No doubt, if you're the average Quake player, you know how cool GLQuake and VQuake are. You probably know that this is because the accelerators in question have something called MIP mapping, and gouraud Shading, anti-aliasing, and this Buffer with a Z, or something like that.
Quake is an engine that works off of polygons.
The result is a much more accurate shading method. MIP mapping is the key thing that makes GLQuake as breathtaking as it is. With GLQuake those pixels get shaded together for a much smoother edge. Z-Buffering is something that fixes a serious problem with a lot of games. Z-Buffering solves this problem.