The Apocalypse 3D Display Properties page

After installing the Apocalypse drivers, a new page is added to your Display Properties control panel, called Apocalypse 3D. The Apocalypse 3D Display Properties page provides options for turning Direct3D acceleration on and off, and for tuning Apocalypse 3D behavior.

To access the Apocalypse 3D Display Properties page:

1. Click the Start button, point to Settings and click Control Panel.
   
   
2. Double-click the Display icon.
   
   
3. Click the Apocalypse 3D tab.

Enable PowerVR HAL

This is used to turn on and off the PowerVR Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). The HAL provides the interface between the PowerVR hardware, and the Direct3D software it is running. Turning off the PowerVR HAL temporarily switches off the Direct3D acceleration from your system, allowing you to run Direct3D applications or games through software, or through another 3D accelerator.

Maximum Performance and Maximum Compatibility

This switches between maximizing PowerVR acceleration, which you would use for most modern systems, and ensuring that the card works with older 2D accelerators. If you want to take full advantage of PowerVR acceleration, select Maximum Performance.

The Advanced page

The Apocalypse 3D Advanced page enables you to optimize Apocalypse 3D performance and quality for specific applications. It overrides the equivalent settings made by the application when run, and, although most applications do not require any advanced settings, you can add, edit or remove your own settings according to the descriptions given below.

At the Apocalypse 3D Display Properties page, click the Advanced button.

Adding an entry

To add an entry to the application list:

1. Click Add. The Add Application dialog box is displayed.
   
   
2. Type in the description of the game or application you want to add.
   
   
3. Type in or browse to the file that this game or application runs.
   
   
4. Click OK.
   
   
5. Change the settings you want according to the descriptions given below.
   
   
6. Click OK.

Render Overlap - controls the way in which the hardware and software interact when rendering 3D. Without render overlap, the hardware and software render at different times. With Render Overlap selected, the hardware and software can render at the same time.

Turn Render Overlap off if your screen is updating slowly, with symptoms such as menus or dialog boxes not appearing, otherwise leave it on for performance enhancement.

Allow Quads - enables PowerVR to process sets of triangles as single, four-sided objects.

Turn Allow Quads off if there are distorted objects on the screen, otherwise leave it on for performance enhancement.

Render Timeout - defines the maximum time, in seconds, that the software waits for the hardware to complete 3D rendering.

Increase the Render Timeout time if the display shows incomplete rendering of scenes or objects. Decrease the time if there are pauses between frames.

Automatic MIP Mapping - takes place when a texture is in the distance, and is very small on the screen. It averages the attributes of the pixels within the texture, so that the small texture has a uniform appearance.

If textures are missing or corrupted, turn Automatic MIP Mapping off. You can turn it on for image quality enhancement, but this may reduce frame rates in some games.

Need 3D On 2D - enables you to turn 2D/3D compositing on or off. 2D/3D compositing is used when a 3D object is moving on a complex 2D background, and enabling this removes symptoms such as a halo of solid color around objects.

Editing an entry

To edit an entry on the application list:

1. Select the game or application you want to edit, and click Edit. The Edit Application Details dialog box is displayed.
   
   
2. Edit the description of the game or application.
   
   
3. Edit or browse to the program that the game or application runs, and click OK.
   
   
4. Change the settings you want according to the descriptions above.
   
   
5. Click OK.
   

Deleting entries

Deleting an entry from the list removes its PowerVR Display Properties settings, so that the game’s own settings are used.

To delete entries from the application list:

1. Click Delete.
   
   
2. A message is displayed asking whether you want to delete the selected game, or all of them.

• If you want to delete just the selected game’s settings, click Selected.
• If you want to delete all of the settings, click All.

Resetting entries

You can reset an entry to its default PowerVR settings. If you want remove an application’s settings completely, delete the settings by following the steps given above.

To reset entries on the list:

1. Click Reset.
   
   
2. A message is displayed asking whether you want to reset the selected game, or all of them.

• If you want to reset just the selected game’s settings, click Selected.
• If you want to reset all of the settings, click All.