Original Post
I''ve been working on a project for the last couple months (would have been done in a few weeks if it weren''t for schoolwork - programming classes make it hard to find the time to learn how to program), and I finally decided to try running it on the computers at my school.
The project is a 3D terrain engine, written in OpenGL, on it''s way to becoming an actual game. It''s got some neat stuff, like billboards, "animated" water and clouds (If moving the texture coordinates really counts...), deformable terrain, particle effects, and Perlin noise for texture and terrain generation. It runs (after a great deal of optimizations and general screwing around) at 80 to 130 FPS on a P3 500 with a Voodoo 3, and just slightly better than that on a 3D Prophet 4500.
When I ran it on the school computers, though, it ran at all of 10 FPS on the menu screen, and less than one frame per second in the actual engine. Later on, trying it at home with hardware acceleration off, I had very similar results.
I get the impression that OpenGL without hardware acceleration is sort of like... uh... a... car without... an engine, or gas, or something else that makes it go. So, I''ve got two questions:
1) Is it pretty much impossible to use OpenGL if hardware acceleration isn''t present? If it''s possible, how so? Are there specific features to avoid and such?
2) How can I find out what video card and processor speed a computer has? Our system administrator at school has disabled dangerous features like the ability to right-click and hit properties on My Computer, or the desktop, or to access the Settings, so is there a way to get this information with code?
I know I can find out which extensions are supported, at least, and they''re the same ones listed on my home computer when I''ve got hardware acceleration off.