My lovely wife, the Lt Col, has finally acquiesed to buying me a new computer. So I ordered a dual P4 2Ghz w/1gig o' RAM + all goodies. (Yes, I am worth it, I think.) One of said goodies is a 64meg GeForce 3 card. Am I going to have trouble with Vue? It's not too late for me to change the card and I will change it if I'm going to have trouble with Vue. If I need to change it, what should I get? Thanks in advance.

Wow that is some computer, your renders will be flying, I don't know if you will have trouble with the card, but I am pretty sure you won't Congrats.....Sharen PS: and of course your worth it, you have a sweet wife.

Don't think you can dual P4s as of yet.. Make sure you're order is correct.

The only problem you will have with Vue is if you want to use OpenGL viewports. There is a lot of issues with nvidia based cards and Vue 4 (I have a GeForce2 and I had to disable openGL acceleration in Vue).

The E-on site specifically mentioned GEForce 3 as having problems. For some, the GEForce 2 has also given some trouble. I just checked around the website and I can't find the page which mentioned this. Anyone else remember it?

I can't remember which it was, but I think smallspace uses this vid card. I wouldn't know what to recommend, but if i were you, I would write directly to E-on and ask them. And, yes, you can use dual CPU's in Vue, of course providing your PC OS supports it. I'm assuming your new machine will be at least W 2K. Will Vue 4 run on XP?

Thanks Sams :) I use wireframe on all viewports, but I have to switch to them every time I load Vue. Don't know why it doesn't save as a preference. Anyway, the only OpenGL I use is the little preview window. Will I still be able to use that with a GeForce? The Xeon (dual-capable P4) is on the market now. I ordered the machine with Win XP Pro...the home edition won't recognize dual CPUs. And if Vue runs on Win2K, it should run fine on XP. Thanks all for the responses. I think I'll be okay.

Dual Xeon (drool), very jealous over here =)

hehe Try me :) I have my system built at my local shop, all he's waiting for is the shipment of Itaniums :)

Itanium=THE ONLY TRUE 64BIT Processor made >:D

Jackson, I think viewport choices are saved per scene, so what you could do is create a New file, set the viewports to wireframe (and turn the camera due North while you're at it), then save that file as START.VUE (or whatever you want to call it. Next time you open Vue, open START.VUE and the viewports (plus the camera!) should be all set for you. I think. :)

Does that work for you, Varian? I can't get it to work for me, and I, too always have to manually reset the viewports to wireframe. Bloodsong had had a similar problem, but had suggested something about changing a line or something in one of the Vue root folders, but I don't see any .ini files in there. Not even sure if that was the plan, anyway, but I DO know that I have never had a scene open back up with my vieport preferences still intact. For that matter, it always wants to render a preview as full screen, unless I set it back to what I had had it on before. shrug Not that I'm complaining, and it's not a big deal to readjust all this stuff, but you would think they'd have built an interface preferences thingie into Vue by now...

I daon't have any direct experience with Geoforce 3, but with my Geoforce 2 Ultra 63 Mb by Creative, I had no special problem with Vue and Open GL. Only, when I tryed to install the latest driver to see if there was some performace improovment, I had to came back because everything in Vue was not working. Of course Vue is not the most stable program, but the number of crash that I have is still on the average (considering also the higt number of devices that i have on my pc, from scsi card to isdn & adsl card, to pinnacle digital video card to 6 HD and more. And I'm running in win 98 FIRST edition (everything works so I don't see any reasons to jump in the dark with the 2.nd edition). And YES, Vue vorks with dual Xeon processor: in fact, I have a single Xeon 450, and I WOULD LIKE to add a second one, but I cannot find it anywhere (at least in Italy... nobody in the USA know if there Pentium Xeon 2 450 MHz is still available?)

Cinacchi: Thanks for the info. I'm going to write e-on today and make sure. You should be able to find that second chip through an internet vendor. Varian & Mike: Nope; upon reopening a saved scene I still have to reset all the viewports. Although I don't have Mike's render problem. Strange program, Vue.

Itaniums.. ok.. Now I'm gonna have to get mad =) I just won a bid for an ELSA Gloria III on ebay though, that makes me happy.

gulps Mesa not going to mention about me new Nvidia Quadro 4... /me runs and hides

I've just built a new computer with Athlon 1.4 GHz, Geforce 3 and XP Pro. Haven't finished installing all the software yet, but a couple of quick renders that I tried in Vue worked no problems. - Mark

Hmm...Mark, did you have OpenGL active in Vue? What make of video card is it? Maybe it's just a driver thing.

Vue was running with default settings. (I just loaded a Pozer model and rendered). I'll check the details when I get home tonight. (It's just after lunch here) It's a Gainward Geforce 3 card using the Windows XP drivers (installed automatically with the OS) - Mark

Quadro 4? I thought the current was the Q2, then the newest is the DCC.. Either way, I'm pissed, better hide well! =)

Yep the latest is the QuadroDCC which I should get pretty soon. :) I had problems with my GeFroce2 GTS and the latest detonators and I installed a 3dlabs Wildcat II 5000 and Vue is finally working fine again! :) Cheers!

OK I've done some more extensive testing now, and the only problem I encountered was the occassional crash when switching viewports between smooth shaded and wireframe. If the viewport setting was left on either one or the other then Vue was perfectly stable for hours. Even with the instant draw settings turned up to max, most of the demo pics I tried were still acceptably fast for panning and rotating in the 3D view. So on balance, I'll live with the shaded -> wireframe problem in return for the speed and responsiveness of the view. - Mark

Thanks Mark. I haven't received an answer from E-on yet but, based on what I've read, I think I'll take my chances with the Ge3.