https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LbIJdGNQfA

It's like he's playing a completely different game than what I have. How can I make my game from GOG look that way?

He describes how to setup dgvoodoo and game options to make it look best (in his opinion).
Link to video

Hmm, so I'm not the only one who tried using d3d on voodoo! Yep this config works. Could also try Wine3D for Windows of other ddraw wrappers. You should also check out PCGamingWiki, they have an A3D D3D patch for MDK on there.

Edit: anyone know how to add the PSX audio tracks into the PC version. Man those are amazing!

I think u could force max antialias and aniso in graphics driver.Be shure u use d3d mode.

He doesn't describe anything in that video when it comes to setting up dgVoodoo. Also he seems to fake the full screen when using D3D + dgVoodoo because there is no working way to make the game run in full screen using D3D + dgVoodoo.

The only way to get almost full screen without stretching is using nGlide 0.97 + Idarion's widescreen fix but the problem then is that you can't use the higher 512x512 textures and everything will also look blurry because of the bilinear filtering that nGlide does add. I've looked for a way to turn that shit off but it looks like there is no way to do that. :(
This game is just screaming for a proper remastered version.

Yeah, this is a weird one in terms of resolution.
I have the game on both GOG and CD-ROM.

If you use the CD, the D3D version is by far the best version of the game. It seems like using that one, the game is running between 40 and 50 fps consistently with the sprites still being at 30 (I've seen many games like this, kinda weird to explain)

Though, for the d3d version, I couldn't get the game to run at 1920x1080 without being stretched, even with dgvoodoo, nor did I get the option to pick the 512x512 textures.

The widescreen patch I used seems to only worth with the gog 3dfx version, and even then the graphics kind of freak out whenever I come across an explosion (which is often lmao) or find transparent objects. This game definitely needs a remaster of some sort, or at the very least a source port to help compatibility. It's ridiculous how well this game still holds up today and how the combat/platforming is satisfying enough to replay the game many times.

Ok so I was still looking for a way to improve the quality of the visuals when using Nglide and the widescreen fix. I was not able to find anything useful, therefore I wrote a message to Zeus from the Nglide website asking for help. He replied and gave me this short tutorial:

1) download a hex editor program like HxD (https://mh-nexus.de/en/downloads.php?product=HxD20)
2) launch hxd.exe and open mdk3dfx.exe in it
3) press ctrl+g and type 6EE10, press enter
4) change 01 to 00
5) press ctrl+g again and type 6EE12, press enter
6) change 01 to 00
7) press ctrl+s to save changes
8) profit!

Before you edit the EXE make a backup of it first. I tested the game with the edited EXE and the widescreen fix and the result was looking quite close to the DF Retro video. Check the attached screens for comparison.

https://www.wsgf.org/dr/mdk/en

how to like digital foundry

I was able to get the D3D version working with dgvoodoo full screen, seems like this is a wobbly old game working with a wobbly wrapper so won't work for everyone; the effect I ended up with was the opposite to the 3DFX exe in that the textures are crisp but the sniper overlay and gadget icons / menus are blurred. This is much better though IMO as most games from this era were not designed with texture filtering in mind and with it enabled it definitely makes games like this and Quake etc look worse with smeared lo-res textures. Dgvoodoo settings and screenshots attached. The key for me was turning off "Disable Alt-Enter to toggle screen state" and alt-enter'ing to get full screen after launching. One thing I note is that enabling XL 512 x 512 textures doesn't appear to do anything from my observations, but I'm not sure if only certain textures become 512 with this option enabled.

I think I have to give this another try with the latest DgVoodoo version. Maybe things improved since the last time I played this game and it will finally work on my end too.

EDIT: It's not working. :( The game still has black bars on all sides and Kirks character sprite is just a white box in the middle of the screen.