Hardware Accleration Required?

[psiegel]

I may be horribly mistaken, but I thought Windows (pre-XP) came with default OpenGL drivers that would so some kind of software rendering if accleration was unavailable through the video card.

I have an older laptop that's got some kind of crappy video chipset that definitely does not have 3D accleration.  When I test on that machine, the GL constructor appears to through an Exception.  But I have run other OpenGL apps on the machine and they do run, albeit horribly slowly.

Anyway, I'm just curious if LWJGL does something to ensure that hardware acceleration is available, and if so if there's a way around it to make the default software rendering drivers work.

Paul

[psiegel]

Just to give some more details:
I ran the basic Polygon example on that machine.  The exception reads as follows:

C:\temp>java -Djava.library.path=./ -cp lwjgl.jar;examples.jar Polygon
java.lang.Exception: Problem starting loop
        at BaseWindow.start(Unknown Source)
        at Polygon.main(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.Exception: Problem initialising Lesson
        at BaseWindow.createGLWindow(Unknown Source)
        ... 2 more
Caused by: java.lang.Exception: Mode not supported by hardware
        at org.lwjgl.opengl.BaseGL.nCreate(Native Method)
        at org.lwjgl.opengl.BaseGL.doCreate(Unknown Source)
        at org.lwjgl.opengl.GL.doCreate(Unknown Source)
        at org.lwjgl.Window.create(Unknown Source)
        ... 3 more

[princec]

You'll have to hack the C source to the DLL and comment out the little bit which complains at non-hardware modes. Or maybe Brian can quickly compile one for you if you've not got MSVC handy.

Cas

[psiegel]

Hmm, this is a pickle.  Currently I'm using a version of the libs that's slightly older than 0.6, as I'm using the new hardware cursor code.  If I grab the C code for 0.6, it sounds like I'll break that functionality.  But from what I understand, the current contents of cvs aren't stable.  Mix in one July 31st deadline, and it sounds like we're screwed.  At least screwed out of supporting software rendering.

Paul

[princec]

You really don't want to bother with software rendering. Really. There are almost no circumstances in which it gives acceptable realtime performance, which is of course what the LWJGL is all about.

Cas

[psiegel]

Well, that's good to know.  It's really a matter of us trying to find our "minimum requirements" and we weren't sure if hardware 3D acceleration was one of them.  Honestly, I've had to drag some of the team into the 21st century kicking and screaming.  One of them was still using DOS, for crying out loud.

So yeah, it looks like we'll just have to require hardware acceleration.  Which I don't think is such a horrible plan.

Paul