Hello,
is there a way to detect, if current hardware supports full-scene-antialiasing in hardware?
I’ve searched around a bit and found something about the GL_ARB_multisample extension. Is this the correct way?
Thanks and greetings,
Mete Ciragan
No, there is no general way to detect hardware capabilities. This applies to ALL kind of functionality. You are always guarateed to have a certain feature, but you don’t know wether it’s hardware or software.
Well, the hardware FSAA that is used by some cards is nothing to do with openGL it is part of the backend of the video hardware: you get what you are given and if it works it works.
I think 3Dfx uses a video scan-out trick like the PlayStation2 -3Dfx must have some better tricks because PS2’s AA is crap- so you couldn’t control it with a software API. As a consequence the AA on consumer boards is unrelated to any extensions or AA techniques you might use in openGL.