Rendition MiniGL Drivers - 5/23/98    GOLD

This ZIP file contains unsupported "Mini" OpenGL drivers
for boards based upon the V1000 and V2x00 chips from Rendition.
These drivers allow you to play Quake and Quake descended games,
as well as other OpenGL games that do not require a full OpenGL
ICD.

Major new features in this release of the MiniGL include H3D 
stereo glasses support, triple buffering, line doubled stereo
support, vertex array optimizations, gamma table support, and 
point parameter extension support.

This release should be considered "gold" - all major issues have
been resolved and todo items completed.  If any new serious bugs 
are discovered however, this MiniGL may once again be updated.

There are four files:

  readme.txt:  		This file.

  opengl32.dll:  	The OpenGL "mini" driver.

  v2000gl.uc:  		The OpenGL microcode file for the V2x00.

  v1000gl.uc:		The OpenGL microcode file for the V1000.

To install this driver:

  * Copy the v2000gl.uc or v1000gl.uc file to your windows\system
    directory, depending upon which chip you have.

  * Copy the opengl32.dll to your OpenGL game's directory.  It is not 
    recommended that you put this file in your windows\system 
    directory, because it does not support the entire OpenGL API.  
    Applications that require unsupported functions may crash if you 
    copy this file to windows\system.


CONFIGURATION INSTRUCTIONS
==========================
This miniGL uses registry entries to modify behaviour. Two new features
that are affected by registry entries are:

(1) Triple buffering (when you are a full screen app, and ask for double
buffering you actually have 3 buffers allocated - 6 if stereo - in a
transparent fashion to the user). Triple buffering drastically reduces the
time the graphics chip spends waiting for the vertical sync between frames. 
An offshoot of this is that it is no longer necessary to have the highest 
refresh rate to see maximum performance. On the other hand we can run at 
the lowest comfortable refresh rate, having the CRT controller access the 
framebuffer much less frequently and thereby freeing up memory bandwidth for 
rendering. So setting the lowest refresh rate gives best results when tripple 
buffering is enabled. When it is not, then highest refresh rate gives you the 
fastest results.

(2) Line doubled stereo. When viewing stereo, if the vertical resolution is
halfed the eye gets fooled into believing that there is almost as much
resolution as in a non-stereo buffer with twice the vertical resolution.
Halfing the vertical resolution, halfs the memory/rendering bandwidths
required. So we are able to run almost as fast as the non-stereo case
(not quite true if the geometry is the bottleneck).

Triple buffering is on by default. Stereo line doubling is off by default.
There is no need to edit your registry if you do not wish to change this
default behavior.

To change these settings, use regedit to add to following to the local 
machine registry under "Software\Rendition\OpenGL":

  TripleBuffering         0 or 1  disable/enable triple buffering
  StereoLineDouble        0 or 1  disable/enable line doubling in stereo

Note: The registery entries should be entered exactly as shown, and the data
values should be DWORD's.  0 = Off.  1 = On.


NOTES
=====
Triple buffering uses 50% more frame buffer memory than double buffering.
On a 4MB card, memory may be scarce in some applications. If you notice
any performance problems with triple buffering enabled, you may wish
to disable it or run at a lower resolution.

Quake 1 assumes a double-buffered screen, and when run with triple buffering 
may exhibit flashing.  At the console "set gl_triplebuffer 1" to fix this.

To turn on stereo in Quake 2, type  "set cl_stereo 1", "set gl_ztrick 0", 
followed by a "vidrestart".  

With line-doubling enabled, the default console font in Quake 2 is very 
difficult to read.  You may wish to experiment with different fonts, or 
to turn of stereo mode temporarily while working with the console.

The V1000 is not as powerful nor as well suited to running OpenGL apps as 
the V2K.  Even so, at low resolutions and with the gun hidden (set cl_gun 0),
we have experienced quite acceptable death match performance.



Again, these drivers are unsupported by Rendition.
End-users are recommended to use drivers provided by their
board manufacturer to ensure that they can obtain full support.

Please post bug reports on Rendition's discusion server at 
http://www.rendition.com/forums.html, or go directly to 
news://news.rendition.com/rendition.games.support.quake to
see what experiences other users have been having. If you can't 
access the forums, please mail bug reports to webmaster@rendition.com.

Have a frag-filled day....

	Rendition


