Mingo3k said:
nice explanation,
even tho i dont understand any of it lol
:emutalk: :1964:
it's actually really simple. There are three major graphic API's, D3D (Found in microsoft's direct x, this is what Jabo's plugin uses), OpenGL (this is the API icepir8 uses), and GLIDE (found only in 3dfx hardware, what Glide64 uses). There are a few others, but that's not important right now. Basically, since only 3dfx cards use the GLIDE API, we need to use a program so we can use software (in this case the Glide64 plugin) designed to work with the GLIDE API on video cards that don't support GLIDE. This is where GLIDE wrappers come into play. What the wrapper does is take the calls that the plugin makes to the GLIDE API, and translates them into calls to the D3D API. This way, GLIDE software can be used on video cards other than those made by 3dfx. However, as cooliscool said, this is at the expense of speed.