I am new to game development. I read that opengl is used in games to directly communicate with GPU and thereby accelerating game performance. I had played games like The Mummy, Desperados 2 in a PC in the past without a dedicated graphics card. Both the games needed directx to be installed in the PC. Mummy game was smooth but i had to lower all the graphics settings for Desperados 2 to run the game. I haven't played any opengl based 3d game yet. My doubt is "Will opengl games run in PCs without dedicated video cards?" If they can run, what all features i won't be able to use in my game?
Will opengl 3d games run in a PC without a dedicated video card?
Even if there is no dedicated GPU, you will practically always have at least some sort of an integrated GPU. They usually implement OpenGL worse than dedicated GPUs so you might face some problems (just like between AMD and nVidia cards), and of course performance will be worse.
And i believe opengl can RUN without a GPU too as software emulated. (ridiculously slow though)
If you are thinking of openGL versus directX support on integrated GPUs i think there is no other issues than possibly bad/incomplete implementation of the standard for some more specific features.
And i believe opengl can RUN without a GPU too as software emulated. (ridiculously slow though)
If you are thinking of openGL versus directX support on integrated GPUs i think there is no other issues than possibly bad/incomplete implementation of the standard for some more specific features.
on windows you have microsoft GDI implementation, its like 15 years old, it implements OpenGL 1.1, and you can always use it.
Its very slow, its single threaded, but it works.
On linux you have mesa, you can hope to rely on something near OpenGL 3 spec.
On MacOS you have apple software renderer that supports OpenGL 2.1, or 3.0 on the very last OS. but its not much faster than microsoft version.
Back on windows, from windows 7 you have a truly performant multi threaded implementation of software DirectX, called WARP:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/gg615082(v=vs.85).aspx
other than that, I'm not aware of any third party that runs a newer opengl version in software on windows. but there may be one. (a windows port of Mesa ??)
on windows you have microsoft GDI implementation, its like 15 years old, it implements OpenGL 1.1, and you can always use it.
Its very slow, its single threaded, but it works.
On linux you have mesa, you can hope to rely on something near OpenGL 3 spec.
On MacOS you have apple software renderer that supports OpenGL 2.1, or 3.0 on the very last OS. but its not much faster than microsoft version.
Back on windows, from windows 7 you have a truly performant multi threaded implementation of software DirectX, called WARP:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/gg615082(v=vs.85).aspx
other than that, I'm not aware of any third party that runs a newer opengl version in software on windows. but there may be one. (a windows port of Mesa ??)
I believe the software implemented openGL version for windows has gone up a bit at some point.
And to OP, remember that these are when there is no GPU of any kind. You shouldnt even worry about the software implementation (unless you have a specific reason to) because most people have at least an integrated GPU, and if they only can use the software implementation, they probably wont be able to run your game anyways (other components too slow, software implementation of the rendering API too slow...)
I would just worry about how well it works when there IS a GPU (be it some old ATI card, mobile GPU with HP drivers, integrated GPU...), whether you need to support other than windows, what API you like more and so on. AFAIK their feature levels are similiar (if some feature exists, there is a way to use it via either API) on a given GPU, its just the way you access the feature.
Depends on your GPU, OpenGL drivers and implementation. Most integrated GPUs (IMO, especially integrated ones) tend to have bad OpenGL drivers. Intel is a pretty good example. I wrote some 2D games using OpenGL and I had missing sprites and speed issues galore on Intel's integrated GPUs. The NVIDIA or ATI integrated GPUs aren't too bad, but ATI's OpenGL drivers haven't been to great in my experience. So far, NVIDIA is the best and what I'd recommend. I don't think there are any more integrated GPUs that don't support a programmable pipeline anymore either.
I have 2 laptops (both Notebook and Macbook) using an integrated NVIDIA GPU and they work great. People tell me that OpenGL on MacOSX sucks, but so far I haven't had any problems.
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