Comment by bob1029
3 days ago
Software rendering often provided better visual effects than the GPU paths could provide at the time. A general purpose CPU can technically do any effect since the software is the pixel shader.
Programmable shader pipelines weren't a thing until Geforce 3 in 2001.
And alternative rendering methods like Commanche's voxel weren't doable on the GPU for a long time.
Commanche was a height-map raycaster. There were no voxels to be found.
[dead]
....and it always sucked, sucks currently and will suck in the future. For several reasons.
The market clearly decided the tech. And yes, for I felt Comanche'94 was just uggly and "bricky"
Well akshually, Outcast was IMO really nice for its time (1999): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcast_(video_game)
Ah,Sorry,in 2001 it was actually the first, so Geforce 1 / ONE.
It hat -fasten your seatbelts- one(!) dedicated pixelshader and one dedicated vertexshader :-) High times back then - it was like entering next dimension.
(Two chips, guys, two!)