The S3 Graphics pedestal bug affected S3’s highly popular graphics cards from the mid-to-late 1990s, such as the S3 Trio64 and ViRGE series. Instead of seeing pure black in dark areas, players saw a noticeable dark grey or muddy charcoal block/glow. This is caused by timing settings in the video registers being set incorrectly by default.
Fortunately, there is a solution for this problem as well. Using DEBUG.EXE, the so called pedestal bit can be modified so that the S3 graphics cards display proper black levels again. It is even easier using s3black.com, which can be launched automatically during every system boot via the autoexec.bat.
Download: S3 Pedestal Fix