General Questions
I got a 3D accelerator card, but some worlds are really slow.
Though blaxxun Contact might run on weaker PCs, the minimum supported configuration is a 16 MB P100. However with current internet browsers needing a lot of system resources, you should go at least for a P266 compatible with 32 MB RAM. Any 3D accelerator card will improve performance considerably, as 3D calculation puts a hefty tag on the CPU. If the video card does most of the calculation itself, you will see a huge performance boost.
Which graphics card works best with blaxxun Contact (3D)?
The general answer is, any card with Direct3D acceleration
in window mode will significantly speed up the DirectX version; a card with
OpenGL acceleration will do the same for our OpenGL version. Note that acceleration
in window mode (e.g. for Internet browsers) is required. This sadly excludes
cards based on the Voodoo or Voodoo2 chipset (e.g. Diamond Monster 3D and
Monster 3D II, Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo2, etc.). Also for Windows 95/98
we recommend using Direct 3D and the Direct3D version of Contact because the
drivers are often more performant and stable.
Any new AGP card should support Direct3D hardware acceleration. Please note
that hardware acceleration for Direct3D is NOT supported on NT 4.0. Windows
2000 provides DirectX 7 support including HW support with the new Windows
WDM driver model.
We have successfully tested the following cards:
Cards based on the 3DLabs Permedia
2 chipset:
e.g. Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro, Hercules Dynamite3D/GL, some Leadtek
and Elsa Gloria boards, Creative Graphics Blaster Exxtreme
Both Direct3D and OpenGL tested on the Diamond FireGL.
Cards based on the ATI Rage Pro chipset:
e.g. ATI Expert@work or Expert@play card
Direct3D tested.
Cards based on the Nvidia Riva 128,
TNT, TNT2, GeForce chipsets:
e.g. Diamond , Asus , Creative, Guillemot, Elsa all offer several
boards
Both Direct3D and OpenGL tested on various boards
Cards based on the Intel i740 chip:
e.g. Intel Starfighter, Diamond Stealth II G460
Both Direct3D and OpenGL tested on Starfighter.
Cards based on Matrox G200, G400 chipsets:
Both Direct3D and OpenGL tested.In general we recommend the
Direct3D version on Windows.
Cards based on the Voodoo3 chipset:
Both Direct3D and OpenGL tested. Older drivers may cause several
problems in the OpenGL version.
Cards based on older Matrox chipsets:
e.g. Matrox MilleniumII or Matrox Mystique
Both Direct3D and OpenGL tested on Millenium2
Cards based on the Rendition Verite2000:
e.g. the Hercules Thriller3D.
Direct3D version tested. OpenGL version has severe clipping
problems
(must be solved by card manufacturer!)
Not tested, no problems reported:
Cards based on the 3DLabs GLint chipset:
e.g. some Leadtek and Elsa Gloria boards
Cards based on the RenditionVerite1000
chip:
e.g. MiroCrystal series
Not tested, problems reported:
Cards based on the 3Dfx Voodoo Rush
chipset:
e.g. the Hercules Stingray 128/3D
Please note that this list is far from complete and new boards (and drivers)
are coming out every month. We did neither perform any proper benchmark
test nor tried the cards on comparable configurations. The quality of the
supplied drivers has a very high impact on performance too. For professional
reviews see for instance Tom's
hardware guide. 3d acceleration has come a long way, and any board from
1999 will give you a great 3d experience. The newest boards (Matrox G400,
GeForce and Savage2000) are especially excellent choices.
When buying a 3D card, there are several things to consider:
the resolution and color depth you intend on using (you need much more RAM for higher resolutions)
your CPU power (some 3D cards require a fast processor to perform well),
your intended rendering engine: OpenGL vs Direct3D (eg. a certain board performs well in Direct3D but has rather poor OpenGL drivers.
Some cards trade image quality for speed (e.g. the NVidia Riva chip), some the other way round.
If you run into problems with your graphics card,
please ensure that you have both the newest drivers from your hardware manufacturer
(available at their respective web site) and the newest version of DirectX,
available from
Microsoft.
If you need to report a problem to us, your problem
report should enclose a short problem description (e.g. transparent
GIFs do not work, or the world is too dark), the VRML file where it occurred,
and of course your system configuration (if possible with both driver and
DirectX version).
|
3D always puts a hefty price tag on your system resources especially if you use the best image quality. Right click in the 3D window and chose 'High speed'. The 'Graphics' sub menu contains a selection of rendering options, with 'Wireframe' the fastest but no images at all up to 'High quality' producing the best images and naturally being the slowest. |
 Chose
the mode where you are most comfortable with the image quality versus
speed ratio. Another option is to simply decrease the size of your 3D
window, either by resizing the complete browser window, or resizing the
3D window alone. The latter is a little bit tricky, you have to exactly
hit the border between the 3D window and the chat panel, once your cursor
changes its shape you can drag the border to the desired position. Note
that the world designer may have prohibited this, so that proportions
of 3D to chat may not be changed. |
The graphics card only has a limited amount of memory for hardware acceleration (usually 4, 8 or 16MB). Most of it is needed to store the picture/pixel information, the rest to store textures. If the amount needed to store this information exceeds the memory on your graphics card ( eg. a VRML world with a lot of textures), the acceleration does not work anymore. This results in a huge performance decrease. The only potential work around is to decrease the size of the 3D window until hardware acceleration kicks in, but some worlds may still be to large for your card. Then the only solution would be to buy a card with more memory ;-). For instance a 4 MB card does/cannot accelerate 3D, if you have a screen resolution 1024x768 or higher ( high color). Thats why most 3D games usually run in 800x600 or lower. AGP cards provide additional fast memory for textures ( Note AGP does not work on NT !), but will not help you if your 3D window is to large. Note that your card must work in window mode, otherwise they cannot accelerate blaxxun Contact. Therefore boards with Voodoo or Voodoo2 chips will have no effect.
You should use 16 bit(65536) color settings (Start menu/Settings/Control
Panel/Display/Settings). If you are using less colors any but the simplest
worlds will look strange. Check the blaxxun Contact (3D) settings ( right
click in the 3D window and chose settings/general), if you really use the
best possible image quality. Using the newest drivers from your card manufacturer
and DirectX ( if applicable) will improve image quality too. Image fine tuning
is the last step in writing a driver, so if you have a new card check for
new driver versions regularly.
Finally the OpenGL version surpasses the Direct3d version in terms of image
quality. Many people feel that the image improvements are well worth the trade
off in navigation speed. So try it out!. Note: If you are running Win9x and
have a 3D accelerator card, please check if it supports OpenGL on Win9x, on
NT OpenGL is always the recommended render engine.
Although most graphics problems are due to incorrect settings or inadequate hardware, it is possible that clearing your browser's cache may help.
Instructions for deleting Netscape cache files:Instructions for clearing Internet Explorer cache files:
I noticed blaxxun Contact (3D) has its own cache. What do the settings mean?
You can access the blaxxun Contact (3D) cache via the blaxxun Contact (3D) menu ( right click in the 3D window), under the Settings panel. Next choose "Preferences" then click on the "Caching" tab. This will bring up the Caching panel. The Caching panel en/disables the blaxxun Contact (3D) cache and specifies its location, whereas the 'Cache settings' specifies the size and verification comparable to your Internet browser cache. We chose to provide a separate blaxxun Contact (3D) cache, to speed up loading time for our community regulars. Your Internet browser cache may fill up every few days, but the blaxxun Contact (3D) cache holds only VRML worlds and the corresponding textures. Therefore the worlds hardly get deleted, and on your next visit loading time will significant decrease.
I get strange rendering effects
with the ATI Rage Pro.
Sometimes hidden polygons appear at strange places in the Cybertown plaza. This is an ATI driver problem. ATI Technologies is aware of this problem and has posted a new release candidate (4.11.2560 driver at 05-28-99) on their website.
I'm using an AGP 3D graphics
board, and textures seem to be blurred.
blaxxun Contact scales down textures if there is no texture memory left on the graphics board. AGP-based 3D boards can use main memory for textures. However, AGP support must be enabled for Windows. For Windows 95, version 950 B [OSR 2] or higher and USB Supplement are required for AGP support.
How can I troubleshoot problems
with Direct3D?
DXDiag is a DirectX diagnostic tool, part of a typical Windows installation
(use Windows Explorer to find it). It can display low-level system and driver
information and allows some Direct3D testing. Also, see the suggestions
in the section about graphics cards.
In case of serious problems with 3D graphics cards, please save a report
using the "Save all Information" button and include the generated text file
in an email to the hardware manufacturer's or blaxxun interactive's technical
support.
blaxxun Contact (3D) only saves your settings if you change them in the settings dialog box. Changing them via the pop up menu eg. to 'High Speed' is temporarily (so you can speed up bigger worlds and still keep your regular preferences). To change the default settings, right click in the 3D window, choose settings, and change them as you prefer.
On certain medium level systems (e.g a Pentium 200 with a good graphics board or a P2 300 with an average board under heavy system load) the Contact default setup may lead to the 3d window using all your system resources. To correct this behaviour right-click in the 3d window, choose Settings/Preferences and in the dialogbox now appearing (may take some time under these circumstances) deselect 'Run full speed' in the 'General' Tab and click ok. This will limit the 3d viewers resource needs and everything should be fine.
You may also want to consider using a third party memory manager. This can greatly increase the speed of your system by freeing up memory (RAM). There are many of these programs available to you free on the web such as FreeMem Pro available at http://www.meikel.com/en/freemem/fmemstd.htm. For FAQs on FreeMem Pro, see http://www.meikel.com/en/freemem/faq.htm.
Graphic cards reviews and more at Tom's Hardware guide
© 2000 blaxxun
interactive. All rights reserved.
Please check
your color depth settings first ( Start menu/Settings/Control Panel/Display/Settings).
If you use more than 65536(16 bit) color, you put an unnecessary load
on the 3D browser.