Open sourced 3dfx GLIDE™ driver...

[forart]

...for Win32 (Windows 95,98,Me,NT4,2000,XP) ported from the Linux 3dfx GLIDE™ source code. The Linux source code was originally open sourced by the demised 3dfx Interactive Inc. Currently supports 3dfx Voodoo Banshee, Velocity, Voodoo3, Voodoo4, Voodoo5. It has been extended to support S3TC (DXTC) compressed textures, T-Buffer effects for all VSA based cards including Voodoo4, and optimizations for 3DNOW!, MMX, SSE, SSE2 are used.

UnrealTournament on Voodoo5 - high resolution textures OpenGL normal
[ external image ]

UnrealTournament on Voodoo5 - high resolution textures OpenGL S3TC
[ external image ]
notice how the walls and floor look.

Official website

[GoBusto]

I seem to recall that S3TC (AKA DXTC) texture compression is patented. I'm not sure if this is a concern or not, so I just thought that I'd mention it anyways.

4.3 Why isn't GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc implemented in Mesa?

The specification for the extension indicates that there are intellectual property (IP) and/or patent issues to be dealt with.

We've been unsucessful in getting a response from S3 (or whoever owns the IP nowadays) to indicate whether or not an open source project can implement the extension (specifically the compression/decompression algorithms).

In the mean time, a 3rd party plug-in library is available.

[forart]

VIA (the owner of S3) Linux Portal claims:

The VIA Linux Portal aims to expand cooperation with open source communities by providing drivers, key documentation and source code for select Linux distributions to technical software developers.

ROS != Linux but...

[Haos]

Nice... it still requires the original Win32 drivers, that doesnt really work on ROS as till now (i should retests it anytime soon).

[forart]

it still requires the original Win32 drivers, that doesnt really work on ROS as till now (i should retests it anytime soon).

Try to involve alternative drivers developers, then.

[Haos]

Its not the issue of drivers not working, but installer failure.