[SDL] SDL 1.3 - SDL_Texture or SDL_Surface?

[David Olofson]

On Wednesday 01 August 2007, Mike Powell wrote:
[...]
> And this is in fact true, so long as your graphics card comes from a
> vendor that still includes OpenGL implementations. I know that
> nVidia and ATI do, which covers the vast majority of consumer
> graphics cards. If you have a more unusual card, you might be out of
> luck, but most Windows users, at least, should have a fully
> up-to-date release of OpenGL on their computer if they have
> up-to-date drivers for their graphics card. And even if their
> drivers are out of date, they will almost certainly provide an
> OpenGL implementation much newer then 1.1.
[...]

Well, hardware with poor OpenGL support, or no OpenGL drivers at all 
is also a real problem. This kind of hardware is often found in 
laptops and low cost desktop systems. You don't want to run AAA 3D 
titles on these machines, but they're perfectly capable of 
accelerating 2D and simple 3D games.

However, the real problem here is that drivers "never" get installed! 
Your average casual gamer doesn't want to, or doesn't know how to 
install drivers. Many users don't even understand what "drivers" are 
all about. People assume that everything should work out of the box. 
If a downloaded demo/shareware trial won't Just Work(TM), it gets 
thrown away and forgotten about. People don't even think about 
messing with drivers (if they know how to), unless possibly if 
they're trying to run a pre-paid commercial game.


//David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate

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