Playing Quake 3 under FreeBSD 4.8 with an nVidia graphics card

This report summarizes how we configured FreeBSD 4.8 with nVidia drivers to run the Quake 3 client. As part of our GENIUS project we have been experimenting with different sorts of networked, multiplayer games. Most games are released for Windows platforms, but a small collection of First Person Shooters (including Quake 3) have also been released for Linux platforms. FreeBSD runs most Linux applications in their binary form, and we have been running Quake 3 dedicated servers for some time under FreeBSD. When nVidia released their latest video card drivers for FreeBSD (4.8 and later) we decided to document just how easy (or hard) it is to run the Quake 3 client on a FreeBSD desktop. In a nutshell here's the problem we're solving. We have: 1. A desktop PC running FreeBSD 4.8, 2. An nVidia 3D accelerated graphics card, 3. A commercial copy of Quake 3 for Microsoft Windows, 4. A desire to play Quake 3 without rebooting the desktop into Microsoft Windows. The short answer is that this problem is not hard to solve. This report is for the benefit of anyone curious enough to try and replicate our scheme.