Just gave Emergence a quick spin and the first thing I noticed were a couple of garbled/misplaced textures on the background planet when using the default 3Dfx/nGlide setting. Switched to D3D and now I have higher color bit depth, higher resolutions and seemingly no graphical glitches... so far it appears to just work.

Is there a reason *not* to use D3D? Any known issues somehwere down the line?

D3D doesn't properly support high resolutions from registry editing, and some capture programs (such as OBS Studio), might not detect the game. Additionally, using D3D mode when on Windows 8 or 10 causes severe and game-breaking lag in certain menus like the Build Manager, making the game virtually unplayable most of the time.

On D3D, the highest resolution possible is 1600x900 (or 1600x1200 or 1680x1050 variants), but using OpenGL (NOT the 3DFX version!) allows 1920x1080 and possibly even higher resolutions to be used. I strongly recommend that you switch to the game's default OpenGL mode (again not the 3dfx version) to get better compatibility with the game and no menu problems. If you are using Windows 7 (or older versions), D3D has no menu lag, but is still capped to 1600x900 (or variants) as the highest resolution from registry editing.

The Homeworld Universe Discord has some posts by a moderator which thoroughly detail how to get OpenGL mode working on Windows 8/10 and how to get up to 1080p HD resolutions. If you are interested, you can join them here:
https://discord.gg/WGmRe2F

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Woah, that's huge! Thanks for proving that OpenGL is the better resolution option for the game!

Wow, thanks for the info! Fortunately I am still on Windows 7 and at 1600x1200, so no critical issues, but OpenGL does sound like the superior option, I'll have a look at that!

If you are going to use nGlide, be sure and use the 1.05 version, first of all. NGlide translates all GLIDE calls to D3d (that is its purpose), and all 16-bit depth calls (which is all GLIDE ever supported) to a much more modern 32-bit depths, transparently. Then you can set nGLIDE to run at your native resolution and it will automatically scale your games to run at your native res. For instance, I have a native res of QHD, or 2560x1440, and I set nGlide to open GLIDE games at that res and it does easily. You can also set global refresh rates and gamma and more in nGLIDE. So when you run nGLIDE you are really running a D3d wrapper for GLIDE. There are wrappers that translate GLIDE to OpenGL as the other posters have said. So, just try with both/all wrappers and decide which you think looks and plays better...;) It's nice to have these choices!

Wanted to add, to answer your original question, it's simply a matter of subjective judgement on your part to decide whether you wish to use a D3d or OpenGL GLIDE wrapper or just plain D3d--unless you get problems playing with one or both wrappers that you don't get by running the game in it's native D3d mode, or vice versa, of course.

I did not know that. Does that mean that the color banding that happened 'back in the day' with 3Dfx/Glide due to the lower color depth does not apply when using NGlide, even though the game in question is indicating it is set to 16 bit colors?

And thanks for your reply! It seems I am in the luxury position of having several options looking/working more or less as good as the others, but it's always interesting to learn if there is a prefered one by the community, to have the game's Ultimate Setup :)

So I'm trying to use OBS right now, and it will pick up the audio but video is a black screen. I tried switching the resolution to the all four video options but none of them worked. Any further advice?

Thank you