[Unknown Target]

it's quite posably about to be the only option.

Noooooo! There are far too many boxen out there with the CPU grunt power to run the game, with embedded video that does a pretty good job at FSO with DirectX, but have next thing to nonexistant OpenGL support. Like the Intel 82865G. That's an OpenGL decellerator, but runs along quite nicely in DirectX 9.0c. (Brickbats to Dell for tweaking the BIOS on their B110/1100 to not accept the latest/last drivers from Intel, and having drivers a year older than those on the Dell support site!)

A Geforce 6200 only costs 40 dollars. Seriously, it's time to stop worrying about people trying to run the SCP on machines with terrible graphics cards.

What about people who have decent video cards on their machine, but integrated graphics chips in their laptops? I can't run OpenGL on my laptop, but I can run Direct X just fine. Unfortunately, the DX implementation doesn't support alpha blending, which makes the game nigh-useless in DX mode (at least while running the BTRL mod).

[taylor]

What about people who have decent video cards on their machine, but integrated graphics chips in their laptops? I can't run OpenGL on my laptop, but I can run Direct X just fine. Unfortunately, the DX implementation doesn't support alpha blending, which makes the game nigh-useless in DX mode (at least while running the BTRL mod).

OpenGL has gotten changes recently which help it run better with IG cards, and there are more changes on the way post-3.6.9.  I think that nearly all of the issues will disappear if you switch to Vista though, since for video cards that don't supply good OpenGL drivers, Vista will employ an OpenGL wrapper around DX10 instead.

[neoterran]

And I want to point out that nvidia rewrote their drivers for opengl ICD implementation from scratch for vista, and they fixed of bugs and Freespace2 SCP actually runs better for me under vista than it did in XP. For example, you can no longer BSOD the machine using alt-tab switching in vista.

Also, since Vista removed hardware acceleration layer from DirectSound, it turns out now that the recommmended way to go for sound, games, and vista is OpenAL, so the project is def. ahead of the curve there.

[Darklord42]

I think that nearly all of the issues will disappear if you switch to Vista though, since for video cards that don't supply good OpenGL drivers, Vista will employ an OpenGL wrapper around DX10 instead.

Realy! thats good news for my laptop then.  Or at least i hope! I got this lovely New Hp Pravillion laptop that has the graphics power to run HalfLife2 very well as HL2 runs off of directX but it cant do OpenGl for squat.  This is because there is a bug somewhere in the drivers of the ATI Radion M200 Graphics Chip that ATI cant fix because Hp modifide their code to work with their laptops and HP won't admit to the bug to fix it. Plus I think the HP version of the driver is out of date.  On the plus side it was built to run vista once it is released.

[Huggybaby]

Hmm, you could try running the Omega drivers or even the desktop Radeon drivers on your laptop and see if that helps.
http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/

[Taristin]

What about people who have decent video cards on their machine, but integrated graphics chips in their laptops? I can't run OpenGL on my laptop, but I can run Direct X just fine. Unfortunately, the DX implementation doesn't support alpha blending, which makes the game nigh-useless in DX mode (at least while running the BTRL mod).

OpenGL has gotten changes recently which help it run better with IG cards, and there are more changes on the way post-3.6.9.  I think that nearly all of the issues will disappear if you switch to Vista though, since for video cards that don't supply good OpenGL drivers, Vista will employ an OpenGL wrapper around DX10 instead.

Except that I use Vista, and ave an x1950xt, and there is no OGl driver implementation. All i get is an error about not being able to get proper pixel ratio, or something to that effect. And D3D is b0rked for graphics... so..... no luck there.

[neoterran]

ATI says they will have a full OpenGL ICD for their driverset for Vista by the January 31st Retail Launch

In the meantime, you can get an nvidia card, had opengl drivers since Beta 2

[Taristin]

ATI says they will have a full OpenGL ICD for their driverset for Vista by the January 31st Retail Launch

In the meantime, you can get an nvidia card, had opengl drivers since Beta 2

Feck that. I didnt pay so much for an x1950xt to have to buy a NV card Ill wait for the full vista. I wanna buy it anyways.

[Darklord42]

not possable for a laptop...
I tried thoes alternate drivers....   
same issues. i think it's slightly better but not enoght to matter

[CP5670]

For example, you can no longer BSOD the machine using alt-tab switching in vista.

This particular thing is a bug in the Nvidia drivers and is unrelated to XP itself.

I'm going to be staying with XP for some time anyway. I generally only upgrade my OS when some program or driver I want to use needs it.