Greetings...

I work for an software company which produces low spec arcade games ( using the 68k processor )

possably moving onto pc based x86 machines.

These Machines also are low spec (800Mhz Pentium cpu's) with No hardware graphics acceleration.

These Machines come with either the WindowsXP Embedded OS, or a Linux OS.

In anticipation, ive been doing a little work with Imilar poswer machines under both WindowsXP, and Gentoo Linux With Hardware Acceleration turned off...

WindowsXP DirectX9.0 has prven to be a complete faiure, taking over 1 second to render 50 textured polgons in an 800x600 screen without hardware accelertion.

So Now im focusing my attention on Linux.

To Simulate Running without 3d hardware acceleration, im Running Xorg with the vesa driver ( instead of the nvidia or nv driver )

and using Mesa as the Graphics Library.

However, im having some real difficulty in using OpenGL VBO's

my test program compiles and runs fine with the Nvidia libraries / Driver, but always seg-faults under Mesa.

I Believe this is because glxinfo does NOT show support for the "GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object" Extension.

However, Mesa3d.org states that this extension has been supported since mesa-6.0, which was a few years ago i believe.

I Realise that VBO's would be no faster in pure software rendering than the usual OpenGL 1.0 method of calling glVertex between GlBegin() and glEnd()

However this extension would be usefull for code compatability should it one day be run on a more advanced machine.

As You Can See, Im Clearly Confused..... Any Idea's ?

First off, I am not a coder.

Maybe you should compile against the standard GLX libraries/headers instead of the nvidia libraries, it is possible that this is what is messing everything up.

<<Samoth>>

Compiling Againsed The Nvidia Libraries ( That Support OpenGL 2.x ) everything Runs Fine, as VBO's were Intoroduced in OpenGL Version 1.5.

But my software MUST run without any hardware acceleration, which is why i need to link againsed the mesa libs.

Mesa3d.org claims that Version 6.0 and above is compatable with OpenGL 1.5, and claims that the Extension GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object is supported..

however, when running with the mesa libraries, glxinfo does not list GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object as an Extension.

( However, the VBO API's are defined in mesa's gl.h ( or maybe glext.h.. i forget )

This is why i am confused.

For Now, i am Using Display Lists ( OpenGL 1.2 )

I am Guessing that what OpenGL Extension Mesa Claims to support is highly dependant on DRI ( which is not possable without Hardware Acceleration )