On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 11:11:41AM -0600, Brian Ford wrote: > On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Alan Hourihane wrote: > > > One note Harold on this.... > > > > You'll find that a lot of OpenGL drivers that are used on Windows are > > seriously lagging behind in support for the hardware. That's because > > a lot of vendors don't bother updating support for OpenGL directly > > and are more interested in Direct3D. > > > That is probably because Microsoft does the same. They only ship/support > OpenGL 1.1. Everything else is an extension that needs to be loaded > manually via GetProcAddress. Exactly. An ATI and nVidia do support later versions of OpenGL via this method.
> > Just run a native 'glinfo' application and you'll see that ATI and nVidia > > are pretty good in this area and provide very up-to-date OpenGL drivers. > > But others aren't so great. > > > But, you still have to jump through the GetProcAddress hoops to get there, > even with ATI and nVidia because of the base layer that Microsoft > provides. Exactly again. It's not impossible though. > > Apparently SciTech (Kendall Bennett) donated some code (a driver) for Mesa > > that allows it to accept the OpenGL commands from the client and call > > the equivalent Direct3D counterparts thus providing hardware that has > > a more capable Direct3D layer much more benefit. > > > > I think Karl Schultz on the Mesa list has the code and is integrating it, > > but I don't know the status. You may want to contact him. > > > > You won't need this to get started though, but it's certainly worth > > investigating once you've got an initial implementation. > > > This would be a good option to have, but I wouldn't make it exclusive. No, but as an option. Alan.
