[karrotwaltz]

> it's actually due to many factors

To add to this point, at 1:35 in the video they compare with / without volumetric ligthing except, well, volumetric lighting has been used in games for a while now.

The "before" should show a non-RTX lighting instead of just nothing at all.

[robin_reala]

I remember one of the big selling points of the Dreamcast in 1998 was volumetric lighting.

[corysama]

Fun fact: The Dreamcast GPU was a precursor to the PowerVR GPUs used in iPhones and many Androids.

Also, Qualcomm’s popular Adreno line on Android GPUs has its roots in the Xbox360 GPU.

[krige]

Unreal, a Quake 2 contemporary, already had it and managed it on meager hardware like P200MMX

[TomBombadildoze]

If you consider a slide show "managing it", then sure.

[jl6]

My P200MMX with a Voodoo 2 managed it just fine.

[elsonrodriguez]

It was more that Voodoo than the MMX. I tried playing some MMX "accelerated" games and it was a lo-fi slideshow.

I think the MMX era was the start of Intel's tradition of hyped up graphics related press releases followed by a total lack of execution.

[rasz]

MMX was useless for games. MMX is Integer math only, good for DSP, things like audio filters, or making a softmodem out of your sound card. Unsuitable for accelerating 3D games. Whats worse MMX has no dedicated registers, and instead reuses/shares FPU ones, this means you cant use MMX and FPU (all 3D code pre Direct3D 7 Hardware T&L) at the same time.

All comes down to Microsoft and Intel coming up with a concept of purely software peripherals around 1997. Intel released things like MMX, AC'97, Communications and Networking Riser (CNR), and audio/modem riser (AMR) standards, all in an effort to push hardware vendors out of the market by handling those roles in software by the CPU. More work for CPU = more demand for fast CPUs = more profit.

Funnily enough AMDs 1998 3DNow! did actually add floating point support to MMX and was useful for 3D acceleration until hardware T&L came along 2 years later.

Intel Paid few dev houses to release make believe MMX enhancements, like POD (1997)

https://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/51358-pod-windows-...

1/6 of box covered with Intel MMX advertising while game used it only for some sound effects. Intel repeated this trick in 99 while introducing Pentium 3 with SSE. Intel commissioned Rage Software to build a demo piece showcasing P3 during Comdex Fall. It worked .. by cheating with graphic details ;-) Quoting hardware.fr "But looking closely at the demo, we notice - as you can see on the screenshots - that the SSE version is less detailed than the non-SSE version (see the ground). Intel would you try to roll the journalists in the flour?". Of course Anandtech used this never released publicly cheating demo pretending to be a game in all of their Pentium 3 tests for over a year.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=65247&start=20#p...

[tomc1985]

MMX was always more selling point than substance, from my experience... a Voodoo card, on the other hand...

[jackfraser]

Glide, man, such a great era for PC gaming if you had the right equipment.

I'll never forgive the computer store guy when I was 14 who pushed me to buy the $40 cheaper S3 Trio3D instead of the Voodoo. Instead of something useful, I ended up with a glorified paperweight that only worked well for Direct3D. Guess how many games back then bothered to use that?

I think I got Quake 1 with some shitty hacked MiniGL driver working _once_.

[leonroy]

Heheh, I ended up in the same boat. Enamoured with tile based rendering (and the lower price) I bought the PowerVR based Apocalypse 3dx which also had a shortage of supported titles.

All my school friends had 3dfx cards. Didn’t get to do 3D gaming until I bought a Radeon 8500 many years later!

Still have my 3dx actually...it was a very interesting card:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR#Series1_(NEC)

https://videocardz.net/videologic-apocalypse-3dx-4mb/