwidth and frames per second when rendering those large textures, they plan to make FXT1 a real standard.

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Uncompressed Textures

Compressed Textures. This image uses 6 times less data than the one above!

Conclusion

As I am writing this and the time is fast approaching 1 AM, I cannot help but convey a conversation I had with Kenn Hwang of Thresh's Firingsquad earlier this evening. He and I were talking on ICQ about all of these technology innovations 3dfx is having, all the while 3dfx are hinting at the specs of the next generation card but never quite giving us enough information to make a concrete judgment on it.

I commented to him that this was almost a cruel form of teasing that they were doing to us. Noting and hinting toward certain specs, releasing some, never divulging others and all the while keeping us all just enough in the dark so that we know something great is in there but never being able to make out exactly what it might be. I made an analogy to the situation and then Kenn came up with a fabulous and catchy name, "3TeaseFX".

Thus, from this day on, if there are anymore "technology demonstrations" before 3dfx release's the specs for the next generation board, I hereby promise that 3dfx will be known as, "3teasefx" until the product ships.

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