I was wondering… is there any openGL command to “test” the hardware? I would like to understand what can the user openGL card do in hardware and what is supported in software.
This way I would be able to decide whether to use certain capabilities or not so that the frame rate doesn’t fall down too much.
Thanks
Software is not the same as low framerate, and hardware is not the same as high frame rate. What you want is to know whether something is fast enough or not, not whether it’s hardware accelerated or not.
If it’s fast enough, do you really care whether it’s hardware or not? If it’s not fast enough, would you still use it just because it happens to be hardware accelerated?
So make a benchmark program and determine yourself, or make some intelligent function to automatically determine whether it’s fast enough or not. Or let the user have the option to turn on/off things as he/she likes for better performance/quality.
Forgot to say it, but you have probably already figured it out: no, there’s no such thing in OpenGL, nor will there be.
This post might give you some ideas, though as Bob said no guarantees about speed if it is software or hardware support.
[This message has been edited by shinpaughp (edited 04-16-2003).]
Originally posted by Bob:
Forgot to say it, but you have probably already figured it out: no, there’s no such thing in OpenGL, nor will there be.
I am writing a small videogame. It is the final project of a course in computer graphic. It runs wonderfully on my computer at home, but it is so damn slow on the computers in the lab because I don’t think they have good videocards. From what I understand there is no way to “know” if I am running on a “old” machine so that I can turn off expensive procedures like texturing and mipmapping? Should I just put some toggle keys that allow the user to turn on/off some features?
This is a little disappointing… 
Originally posted by shinpaughp:
[b] This post might give you some ideas, though as Bob said no guarantees about speed if it is software or hardware support.
[This message has been edited by shinpaughp (edited 04-16-2003).][/b]
Thanks Shinpaughp, I have checked it out I will try to see if I can get any interesting info from those strings…
One thing to look for, if it is Windows based, is if glGetString with GL_VENDOR or GL_RENDERER (I forget which one) shows Microsoft Corp, then all of it is running in software and would only support up to v1.1 functions. Not sure what other platforms say when it is running completely in software with no hardware support. Also, you might want to check the lab computers for all 4 strings with glGetString so you have some idea what they do support.
But, like V-man stated in that other post, the driver may support higher version than the hardware, but if the extension shows in the string it should be hardware accelerated or have decent results in software through the driver. If it is not in the string, it may still be available but only through driver/software and probably slow.
Good luck with it.
Patrick
Originally posted by shinpaughp:
[b]One thing to look for, if it is Windows based, is if glGetString with GL_VENDOR or GL_RENDERER (I forget which one) shows Microsoft Corp, then all of it is running in software and would only support up to v1.1 functions. Not sure what other platforms say when it is running completely in software with no hardware support. Also, you might want to check the lab computers for all 4 strings with glGetString so you have some idea what they do support.
But, like V-man stated in that other post, the driver may support higher version than the hardware, but if the extension shows in the string it should be hardware accelerated or have decent results in software through the driver. If it is not in the string, it may still be available but only through driver/software and probably slow.
Good luck with it.
Patrick[/b]
Thanks! I am surely have a very good time with this assignment… I wasn’t waiting for anything better than this… Screw the OS class… LOL!!
Francesco www.gallarotti.net