alt Hacker NewsBut if you want to experience GLQuake that looks like software-rendered Quake, that's a simple settings change in your GPU driver, overriding the texture sampling mode. That's literally the only difference. I'm not sure the author is aware that it is a viable option to tweak the hardware rendering this way.
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Are you sure? I haven't played enough Quake to know either way, but I did play Deus Ex in software mode (unreal engine), and that had a lot of differences to the other renderers. I very much doubt texture sampling mode alone would reach a similar result.
(It even had graphic errors, green textures in the faces etc giving everything a very alien look. But that's not what I mean).
May be a couple settings. IIRC full bright textures didn't translate well in early GPU renderers. Often they'd appear shaded as if they weren't light sources at all.
> if you want to experience GLQuake that looks like software-rendered Quake, that's a simple settings change in your GPU driver, overriding the texture sampling mode. That's literally the only difference.
Is that the case?
https://fabiensanglard.net/3dfx_sst1/ has a side-by-side screenshot comparison of the two, and software Quake's colours and lighting look way more rich and vibrant; it's not just smoother textures. It's possible that GLQuake/one of the many source ports since has improved on this though.
Of course I know this is a particular quality of GLQuake and not an actual limitation of hardware rendering. And I agree with in general with the contention that this article is talking about a particular art style associated with mid 90s software rasterizers rather than about "software rendering" itself.