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Comment by louthy | Hacker News Reader

Always thought the original software renderer looked much better. It didn’t have the bilinear filtering, so the textures didn’t look all smooth and ‘washed out’, which suited the environment more imho

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I can't speak for the original GLQuake on 3dfx hardware, but on OpenGL-compatible Quake engines (which include modern Quake source ports such as Quakespasm, Ironwail, and vkQuake), bilinear texture filtering is an option that can be turned off.

I play on vkQuake with nearest-neighbor texture filtering, square particles, and the "classic" water warping effect and lighting effects, alongside 8x MSAA, 16x anisotropic filtering, high-resolution widescreen, etc. This keeps the art style consistent with the look of the original Quake, while still allowing for the benefits of hardware 3D acceleration.

For what it's worth, the modern source port for Descent (DXX-Rebirth) makes bilinear filtering optional, too, while using OpenGL and allowing MSAA and stuff. I played through the first two games some time ago and I also found the bilinear filtered textures worse-looking than the blocky ones.

Yeah same here. Always preferred the software renderer for Quake and Quake 2. Even over the modern stuff.

The software renderer has this gritty feel that is integral to the art I feel.

That said, the 3dfx was impressive at the time, and I was very jealous of my buddy who got one.

Mostly agree, but the RTX version of Quake 2 is very impressive to play.

I'd be interested in a RTX-enhanced software renderer. Ie replace the baked lighting with the GI raytracing, but otherwise keep the rest of the software renderer. Have a feeling that could be an awesome blend.

Would be a bit challenging with the palette but should be doable.

Doable, but not at a playable framerate without hardware.

Yeah that's what I was thinking. Like do a RT-only pass doing lighting (no textures), then do the software pass using the RT-lighting rather than baked lightmaps.

Latency would be slightly higher but I guess one could implement the important parts[1] of the software renderer on the GPU.

[1]: https://fabiensanglard.net/quake2/quake2_software_renderer.p...

You should check out Devil Daggers on Steam.

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