I thought these two articles were an interesting read. link: https://web.archive.org/web/20110326050206/http://www.firingsquad.com/features/nv2/ link: https://web.archive.org/web/2010120...gsquad.com/features/nvidiahistory/default.asp
I realize these articles are really old, and had to use Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to retrieve them. I find the part about SEGA's funding of Nvidia, and therefore keeping Nvidia afloat during 1995-1996, pretty interesting.
Cool read. I never realised at the time Diamond Edge used an NVIDIA chip. AFAIK Edge 3D was the first consumer grade graphics accelerator and like said in the article pretty solid too. It just suffered from the fact no standards were established at the time and ended up being more of a 2D accelerator in a way as it didn't specialize in polygon handling. As polygons turned out to be pretty essential for 3D gaming... in retrospect I suppose NV tried to open up the market by making a card for games as of then, rather than thinking games as of tomorrow. Plus IIRC the only game able to utilize Edge 3D was Virtua Fighter. The main wave of 3D cards soon superseced the Edge and it was lost in history.
Yep, Diamond EDGE 3D used the NV1. It ran Windows PC ports of Saturn a few Sega Saturn games: Virtua Fighter Remix, Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Cop. Plus a few other PC games: NASCAR Racing, Battle Arena Toshinden and Decent. Because the EDGE 3D was a multimedia card, it had audio hardware, as well as Sega Saturn controller inputs. However, contrary to an often used misconception, Diamond EDGE 3D was not based on Sega Saturn hardware, as it used Nvidia's first chip, the NV1 accelerator. They both just happen to use the same method of rendering; quadratic texture mapping. Next Generation issue 10 - October 1995:
^ actually thinking about it NV was way ahead of its time. Looking at that sphere image, that was basically an early implementation of tessellation. Adding detail to a polygon with displacement mapping of the texture. I suppose the term "quadratic" refers to the way the texture is displaced from the polygon surface, using quadratic interpolation (which creates a parabolic shape) :nerd:
I believe so, yeah. Here's another article explaining it, this one from Electronic Gaming Monthly. Edit: more articles & reviews Nvidia press release NV1 announced - May 22, 1995: http://web.archive.org/web/19970228082854/http://www.nvidia.com/corporate/prnv.html CGW January 1996 PC Format March 1996 CGW June 1996
Heh, I had the Next Generation article, the picture of the blue F-18 fighter jet was instantly familiar for me!
Quadratic primitives (polygons, defined by four vertices) are more advanced than triangles by directly simulating smooth geometry curves (by mapping the texture over the interpolated curve), but the paradoxical issue is that quadratic mapping is not suitable for complex irregular objects and body skinning is outright impossible to do. Unless the game asset design consist mostly of arches, ovals and spheres it would have benn progressively hard to design diverse game worlds. Back in the day (mid-90s), graphics processors were with very limited capabilities and performance, and QTC was one of the proposed early shortcuts to the problem of low-geometry real-time graphics. Naturally, as the technology evolved, both the CPUs and GPUs were becoming more capable of processing millions of triangle primitives per second and thus gradually solving the problem with curved surfaces.
