I had the same experience. Running qw.exe and it just feeling substantial and beautiful compared to the software renderer. I have been chasing a transformative high like that since. I sat out the initial VR iterations hoping for the biggest wow factor when I finally strapped on the HTC vive connected to a PC. It was great but still not at that level.
One aspect of this story I've never seen covered is how Nvidia managed as a quiet dark horse to come from behind and crush 3dfx in a few years with the TNT and TNT2. The article talks about the GeForce 256, but 3dfx crown was stolen before that.