Using HSR

Currently it seems that the HSR feature is limited to Quake 3 engine games, based on the 1.17 code or earlier, such as FAKK2, Quake 3 Arena & Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

Right click on the Desktop & select Properties. Click the Settings tab, then the Advanced button. Now go to the 3dfx Advanced Features tab.

In the OpenGL/Glide section scroll down to Hidden Surface Removal. Settings available are as follows.

Aggressive Tiling takes the most aggressive approach to hidden surface removal, while Conservative Tiling is the least aggressive. The more aggressive the setting you select the greater the amount of visual errors you can expect to see as a result, although frame rate will be higher as a result. Select Disable to disable Hidden Surface Removal altogether. NOTE – You should set Guardband Clipping to Disable if you intend to use HSR as the games may not play if Guardband Clipping is enabled.

However there are certain things you can do to reduce the amount of graphical anomalies you may encounter. These I’ll cover in the Reducing artifacts section.

Batch files

If you wish you may also enable HSR through the use of batch files in supported games. This is particularly useful if you wish to use different HSR settings for different games & don’t want the hassle of going through 3dfx Advanced Features to make your changes before loading game.

In the directory where the game executable is installed, e.g. C:\Quake III Arena, make New Text Document. Now click on, Start, Settings, Folder Options. Ensure you have Unticked Hide file extensions for known file types. Now rename the text file to name.bat, where name is whatever you want to name the file. You can now go back into Folder Options & tick Hide file extensions for known file types. Right click on the batch file & select Edit.

Add the following lines.

ECHO OFF

SET FX_GL_HSR=X

SET FX_GL_GUARDBAND_ENABLED=0

GAME.EXE

Where X represents the HSR setting you wish to use. The following values for X may be used.

0. Disable.

1. Conservative Tiling.

2. Non-Aggressive Tiling.

3. Semi-Aggressive Tiling.

4. Aggressive Tiling.

Aggressive Tiling (4) takes the most aggressive approach to hidden surface removal, while Conservative Tiling (1) is the least aggressive. The more aggressive the setting you select the greater the amount of visual errors you can expect to see as a result, although frame rate will be higher as a result. Select 0 (Disable) to disable Hidden Surface Removal altogether.

GAME.EXE. Replace GAME with the executable filename for the game, e.g. STVOY.EXE or QUAKE3.EXE.

To load a game using the batch file, simply execute the batch file & the game will load using your custom HSR setting.