The Macintosh uses a 16-bit color mode called 1555. That means one bit for an alpha channel, and five bits each for the red, green, and blue channels. The alpha channel controls transparency. The difficulty is, the Voodoo3 does not support 1555 mode in its 2D hardware. It supports 565 mode for 16-bit color, which is the Windows standard. Since the Macintosh needs 1555 support and the Voodoo3 does not support it in hardware, the clever 3dfx engineers worked out a way to use 565 mode to emulate 1555 mode. They juggled the bits around in software to get things working just like 1555 mode should, though it does lose one bit depth of red in the process.

So what does the existence of these unsupported, unreleased beta reference drivers mean for Macintosh? For the immediate future, it means that software developers will have access to this generation of accelerators for developing on the Mac. This means that next generation Mac games will support 3dfx hardware. When that support is there, 3dfx will be in a much better position to move into the Mac market as a dominant player and Mac users will have access to much better 3D hardware.

For the midrange future (maybe even this week), it means that Voodoo3 products will probably start to be announced from 3dfx's current crop of Mac partners. As 3dfx has neither the inclination nor the bandwidth to embark on full tech support for Macs with this generation of hardware, the Mac partners will likely fill that role as they have with Voodoo2 and Banshee.

For the long-term future it seems highly likely that the next generation of 3dfx cards could come straight from 3dfx. Quake III will have a nearly simultaneous Mac and PC release. Can we look forward to the Voodoo 4 (or whatever they call it) coming out on the Mac and PC simultaneously or nearly so? We at Sharky Extreme certainly hope so.