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May 22, 2001, 9:13am

I was just reading the AW 3.2 help stuff...

How does he mean that there is no software renderer in 3.1? I run it on
my laptop all the time, and my laptop has NO 3-D renderer, and it pops up
with a red X box that says something like "Warning, AW will run in
Software mode." Sure, its sluggish, but it works........
_____________________________
John Viper
jviper at jtsoft.net
http://www.jtsoft.net

May 22, 2001, 9:47am

It's still using the hardware renderer, just your CPU is doing 100% of the work.
[View Quote]

May 22, 2001, 9:59am

That's just it: When you're in software mode, your computer has to use
the non-3D video card (along with the processor) to try and handle all
the 3D stuff that's going on instead of a real 3D video card. A software
renderer would effectively take the place of a 3D video card and would
ease the load on the non-3D card. That way, those people who don't have
a video card could actually use AW 3.x and not see a slide show. :)

[View Quote] --
Goober King
That is, if Criterion ever *makes* a software renderer...
rar1 at acsu.buffalo.edu

May 22, 2001, 7:04pm

Er, that doesn't make sense. The whole POINT of a software renderer is to bypass the non-existant 3D video card and only use the system CPU for all rendering. If AW 3.1 can already run in software mode (I've never encountered it since I have a 3D card) I don't know what Roland is getting at when he says RW3 doesn't have a software renderer...

[View Quote] > That's just it: When you're in software mode, your computer has to use
> the non-3D video card (along with the processor) to try and handle all
> the 3D stuff that's going on instead of a real 3D video card. A software
> renderer would effectively take the place of a 3D video card and would
> ease the load on the non-3D card. That way, those people who don't have
> a video card could actually use AW 3.x and not see a slide show. :)
>
[View Quote]

May 22, 2001, 7:18pm

Hrmm. That makes a very unusual amount of sense. In fact, if I remember the message properly it even SAYS that Activeworlds will
start in software mode. I invite anyone who wants to try to switch to default Windows drivers and try AW, it will function, albeit
not very well, but it still functions. In fact, I was on 3.0 beta without a 3d card. If they had not wiped the beta board, you could
still read my glowing reviews of the software rendering.
[View Quote]

May 22, 2001, 10:05pm

Good point. The only problem I get when attempting to run 3.1 on my
2.2 computer is that there's errors saying that there's not enough
video memory and AW can't resize the window. It's somewhat slower,
but I guess that's to be expected with lights and everything else
that's been added to 3.1.

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