This game has always run in dos, it had a windows 95 version but that used a dos window as well. I believe it was also ported over to the mac but it had no true windows version.
[url=]http://www.bioware.com/games/shattered_steel/game_info/system_requirements/[/url]

I'd just like to add that certain pure DOS games are accelerated, using vendor-specific API instead of Direct3D. Most popular vendor-specific acceleration API, is, of course, GLide by 3dfx. An example of DOS games that support 3D acceleration is Carmageddon.

On the other hand, there are Windows 3D games that are not 3D-accelerated. Examples are S.C.A.R.A.B and Jane's Fighters Anthology.

Things being said, Shattered Steel are not accelerated. It uses voxel engine instead of polygons, and as far as I know, there is no consumer-level 3D accelerator for voxel engine. It is similar to Delta Force, which relies solely on CPU powers instead of 3D accelerator, because it uses voxel engine.