Querying device caps

[glfreak]

It's cool if opengl has an extension probably called GL_CAPS which is passed to glGetString to query the different capabilities of the display hardware.

I want to know if you agree with me guys.

Thanks.

[ET3D]

There's been quite a bit of discussion here about detecting hardware vs. software rendering. Basically, I agree with you, although it's not that simple, as some cases are hard to query (for example, the fact that polygon stippling or a user clipping plane take a texturing unit). My post in the "hardware vs. software - again" thread suggests other ways to do it, but Matt from NVIDIA says that even those are not practical to implement (although he doesn't explain why).

So basically, I'm all for a way to determine what rendering is done in hardware, but it's already been discussed at length.