Software substitue for GL was, Re: [SDL] OpenGL / SDL / GUI / Movie :-)

[David Olofson]

On Tue, 27/08/2002 08:48:08 , Patrick McFarland <unknown at panax.com> wrote:
>Why dont we just use Mesa? Mesa "isnt" opengl, and includes a half
>way decent software renderer. It isnt really fast, but software 
>never is.

Software can be quite fast enough for playable 3D games (Wolfenstein
3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake...), but that's not the case with
any truly OpenGL compatible implementation I know of. The CPU power
required for real time OpenGL without countless shortcuts is still
far beyond that of your average PC.

That said, software OpenGL could be handy for install time or load
time rendering of graphics - but why not just use Mesa directly for
such applications? (Possibly with the option to use OpenGL through
SDL if available. If you dare trust it to render accurately
enough, that is...)


//David


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