6/21/99 Monday's News

MesaQuake/Banshee/Q3Test Screenshots: Anyone else having freezes when trying to take screenshots in Q3Test 1.03, running MesaQuakeB11 with a 3dfx Banshee card (ie VillageTronic MP850 or IXMicro Game Rocket). If anyone has a workaround or tip please contact me.

[Randall Markarian's Update:]

Unreal 2.24

Well Westlake made good on their promise to release another Unreal patch to correct some bugs that were found. 2.24b3 is now available for download from Westlake Interactive. In this update, problems with moving elements in levels were corrected along with a couple of other issues like an Apple talk problem. Now there is a side effect of using this update and that is your frame rates will drop about 4-5fps. Mark Adams posted on Usenet that it was related to the compilers they are using and that they may have lost some optimizations that were present before. They are planning to hand optimize the code if it is feasible keeping in mind that UT and other projects are very important too. So as long as it doesnât take away resources from those, they will try to get it. Another point he mentioned is that he would like to see the stability of Unreal back at the levels that it was previously. On those lines, I spent a lot of time playing Unreal this weekend both online and LAN based and I had very few problems. I think that Unrealâs networking, while improved, leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully, UT will have much better networking. Now that 2.24b3 is out, I need to test that out a bit, but losing some fps doesnât really excite me.

Caesar III:

Sierra Studios has released Caesar III which should start to show up at stores soon. Caesar III is a stragic city building game that so far has been a great success on the PC side. Sierra Studios has a demo version that can be downloaded from their web site.

Other news:

As noted by Mike, I have started to hear about Voodoo 3 drivers for the Mac. A source told me that "if he were recommending to a friend, he would tell them to wait." Patience is a virtue. So while there is no official word on anything eminent, I would say that it cannot hurt to wait until MacWorld to see if there are any surprise announcements on video cards for the Mac.

More news later today. Keep the questions and tips coming!

By the way, donât forget to contact iWonder (1-877-237-8622) to let them know that we want SLI and OpenGL support for our Voodoo 2 cards!-Randall

More on Voodoo3/565 Issue: The author of the earlier post on Mac Voodoo3 drivers asked his source about my comments on the 565 Pixel format issue (which is still present in the Voodoo3 as I suspected)-Mike

"Hi Mike !
Iasked the guy about the Banshee/Voodoo 3 problem :))

A: "This is correct. Banshee and Voodoo3 only understand how to use a 565 RGB desktop display mode, and don't understand how to do a 1555 mode that MacOS expects. However, with some creative CLUT programming, you can effectively get an RGB 455 mode out of it (you lose the lower red bit). This is unfortunate, but at least the mode is mostly usable. The other problem then is that Banshee and Voodoo3 can only do 3D rendering in 565 mode, so you can't really do 3D in a window. (Full-screen 3D is okay though since MacOS isn't allowed to play with the screen in that case, or at least we prevent it from doing so).

If we ever release drivers for Voodoo3, then we will explain this problem to users, as well as the problem with doing 3D in a window. In my case I just run the desktop in 32-bit color anyway, so the thousands problem doesn't really matter to me. However, I would not want people to buy a Voodoo3 and expect it to work as well as it does on a PC, because that would be almost impossible to do. However, if users just wanted a 2D/3D board that was good for fullscreen games and don't mind the thousands problem, then I'd say that Voodoo3 would be an okay board for them."

Q: Are you working on a fix for that problem ? A: "Yes, this will be fixed in the future, but not for Banshee or Voodoo3. That is all I can say right now."
Lolo"

Mac Voodoo3 Update: This just in from a reader:

" Voodoo 3 News !

Hi !
I've had a contact from a guy at 3DFX who is working on the Mac drivers. [Does his name begin with the letter P? Mike ;-] And guess what ?

YES, they are working on the drivers and the firmware of the Voodoo 3 2000 PCI :)))

At this time, it's only the 2000 model but there is a possibility to have the 3500 PCI model working in the future. He doesn't know it it will be released for free on their site or it it will be sold to iWonder (I hope NO).

Here it it :

" Stock, right out of the box Voodoo3 2000 PCI boards are PCI 66 compatible and work just fine in the 66Mhz slots in a B&W G3, assuming you have the appropriate drivers and firmware. I'll leave it to your imagination to determine how I know this. "

"Well, to be honest right now we only have Voodoo3 2000 PCI drivers. We don't currently have drivers that support all of the extra features of the 3500, although if we get the time that could happen.

Unfortunately I can't tell you *when* or *if* the Voodoo3 drivers will be officially released by 3Dfx, but stay tuned. "

It's a great news. Isn't it ?
We will have a choice at last. Because ATI is cool but their card doesn't have TV Out, no DVD/MPEG2. I don't know about the TNT 2 or the Matrox G400 but their cards don't exist in PCI so it will buy more expensive and more difficult to get them on the Mac.
Lolo http://www.highmac.com
Toute l'actu du Mac "

The guy at 3dfx that wrote the generic Voodoo2 drivers wrote me last year when I posted the Generic Voodoo2 drivers feedback page and hinted at better mac support for the next chip. Last info I had (reported here a few months ago) was that the Mac would require new silicon for the 565 Pixel format I mentioned last year in my Q&A with VT on the MP850. This was confirmed by Bob of (RIP) Microconversions. Originally the promise was a summer (Macworld) Mac voodoo3.

More news later in the day.

Weekend News (6/19-6/20)

The Mac server that runs the FAQ, CPU Review and Game Review databases is down. I noticed it was not responding about 1AM this morning. It should be back online by 10AM tomorrow morning. [2:30AM Update]

Bart sent a note that Unreal 2.2.4B3 patch has been released (not sure when as there is no date on the update page). Here's the info from Westlake's download page:

** The b3 patch ONLY works with Unreal Mac 224 (either b1 or b2). If you are looking for the original 224b1 patch (which you need first), click here! **

The 224b3 update fixes problems with AppleTalk games, problems opening several third party maps, and a bug that messed up moving platforms/boats. A few new workarounds are mentioned in the readme also. Click here to view the read me file online.

The Unreal Mac beta update may be freely distributed, so if you want to mirror this download on another site, please do.

Note: UnrealFinder is not included in the public beta for space reasons. To get the latest version of UnrealFinder, click here.
Unreal 2.2.4 Beta 3 (1MB)

Download Unreal Mac 2.2.4 Beta 3 from the Westlake mirror

The Online ReadMe File has a list of known issues, advanced RAVE and other topics - check it out.

I've added VPC/RealPC and OrangeMicro CPU card options to the Rate Your Mac games database. To report emulated (VPC/RealPC) or OrangeMicro scores select that option under the Game title menu and list the specific game title in the comments areas. This might be of interest to those wondering about VPC/RealPC emulated PC gaming. The CPU type now has options for Orange Micro's Pentium/AMD CPU cards (620 and 660). I don't think either of these options come close to the performance needed for most current 3D games however and thankfully Mac gaming is picking up to where they're not really needed. I've also added more game titles to the list as well (Starcraft, Warcraft, Quake3test, Railroad Tycoon II, FutureCOP).

AOL Readers: Apparently AOL does not like the 'auto-subject line' HTML tag I often use in email links. Other mail clients work fine with it and I have to use these to be able to scan/spot mail subjects due to the hundreds of mails I get a day. If you're an AOL user that has had mail bounce - just use the news@xlr8yourmac.com and add your own subject line.

VT MP850/750 Updates Soon?: An anom. beta tester wrote that there are updates coming soon:

" hi mike,
it looks like villagetronic is getting ready to rev the quickdraw 2d accelerator software for the mp850/750 soon. they sent me an internal beta which fixed alot of the qt movie playback issues with movies compressed with some of the sorensen codecs.

also, i got a email from the folks over at intech usa (who make cdrom speedtools) that v 4.0 will support the kenwood 52x truex cdrom in both atapi and scsi.

both vt and intech mentioned release dates next week. "

Intech had also written me about the TrueX support - noting improved audio CD support and a promise of 25% faster speeds (I have a beta copy to test). As I mentioned last week Kenwood told me there is a firmware update coming soon for the TrueX drive as well. See my review and install guide for more info on the IDE TrueX 52x CDROM drive.

I've posted about 90 entries in the Rate Your Mac Games database and added Tomb Raider II (DOH!) to the list of games. If there are any popular titles I've missed, please let me know. This is a great way to see/report how Q3Test runs on specific mac models (graphics cards, CPU speeds, etc.) I was out of town most all over the day Saturday visiting my father and didn't return until 10PM so news has been light.

Bare Feats has a page with comparisons of the speed of a ATI Rage Orion with the original (slower clock speed) Rage128 that shipped with the B&W G3. Both cards tested in the 66Mhz slot.

Rate Your Mac Games! I invite readers to post their ratings of Mac Games at the new Rate Your Mac Games survey page. Since how well the game plays and looks often depends on installed Video card type, amount of RAM you have, your Mac model or CPU speed, ect. there are selections there for these values. The game list is not a complete listing of all Mac games (that would be too long) but does cover the most popular games and I can add new ones as they are released. If the reader response is good, this will be a great resource to check before you buy and also a great place to post version specific bugs - so be sure to note your game version (ie Unreal 2.24 beta, etc.)

The Friday main site news had a tip on how to use the new Apple's ATI Video Software Update 1.0 with RagePro PCI Cards. Paul Constantine wrote that contrary to the readme, he did not need to be running OS 8.6 and found a workaround to install the update on systems with Ragepro (or later - it's not for RageII ) PCI cards:

" I have an original Rev A beige G3.. with a XClaim 3D card w/ Rage Pro chipset. I am NOT running 8.6, but 8.1. I extracted the individual extensions with TomeViewer and compared the version numbers of the appropriate pieces with what I already had. 2 files from the apple update were newer so I used them. No problems at all. So 8.6 "requirement" is unnecessary. In line with steve jobs inc., a company that seems to be adding firmware to their machines so that third party accelerator companies are prevented from creating upgrade cards for Macs!"

TomeViewer is available at: ftp://ftp.anapraxis.com/mrp/tomeviewer-13d3.sit. As noted yesterday, I expect there will be an ATI PCI Card driver update soon for the retail cards (RagePro series - Rage128's should ship with it I suspect). Watch ATI's Mac Drivers page for updates.

Michael Maddux (from The MediaPLANT) sent a note that there were only 3 updated extensions (compared to the OpenGL 1.0 release I assume):

• ATI Video Accelerator 1.02 (old version 1.0.1)
• ATI MPP Manager 1.2f1 (old version 1.1.1)
• ATI Graphics Accelerator v3.9.7 (old version 3.8.9)

Some say the new drivers boost game framerates a bit. The Old vs New (faster) Rage128 game framerates posted here last week did not use the new drivers. I've moved the table of comparison scores to the B&W G3 Game Performance page which is linked under the logo in the list of benchmark pages above.

Eric Whitmore sent some game performance results with his new B&W G3 which apparently does not have the faster Rage128 noted in last week's new features page:

" I just got my G3 400 today. I did a few tests with it. All these tests are done with the games set to 640x480 with all settings at the max, I used a VoodooII GameWizard 8MB

• Unreal:41.2FPS
• Quake timedemo1:54.6FPS
  [See my B&W G3 game page for Quake/Unreal framerates with new faster Rage128-Mike]
• Falcon 4: inside cocpit (view 2):21FPS
• Outside plane (view 9 or 0):50FPS
• Inside camaign I get 12FPS inside and 25FPS outside view.

-Eric Whitmore"

Note: As shown on today's front page news, if you really want to make sure you get a B&W G3 with all the new features (dual drive bracket/cable, new IDE chip, faster/heatsinked Rage128) the best way is to verify it in person as model numbers are not a key based on reader reports. Lots of older revisions in the supply system/dealer stock as noted in the past week from reader reports of mixed features in some new boxes (sometimes having the drive bracket but no heatsinked Rage128, etc.).

GTInteractive sent a mass mail out that indicated Unreal Mission Pack #1: Return to Na Pali Mission Pack has gone gold and is available for pre-order at $19.99 plus shipping. It's currently listed as PC only. Friends in the know on the PC tell me that Unreal Tournament has also been completed but I've not seen it for sale yet. GT also still has their $150,000 Make Something Unreal Contest going.

Gamecenter.com has a review of the new Phantom Menace game (PC).

Gamecenter also has a review of the new CH USB Gamepad that looks like it was designed from a Batman movie. They rated it an 8. It's not programmable and no software is included so I'm not sure if it works on the Mac (perhaps USB Overdrive software might allow it but I've had no reports from readers).

Patrick Maillard sent a reminder that in case anyone missed it in the earlier post, Villagetronic updated the Glide drivers for the MP850/750 card to v1.1 recently. Get them at: ftp://ftp.villagetronic.com/pub/mac/MP850/.

Friday, June 18th

Randall Markarian sent the following news:

Unreal 2.24 updates:

It looks like there is some real progress on some of the Unreal issues that have been posted since the 2.24 release recently. One bug was the inability to correctly jump onto moving portions of the world. The player would fall off, making it impossible to finish the levels without using the "fly" command. Last night in a Usenet posting, Mark Adams of Westlake Interactive, said that bug was related to a compiling bug with CodeWarrior. It seems that there is a fix and we can expect to see it in the next Unreal patch. It seems that they are busy at Westlake because a couple hours later Mark posted that a umod installer is now available from Westlake. This should allow gamers to install the umods that they download off the internet such as Serpentine and RealCTF.

I think that Westlake is on top of the situation with Unreal. I feel confident that they will get the bugs in 2.24 squashed quickly. Look for an extended look at Unreal 2.24 on Saturday.

Miscellaneous:

Aspyr Media has a gaming newsletter that will keep you updated with the latest news on their products. Go to their web site and sign up now! There will be special discounts and other offers for those who subscribe to the newsletter, alone with contest and of course the low down on upcoming titles. I sounds like something that other gaming companies should do for their customers.

There is a new Diablo 2 screenshot of the week. Check it out. I think that this will be a great game.

Peter Sterling sent in this interesting "feature" on Falcon 4. I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds pretty interesting.

This is not game news, but I thought it was interesting. There is a OpenGL shareware screensaver for the Mac called Setting Sun. It has some really cool screensavers to try. Download it and have some fun.

This afternoon I plan to immerse myself into Falcon 4 and some online Unreal 2.24 for more detailed articles this weekend. And as always, keep the tips and news coming -Randall.

Falcon 4 Tips: Terry Freeland wrote with some tips for Rage128 owners:

" Dear Mike,
I read on your site that you picked up Falcon 4.0 and I thought I‰d pass along some of the settings that have worked for me. You can use them for comparison purposes or to save valuable time.

I'm running a 350 DVD B&W (not one of the new heat sinked ones) with 325 Mb assigned to the game at 800 X 600 in 16 bit on a Sony 200 ES monitor. CH F-16 Fighter Stick, CH Pro Throttle, and CH Pedals (all ADB). So far the game has absorbed all the Ram I have been able to throw at it. I may yet buy more . . . if I don't go broke first.
[See the Transintl $97/128MB DIMM offer above, under the logo-Mike]

It seems to me that even small changes in the ‹setup boxŠ sometimes equal large changes on the screen. This is especially true when making graphics selections. Beware of the graphics resolution reverting back to 640 X 480 if you have selected 600 X 800. I got tricked by that problem several times before becoming hyper aware of it. Also note that some of the other graphics selections will change on you in a similar manner. It depends what you click on. A scratch pad can be really handy for recording your best setup.

I still haven't heard back from Westlake and assume they are buried getting out the patch. Some of the instrumentation in the manual doesn‰t coincide with the printed instruction. Trying to figure out some of the advanced radar without correct input info is pretty frustrating.

I've had no sound related problems but still experience stutters in dogfights. It looks pretty good after loading their first patch and I‰m hoping the next one will really do the job. (On the PC side they underwent numerous patches over a protracted period.) I get zero clouds but all the cockpit reflections work? On my controllers, no matter what you do, some of the buttons don‰t perform as labeled. I have yet to experience a Falcon freeze . . .

On my unit these settings seem to work best:

Video Driver - Rave
Video Card - Rave
Resolution - 800 X 600

Textured Objects - On
Texture smoothing - On
Transparency - On
Gourand shading - Off (this can really change the graphics)
Haze - Off (yuck when it is on)
Intro Movie 32 bit - Off
Intro Movie skip lines - Off

Terrain Texture - 5
Terrain Detail - 7
Object Detail - 5
Player Bubble - 2
Vehicle Mag - 1
Special Effects - 4
Canopy Clues - lift line

By the way, the graphics "preview window" doesn't seem particularly representative at showing what actually happens on screen. I‰d call it 60% accurate.

I'm very impressed with Falcon 4.0 and think it will be outstanding when all the glitches are ironed out. However, that may be a bit down the road. I‰d sure like to see this work out for everyone who took the time to bring it to the Mac.

Maybe this was of some help. I hope so.

Regards,
Terry Freeland
PS - Command P will take you to the desktop without quitting the game. "

Derrick Yamaura just wrote that Westlake has released the Unreal Umod installer: http://members.aol.com/westlaketn/UmodInstall.sit. Westlake's download page has a note on the installer's purpose at http://www.westlakeinteractive.com/download0013.html. The Umod installer allows you to unpack and automatically install "mods" or modifications to Unreal that add new weapons, new network games, etc. and requires v2.24 to work. (Thanks for the news tip Derrick!)

More news later from Ruffin and/or Randall. Note that a new Reader Ratings system for games is in the works and almost done. It will work similar to the CPU review database and I hope its something that you will find useful.

Thursday, June 17th

Ruffin Bailey's Update: (sorry I missed this in the mailbag until now)

• q3arena.net has an interview with Paul Jaquays, a man who seems to be answering more questions about Quake 3 in recent weeks that coding! (That is to say, he's one busy man!) This interview covers a wide range of topic from hints for map design, working in the video gaming industry in general and id in specific, and a few questions about Quake in general. Paul mentions that he's learned a great deal about how far reaching Quake's fan base is by Q3 Test's Mac first, Linux second (PC last) release.
  
  
• GA Source has the second in a series of interviews with Shiny's Scott Herrington about the upcoming game Messiah. There are also a number of screenshots of this game in development for the PC and Playstation. In this interview, Herrington explains the logic about the plan to release Messiah's multiplayer patch two months after the game is released for the PC.
  
  
• World Without Borders has posted the transcripts of their chat sessions with Chat Log with Aspyr Media (the fellows who brought Tomb Raider to the Mac), Fox Interactive (the Alien vs. Predator people), and Ambrosia Software (perhaps best known for Maelstrom).
  
  
• IGN PC has a review of Alien vs. Predator for the PC. The AvP Mac release is slated for 3rd qtr of this year.
  
  
• Games Domain has an interview with Bungie's Doug Zaltman about their upcoming game Oni. The interview centers around the plot and story behind the game, and well as information on the lead character (Konoko) and Bungie's marketing strategies for Oni.
  
  
• The Hive has an interview with Descent 3's producer, Craig Derrick. The interview covers features not implemented, new weapon descriptions, and an implicit slam of Forsaken.
  
  
• Mac Gamer's Ledge reports that a port of Railroad Tycoon II: The Second Century will be announced for the Mac today. Here's a description of one of RT2's futuristic plots:
  
  From 2005 to 2030, worldwide flooding and melting ice caps wreak new havoc for the modern railroad tycoon. The United States is a watery wasteland. The Mediterranean is an empty basin with a blossoming Eden. Antarctica is a promising agricultural center. The heady task of providing rail systems for this strange and exotic new world falls upon your shoulders. No doubt, only the most ingenious solutions will do. One of the wonders of the world?
  
  
• The official Team Fortress 2 web site has been published. Team Fortress is a game I'm feverantly hoping is coming to the Mac. It's based on Sierra's Half-Life engine, and is the sequel to the Team Fortress mod for Quake (see my article on xlr8 regarding how to use Quake mods including Team Fortress!) and the Team Fortress Classic mod for Half-Life.
  
  

IXMicro Game Rocket: was sitting on the doorstep when I arrived home. I'll have a head to head against the Rage128 Orion soon, and will compare both to the Voodoo2 Game Wizard (see my B&W G3 Game Performance page for Rage128 OEM/Voodoo2 comparisons I've done in the past). -Mike

Another Update from Randall Markarian:

Just a couple of things to add today.

IWonder Inc:

Eric Fletcher wrote in to say that he had called the iWonder tech support phone number to inquire about the future driver development for the Game Wizard PCI cards (which iWonder acquired in the "buyout" of Microconversions). The support person that he spoke with indicated that SLI drivers (and OpenGL I would assume) are not a priority as the iMac products are what they believe are the future for them. He stated that the SLI drivers will be released "in a couple of months," but would not be a priority.

I would like to step on the soapbox for a moment. I was told in March that the SLI drivers were just days from release. On a WWB chat in early May, Bob Archer of MC said that the SLI driver release was immanent. People reported that within a few days of shutting down they were essentially complete. Where are the SLI drivers? If iWonder has no intention of completing the drivers then they should consider releasing the source code so that others may complete the job. I am certain that those of us with GW cards will never see OpenGL games run with our cards in any way other than with Mesa libraries. For those gamers who were misled by MC and purchased a second GW card I recommend that you call iWonder (1-877-237-8622 toll free) and let them know how many people are expecting those drivers. I think since this company is actually made up of many MC employees, that they should learn from the mistakes of MC which is don’t anger the public that you intend to sell to. End Soapbox. [Many months ago I wrote an editoral about wondering if the Mac Voodoo3 would arrive before SLI drivers did.-Mike]

Unreal 2.24:

I continue to get email from people having troubles with Unreal 2.24 and either freezes or bad network performance. I have spent the last couple of night testing out the networking for Internet games and I have had mixed experiences. The first time I tried I did not have a good experience with it. It seemed very laggy and the game was too choppy because of this. The next night I had much better luck and it played very well over my 56k modem. The odd part was my pings were about the same both times. Last night I again had similar pings, but it seemed more laggy again. So I would think that it is a mixed bag that must really depend on what server you are playing on. I will do some more Friday and Saturday and post a detailed article about it.

As far as the crashes are concerned I have seen Usenet postings about this so I think that it is pretty common in this release (again this is beta software and may have bugs). I have seen this on my beige G3, but I think that it is related to the fact that I don’t have enough RAM and rely heavily on VM for Unreal. I am getting a 128meg card for it and will test to see if the crashes go away. Mark Adams of Westlake Interactive noted on Usenet that he is running it on a G3 with 128Meg with VM and no problems so it may not be a VM issue. My upgraded 9600 has not had a single problem with 2.24.

Falcon 4.0:

We are still waiting for the next Falcon 4 patch. Hopefully it will show up by the end of this week. Some readers have noted reproducible crashes in Falcon that will hopefully be dealt with. One reader said that Falcon crashes every time he tries a refueling mission. Also, Thanks to readers who have sent in Falcon 4 screenshots under different graphics modes (software, RAVE, and Glide) I will post those here today so we can get some feedback. Glide looks much better there is no doubt about it.

Keep those comments and questions coming, especially for Falcon 4 and Unreal 2.24. I will try to get a detailed report completed by Saturday on both of those.

Randall Markarian's Update:

Sorry for the late update, but I was having some problems with my PowerBook which prevented me from getting on the net. Anyway, I just to get everyone up to speed on the Games Page and what you can expect to see in the coming weeks. Ruffin and I will be sharing the update responsibilities. So one Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I will be updating the news and on Tuesday and Thursday it will be Ruffin. Weekends are usually slow for game news, so unless there is some breaking news or reader questions that need to be answered, I would count on only one update on the weekends. Please contact me if you have questions or comments about this. On to the news:

Quake 2 and ATI Drivers:

It seems that both the ATI Rage 128 cards and Quake 2 are on their way to release. Updated ATI drivers were released that apparently solved some stability issues with Q2. Q2 is now in final quality assurance and should be out very soon. Nate Trost of Logicware posted, in Usenet, about the situation:

It is good to see that they are giving it a little testing with Mesa’s OpenGL-like libraries so that Voodoo2 owners will get to play this game. Other Mac sites have noted that it is likely that the release of Q2 will be around the time of MacWorld NY next month. [See my Quake3 Tips page for info on MesaQuake w/Q3 and 3dfx cards-Mike]

As for the Rage 128 cards, they appear to be headed for release by the end of the month. [See yesterday's news below for Quake/Unreal Framerate tests from the new faster cards vs the OEM 75mhz cards in the B&W G3-Mike] I am sure that the release of new drivers (which were apparently holding up the card’s release) is what was needed to get this ball rolling. I have had a card on order for several months and will be putting it to the test with all of the recent releases as soon as I get it. It will be interesting to see if the 66mhz slot cards in the B&W G3’s are better than a possibly faster graphics chip in a slower slot.

Other News:

Speaking of graphics cards, Formac is releasing the Permedia 3 based Proformance 3 card for Macintosh. I looked over their site and they have some performance comparisons that are a little too vague to really see how fast the card will be. For example, they show game performance, but don’t mention screen resolutions, 16 or 32 bit color, or whether the ATI card they are comparing it to was Rage Pro or 128. While there will not be Open GL drivers initially, (they should be released in the future) it will support RAVE. It will be interesting to see how it tests in games compared with voodoo 2 and Rage 128.

MacMame arcade emulator has reached release candidate 1 for version .35.

And Electronic Arts will be releasing a new game Skydive! later this month.

I have some reader questions and problems that I will post later on today, as soon as my PowerBook decides to cooperate. In the mean time, keep the questions and tips coming.

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