[Bf-committers] OpenGL in troubles? Help!

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi all,

It might be coincidence... we attract many more new users, with of  
course the average 'idiot rate' of confusing bug reports. Nevertheless,  
it appears to me that proper OpenGL support by 3d cards only gets  
worse. I completely lost track of all hints and tricks for driver  
tweaking with ATI's for example. Another signal is that major consumer  
brands (like S3) don't even continue to support OpenGL anymore.
Also if you check websites from our Maya/Modo/XSI friends, you can find  
serious OpenGL issues, tweaks, and excuses...

Not even to mention each vendor has like a 100 different types, and  
monthly changing driver upgrades!

My proposal would be to prominently advertise on the Blender website  
which 3d cards and drivers actually work, with a very clear purchasing  
advise. And mention which cards clearly do not work... hopefully that  
will help our users some, but also invoke actions from the vendors. The  
Blender website gets google #1 rankings you know. :)

We can post 3 lists:

1) Active supported hardware
A list of 3d cards / OS combos as being used by our active developer  
team, so you can expect as user it's being tested and supported

2) Best rated hardware
A list of 3d cards / OS combos best rated on the "OpenGL database" on  
blender.org

3) Worst rated hardware
Also from the "OpenGL database"

Anyone going to volunteer? Thanks! :)

-Ton-

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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org