3dfx Interview (September 1999)

It seems that OpenGL and Direct3D have garnered sufficient enhancements and support that there's no reason to go with Glide any more. What do you see as the future of the Glide API?

We try not to get "religious" about 3D APIs. Basically, our philosophy is simply to support whatever developers are asking for. That is the reason that we’re the only company which offers support for the 3 most popular APIs – no other hardware vendor can make this claim. So, as long as developers are asking for Glide, we’ll continue to deliver it to them. That being said, however, there is no doubt that both OpenGL and Direct3D have made tremendous strides in the last several years in terms of improving capabilities for gaming. This is a very good thing for us and for the industry overall, as it has raised the performance and functionality bar substantially for everyone.

Can and will Glide be extended to fully support the features of the "Voodoo 4"?

Since Glide is 3dfx proprietary, we can do anything we want with it regarding adding new features for new pieces of hardware. I can’t comment on Glide support for unannounced features, however.

Any chance we'll ever see 3dfx turn Glide into an open API?

We are currently looking at GLIDE to determine how it will serve 3dfx and developers best in the future.

The 3500TV is selling very, very well for us right now, and we are very excited about the product. What the 3500TV has proved to us is that there is definitely a strong market which cares about both 3D acceleration and excellent video capabilities. We will undoubtedly be continuing the line of fully featured combined 3D/video products moving forward with our future products.

We have been very impressed by the excitement in the Mac community about 3dfx offering our technology for that market. And, we sense a continued momentum building amongst the game developers in supporting the Mac as a gaming platform. So, we are excited about dominating the Mac gaming market just as we have done so successfully in the PC, in helping to make the Mac a premiere gaming platform.