There are a number of very useful compatibility tools for the PC that help all manner of older games run better, but the most significant tool to arrive in recent years is dgVoodoo2. This software is a legacy DirectX and Voodoo Glide to DirectX 11 wrapper. What that means is, use it with any old game that uses DirectX 1 through 7 and it will covert/wrap this game to use DirectX 11 instead.
There are two reasons why you would want to do this. The first is for compatibility, the old versions of DirectX are still present in modern versions of Windows, but we can’t imagine they are a high priority for Microsoft to maintain and update. By using dgVoodoo2 you effectively convert your legacy game into a DirectX 11 game, making it run on a modern API that has much better support on modern hardware. Over the last year of testing games, dgVoodoo2 has fixed more compatibility problems than any other tool we’ve tested.
The second reason you might want to use dgVoodoo2 is so that you can use more modern in-game tools with your classic titles. If you’re into screen-casting or streaming, for instance, there are several tools you might want to use, such as Nvidia Shadowplay or Evolve. Thanks to dgVoodoo2 these tools are now fully compatible with your retro titles.
Today we can report the exciting news that dgVoodoo2 version 2.5 has been released and this version includes support for DirectX 8. DirectX 8 was used on a huge number of PC titles around the turn of the millennium. Classic games including Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, Commandos 3 and Giants all used DirectX 8. While DirectX 8 support is still preliminary, this is a hugely positive step and one that will help preserve and keep these classic titles running as we march towards DirectX12 and even newer graphics hardware.
The new version of dgVoodoo2 also includes support for dynamic shader compiling, which significantly improves performance, particularly on lower end PCs. You can grab the latest version of dgVoodoo2 for free here.
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