1. w95_131.zip Driver
2. README.TXT File Contents

README.TXT Driver File Contents (w95_131.zip)

RIVA 128 - Open GL/Win95 Driver 
Public Beta Release
February 1998

                 ******************************************** 
                 *                                          *  
                 *     Beta Win95 / OpenGL drivers          *
                 *                                          *
                 ********************************************


The RIVA128 OpenGL has come a long way since we last sent one out.  Please 
read these notes before you install the driver and start running all the 
OpenGL applications you have:


INSTALLATION
------------
The OpenGL driver installs itself as a real ICD driver.  What this means is
that Microsoft's OpenGL32.DLL is copied into your Windows System directory,
and it in turn calls the RIVA OpenGL driver to accelerate rendering when
possible.  If there are any other OpenGL32.DLL files in your path, they
must be renamed, deleted, or otherwise removed from your path in order for
RIVA-accelerated rendering to work.

Installing this driver set will give you a new (and much improved) set of
all the other drivers you need, such as DirectDraw, Direct3D, and GDI.  Any
panels that may have been added to the Display control panel by your board
manufacturer will not work with this driver set.  Eventually, we expect
that board manufacturers will integrate their applications into this set of
drivers.


GOTCHAS
-------
The RIVA OpenGL driver only accelerates rendering if the display is set to
16-bit, and if all the rendering surfaces can fit in the card's memory.
This means that common double-buffered, Z-buffered applications can run at
a maximum resolution of 960x720.  We have seen some occasional crashes when
using the OpenGL driver at 960x720 mode, and expect to fix them in the next
release, but for some of you, it may work quite well.  Give it a try if
you'd like!


WHAT'S NEW
----------
In short, almost everything is new.  The driver should be much more stable
than Alpha2, should be able to run many more applications, and should be a
*LOT* faster than the previous driver.  We've still got a long way to go,
but if you're using your RIVA board for applications such that use lots of
texture-mapped triangles (such as most of the OpenGL games out there), you
should see significant performance improvements, especially on faster CPUs.


PERFORMANCE
-----------
As mentioned above, most if not all applications should perform much better
on this driver than they did with the alpha drivers.  In particular, we are
measuring about an 80% (!) performance improvement in applications that
draw lots of textured polygons.


GAMMA CONTROL SUPPORT FOR OPENGL
--------------------------------
We've temporarily added a registry key that will allow you to adjust the
gamma of OpenGL applications.  In particular, this is most useful for people
who play Quake/Quake2/Hexen II, as these games tend to look very dark in
the RIVA OpenGL ICD.  To adjust the gamma, you must use the Windows utility
RegEdit.  If you are not familiar with using RegEdit, please ask someone
for help.  You could damage your Windows installation by hitting the wrong
keys in RegEdit.

Anyway, the registry key you must add is located at:
  \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\OpenGL

Create a new DWORD value called "GammaTimes1000" (without the quotes).
Double-click the new value, click the radio button for "Decimal", and enter
a gamma setting multiplied by 1000.  For example, to set the gamma to 1.4,
enter the value 1400.

Note that this setting will be active whenever OpenGL is running.  This means
that if you create this registry value and run a windowed OpenGL application,
the rest of the display will also be affected by the gamma setting.

To disable this gamma adjustment, either set the value to decimal 1000
(gamma 1.0), or just delete this value from the registry.

We are working on a better solution to the "Quake2 darkness" problem with
id Software, so we apologize if this feature is not well-polished.  Once
gamma support is available in Quake2, we expect that we will disable this
registry key, since it can cause some visual problems in non-Quake apps.


QUAKE AND OTHER GAMES
---------------------
Quake, Quake2, and other OpenGL games should see vastly improved
performance and rendering quality.  To run these games, it is best to have
more than 32MB of system RAM, and a fast CPU.  If you see the disk access 
light going on during game play, and the game stutters, it may be a sign 
that your machine does not have enough RAM for the application.

We have worked with id Software on implementing an extension called
GL_EXT_point_parameters.  It will make the particles from weapons like the
rail gun and the shotgun in Quake2 look much better.  At the time of the
writing of this readme, id still hasn't released a patch that uses this
extension, though.  We hope they release it in 3.11 of Quake2.  We don't
know whether they plan to ever release a patch for Quake1 that uses this
extension, though.

We are also currently worked with id on implementing an extension currently
called WGL_NVIDIA_gamma_control that allows Quake2 to set the gamma for the
RIVA to their liking.  This should solve the darkness issue with Quake2.
We think the extension should work as agreed to with id, but so far we have
not seen a working copy of Quake2 that uses it.  We will continue to work
with id on this extension, and update our driver if necessary to make sure
the rendering is sufficiently bright.

If you launch Quake2 version 3.10 within a minute of booting Windows,
Quake2 can hang for up to one minute.  id is aware of the problem, and will
patch Quake2 (probably in 3.11) to fix the problem.  Again, this is only a
problem if you are running version 3.10 of Quake2.


WINDOWS NT
----------
We are working on porting the ICD to Windows NT.  To quote the guys at id,
we'll ship it "When it's done."


Enjoy!
-The OpenGL team