How to access graphic hardware acceleration while running as a service

[Snapshot]

Because of Microsoft's security policies, creating a window while running as a service causes the creation of a new window station as well as a new desktop exclusively for this service.
The result is, the application is running but without showing a window at the visible desktop. The problem is that rendering for invisible windows acts like clipping away the whole scene.
My question is, is there a way to access the graphic hardware acceleration without actually drawing a scene on the screen? In other words the whole rendering should take place with or without a visible window.

[k_szczech]

...without actually drawing a scene on the screen?

Try experimenting with pbuffer or FBO.

[Snapshot]

Thanks, sounds good! I will do that...

[yooyo]

Before you do anything.. check GL_RENDERED & GL_VENDOR strings. If it reports something like "GDI generic" (by Microsoft) service will not be able to use hw acceleration.

You can make a regular application and use some inter-process communication (or even TCP) between service and application.

[Snapshot]

Okay, thanks for the good advice! That's exactly what I need to differ between local and remote access.
By the way: It's working! Using pbuffer rendering nearly solved my problem. Nearly because it's working fine while running as a local service. But via remote access, which is also a feature request, there is only the generic driver available which does not support pbuffer rendering.
This leads to an other question: Is there a way to create a valid, hardware accelerated opengl context which is also available from remote?

[JeffJ]

Please clarify what you mean by, "via remote access". For example, do you mean terminal services (remote desktop)?

When you connect via terminal services (remote desktop), the OS creates a new "desktop", or something like that. From experience it looks like a desktop that is not connected to the physical terminal cannot use HW opengl acceleration.

VNC is a third party application that also allows remote access by sharing the real desktop with a remote machine. VNC does not disable opengl HW acceleration, although sometimes a window with animating OpenGL content lags before the client sees the updates, so VNC should not be thought of as a windows equivalent to GLX indirect rendering.

(edited to fix typo)

[Snapshot]

Yes, we're talking about terminal services. But using VNC instead is realy a great idea! Technically it solves all our problems.
Hmm... let me see if I can inspire the local administrators to use VNC instead of remote desktops...

Anyway, thanks for your help!!