Stencil buffer only for hardware?

[Erik Labree]

Hi everyone,

Is stencil buffering only possible if the hardware supports it or is there also a software implementation.\I'm using Windows NT.

Thanks

Erik

[DFrey]

Some OpenGL implementations do emulate a stencil buffer in software. One being Nvidia's TNT OpenGL driver in 16 bit color mode (I'm sure there are other's too). But it is horribly slow. I've had my app go from 50+ FPS to less than 10 FPS simply by enabling the stencil test in 16 bit color mode. In 32 bit mode, it runs fine with little slowdown.

[Erik Labree]

Thanks DFrey,

I was afraid so. Gonna buy me a decent card.

Thanks.