Technical Notes

The listed minimum system requirements are as follows:

• Pentium 200MHz
• 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended)
• 3D accelerator (Direct3D, Glide) required
• Windows 95/98 with DirectX 6.0, or NT 4.0

FreeSpace requires a 3D accelerator that supports either a Glide or D3D API. A high-speed 3D card and extra RAM will take the strain off your processor and will result in better performance. The debate between the Glide and Direct3D APIs should no longer be such a major issue (for those who have not used these FreeSpace Direct3D registry tweaks), as FreeSpace 2 will support of Direct3D at the same level as Glide. Quite a few bugs in Direct3D have been fixed from the original FreeSpace.

To achieve maximum performance, the fillrate speed of your 3d video card will be important for the nebula effect. A Voodoo 1 will work well, but a Voodoo 3, TNT2 or G400 will be preferable for the most smooth framerate which results from their high fillrate speed.

The next important factor for frame rates is "definitely memory." One of the biggest sources of "lag" reports is hard drive swapping, where Windows uses much slower virtual memory on the hard drive to substitute for RAM. There are several ways to reduce hard drive swapping, but the best solution is to have 64 MB or more of RAM installed.

Compared to the above, the CPU speed "isn't too much of an issue" if you have a decent video card (Voodoo 1 and later). The original FreeSpace engine often ran at much lower than the system minimum requirements, so I wasn't surprised when one demo beta tester reported satisfactory performance on a Pentium 166MHz and a Voodoo 2. However, there are various levels of detail and features you can de-select in order to improve performance (all while still looking very good).

FreeSpace 2 supports a larger screen resolution of 1024x724, in addition to the standard 640x480 resolution. However, a single Voodoo 2 won't be able to handle this higher resolution. You'll need two connected in SLI mode or one of the most recent generation 3D chipsets (TNT2, Voodoo3, G400, Rage 128 or later) in order to choose the 1024x724 mode. A resolution of 800x600 is not supported, because this would require a third set of interface art and animations. Either you have a high-end system or you don't, end of story.

If you're looking to upgrade your 3d card with FreeSpace in mind, keep in mind the following critical requirements:

• Direct3D or Glide API compatibility (your choice)
• Speed of fillrate
• Recent generation 3D chipset for 1024x724 mode

FreeSpace 2 also supports both 32 bit and 16 bit color. Among the changes to the graphic engine is a revamp of the bitmap and texture manager so that everything internally is in 16 bits, but video cards with 32 bit color support will have much nicer alpha blending in the nebula effect. The nebula effect is simply stunning in 32 bit color, demonstrating to me that 32 bit color does make a noticeable difference on my TNT2.

FreeSpace 2 supports joystick, mouse control, and keyboard control. I favor a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro (or even better, a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback) joystick, which allows you to bind the third axis to a "rotating" motion which is very useful. The keys are programmable from within the game, so those who invest in a serious "flight control system" should be able to properly configure their controller from within the game and use all of their buttons.

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