I''ve been wanting a Direct3D emulator for my laptop (Which does not have 3D acceleration...) that will run applications in software mode automatically... no matter what, without closing or bringing up errors due to a lack of 3D hardware. Do I desire something that is impossible, and if so, does anyone know of a Direct3D emulator, wrapper, or app of some sort that will allow me to run Direct3D programs on a non-3D accelerated laptop? Someone told me that another solution is to download the DirectX SDK, and edit the program yourself to change the filtering mode of the program to software... though I would need to look into this before downloading that huge SDK installer. Though my new computer is coming in next month... I''m curious anyways. My deepest apoligies if this is the wrong forum to be asking for this type of thing.

I suppose you could force everything to run off of the reference rasterizer...you''ll get a huge slowdown though.

Excuse my ignorance, but what''s the reference rasterizer? The application itself, or is this something else?

When you create the Direct3D Device, create it with D3DDEVTYPE_REF. Thats the reference rasterizer.

EDIT
BTW:
Here's what the documentation says about it:


D3DDEVTYPE_REF
Microsoft® Direct3D® features are implemented in software; however, the reference rasterizer does make use of special CPU instructions whenever it can.


-UltimaX-
Ariel Productions
|Designing A Screen Shot System|

"You wished for a white christmas... Now go shovel your wishes!"

[edited by - UltimaX on March 26, 2004 10:21:39 PM]

When you say "create the Direct3D Device", what exactly do you mean? And then how would I create it with D3DDEVTYPE_REF? Does that work as a command line entry?

As you can tell, I''m totally lost. But I give thanks to you guys for giving me advice.

You can write a DirectX hook....2 common methods

1. Make a .dll and export the same functions as the original. Copy the dll to the same folder as the exe you are running.
*the "fake" dll will load the real .dll and passthrough any functions that don''t need to be changed. You will also need to wrap the com objects that it creates...for what you are doing, the device object should be enough.

2. Write a dll and an Injector. the dll will hook itself into DirectX. The injector is just a program that load the dll into another process..very easy to do if you use microsoft detours.


in either case...just hook the create device and change the present parameters. I''ve done this to force a game to run in a window.

A DirectX wrapper is hard to find..so I made my own.

I did find one after I made mine in a cheat for America''s Army..search for evil hack, it was an opensource cheat which has a DirectX wrapper.

If you''ve ever used the reference rasterizer, you would see why it wouldn''t work for running a game. It was designed for development purposes to test features that your card may not have, but even in the demos you get frame rates like 5 FPS even on fast computers. Any 3d game without a 3d accelerated card would be rediculously slow to the point where it is unplayable. Just wait for your new computer