All Intel GMA chips do support fragment shaders (but not all support vertex shaders)
I'll check if the gma 3100 supports vertex shaders.
EDIT:
The G31, G33, Q33 and Q35 chipsets use the GMA 3100, which is DX9 capable. The 3D core is very similar to the older GMA 3000, including the lack of hardware accelerated vertex shaders.
What do you think--will still work ? Also, my G31/G33 chipset is in fact running DX10, not DX9.
All Intel GMA chips do support fragment shaders (but not all support vertex shaders)
I'll check if the gma 3100 supports vertex shaders.
EDIT:
The G31, G33, Q33 and Q35 chipsets use the GMA 3100, which is DX9 capable. The 3D core is very similar to the older GMA 3000, including the lack of hardware accelerated vertex shaders.
What do you think--will still work ? Also, my G31/G33 chipset is in fact running DX10, not DX9.
Lots of things can run DX10, but anything the HW can't do is done in software by the cpu instead that's the point of DirectX after all!
Thanks for the explanation D_H! But will it be able to use shaders with the lack of hardware accelerated vertex shaders? (I really don't know anything about shaders, so I wouldn't be able to tell if it was directly saying I couldn't).
Would the same problem with shaders make there be no lights or glow on anything either (eg. Griff thargoid test 2nd variation)?
Since Oolite uses OpenGL rather than DX - I think my answer is No - Ahruman is the graphics god though I'm sure he will confirm or deny my assuptions when he stumbles over this thread (and deems it important enough to answer).
I think I may have over simplied my explanation for DX9/10 - DX10 is obviously Vista only (we have recently taken delivery of some Vista top spec gaming laptops for tech demos at work - and although we had DX10 installed we had to go back and also install DX9 as some of our demo programs were missing the DX9 dlls required to work (at all)!)
Since Oolite uses OpenGL rather than DX - I think my answer is No - Ahruman is the graphics god though I'm sure he will confirm or deny my assuptions when he stumbles over this thread (and deems it important enough to answer).
He already has answered this, in the negative, on another thread...
It means no shaders.
To clarify, when hardware supports fragment (pixel) shaders but not vertex shaders, it is necessary for the software stack to implement vertex shaders. Under Mac OS X, this means the Apple software engine is used for vertex shaders and the hardware is used for fragment shaders. On other platforms, I expect the software fallback has to be provided by the driver vendor. All of this is transparent to the application, which just demands that full shader support be available.
Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied
To me what that says is that the API (DX/OGL) asks the hardware: "Can you do this?" - the Hardware responds with an affirmative or a negative - if it's a negative then the Software gets the CPU to do this and your program starts to chunk.
A good example of this which we use at work as a demo.
Two PCs one with an Athlon XP1400 installed the other with a 3.2GHz P4 HT, both have AGP slots both have XP, both have nasty old ATI Rage Pro (DX7) cards fitted and DX9c installed.
Run DXdiag on both machines.
The spinning cube runs well on both machines when it is done using DX7 calls, but when it gets to the DX8 and DX9 calls the XP1400 really starts to chunder as tries to do all the DX8/9 calls in software not hardware - the P4 also slows down but by a significantly less amount!
To me what that says is that the API (DX/OGL) asks the hardware: "Can you do this?" - the Hardware responds with an affirmative or a negative - if it's a negative then the Software gets the CPU to do this and your program starts to chunk.
I didn't know there were two kinds of shaders - thanks Ahruman, I have learned my Fact for today.
DH has it right I believe, at least under Windows. The upside is that shaders always work on a DX9/10 level box, but the downside is that they might be working through software rendering without you knowing, and your frame rates will be hideous (and your main CPU may well catch fire. )
On Linux the OpenGL stack works with/is provided by the Mesa libraries, and there's a whole different kind of fun which I'm doing a bit of reading around...
When re-building "1.73" trunk Oolite via the instructions at the start of the thread, at "make debug=no" I get the following error message:
/d/myoolite/trunk
$ make debug=no
Making all for objc_program oolite...
Compiling file src/Core/legacy_random.c ...
gcc.exe: installation problem, cannot exec `cc1': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [obj/legacy_random.o] Error 1
make: *** [oolite.all.objc-program.variables] Error 2
@Lestradae: Go to D:\msys_x\1.0\mingw\libexec\gcc\mingw32\3.4.2 folder, copy all executables found therein to D:\msys_x\1.0\mingw\bin. You should be able to build after this.
If I attempt that with my trunk install that I did with A_C's method I get the message "?\195?\156berspringe ?\194?\187.?\194?\171" and nothing happens.
I had something similar at my last svn up attempt, I solved it by re-installing the trunk completely from scratch (still A_C's method) and that worked, but upgrading via completely new installation gets a bit tedious
Was this before or after your problems with my trunk installer?
Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied
Sounds like something in your system is broken.. Svengali's idea of a hardware issue is worth pursuing.. another possibility; it's just conceivable that there is some kind of malware problem making your system flaky.
See if you can get HijackThis installed to your computer and run it. PM the logfile it generates to me..
Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied
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