[Rapsodius]

First of all, Hello to all the people, I've been reading your forum for a long while and I recently decided to register, I was looking for a solution to my problem, I played both retail versions of FS, and I wanted to get the FSOpen version, after hours of downloading, I get my hands on fsopen, mediavps, ST:R, and willing to play.
After all the configuration process, and after clicking Run, a msgbox appeared saying that I needed OpenGL version 1.2 to play and the current version I had was 1.1....

System specs (please don't laugh at me...  )

Intel Pentium III 605 MHz (L2 Cache 256 KB)
System RAM: 192 MB
OS: Windows 2000 (here I play with OGL) and Windows XP SP3 (don't think this matters)
Video card: Intel 82810 32 MB OnBoard (doesn't use system ram to get vram)

I have read the FAQ already about my case and it stated I should use 3.6.9 with D3D instead, the problem is that the game crashed to desktop without errors on D3D when beam cannons where firing and when big ships where destroyed.
(Retail FS2 runned at top speed in 1024x768 and details at the maximum & no crashes)

Intel is no longer supporting my vid card so in XP I don't have Hardware accelerated Ogl on XP but yes on 2000.

Well, what i'm asking for is if there is a way to avoid OpenGL 1.2 and to use instead 1.1, I'm not asking for the advanced graphics effects that may come with 1.2 just want to play this game!

Using the latest nightly build (02/03/2009) with MediaVPS v3.6.10

[General Battuta]

You honestly might have some trouble running FSO with those system specs. Can you get plain ol' vanilla retail working?

[Rapsodius]

Well i can play fs2 retail without problems if that's what are you referring to... dont' know what is "vanilla retail"...

I am well not planing to use mv_advanced as it said there was for high end pcs

I don' t know what problems are you referring to, if i am able to play this on opengl 1.1... I certainly know OpenGL is a lot faster than D3D... and even without the enhanced graphics the mediavps offer, i should be able to play it without any other thing than.... well FSO itself

[dragonsniper]

FSO's requirements are way higher than the retails system specs. I have a 2.13Ghz, 2GB ram, and a newer (late 2007) Nvidia graphics card, and at times my computer still chokes with the newest mediavps. Can you not get a newer OpenGL for your graphics card? Because FSO plainly won't work for me if I don't have OpenGL.

[TopAce]

Well i can play fs2 retail without problems if that's what are you referring to... dont' know what is "vanilla retail"...

Vanilla retail is just another way of saying retail, so the original FS2 with no SCP enhancements.

As for your thread, I suggest you get rid of the MediaVPs. Like dragonsniper said, your computer is simply too old for the MediaVPs.

[Rapsodius]

FSO's requirements are way higher than the retails system specs. I have a 2.13Ghz, 2GB ram, and a newer (late 2007) Nvidia graphics card, and at times my computer still chokes with the newest mediavps.

I said previously I'm not that interested on mvps just on the game if I can get it to play... Playing 3.6.9 in D3D mode gives me some crashes as I explained when I started the topic, but general gameplay is as smooth as retail.

Can you not get a newer OpenGL for your graphics card? Because FSO plainly won't work for me if I don't have OpenGL.

I can't... check out this (Intel Support for my vid card)

EDIT:

As for your thread, I suggest you get rid of the MediaVPs. Like dragonsniper said, your computer is simply too old for the MediaVPs.

Ok ok, that's all with MediaVPs, leave them alone, I'm asking for a way to use OpenGL 1.1 only and without it asking for 1.2. Intel won't do any more drivers for my card, and I have already the latest ones for them

[chief1983]

Yeah then that Intel chipset is simply to old to run FSO in OpenGL, the mediavps won't have any effect on that one way or the other.  3.6.9 is the last version to support any D3D at all, and will lose FS2NetD multiplayer support more than likely shortly after 3.6.10 is finalized.  You best bet to have 3.6.10 running at all is to get some other video card in there.  Any PCI or old AGP card you can stick in there with 32MB of RAM or more would probably work fine.

[Zacam]

Or, if someone is creative enough to grab the OpenGL 1.2 information from some other Intel driver package and put it's dll into the freespace install dir....

Might not help, but it's worth a shot.

[Rapsodius]

Yeah then that Intel chipset is simply to old to run FSO in OpenGL, the mediavps won't have any effect on that one way or the other.  3.6.9 is the last version to support any D3D at all, and will lose FS2NetD multiplayer support more than likely shortly after 3.6.10 is finalized.  You best bet to have 3.6.10 running at all is to get some other video card in there.  Any PCI or old AGP card you can stick in there with 32MB of RAM or more would probably work fine.

I'm positive I have tested 3.6.9 with D3D and it loaded without problems but it crashed on missions with intensive use of beam weapons and big explosions (without the mediavps, only No-modded fsopen), maybe because d3d bugs were not solved because support for it was going to be discontinued anyway

Or, if someone is creative enough to grab the OpenGL 1.2 information from some other Intel driver package and put it's dll into the freespace install dir....

Might not help, but it's worth a shot.

Er.... I don't think that would do any good... You're talking about fooling the machine about it having hardware support for OpenGL 1.2 without it actually having that...

Using normal non-modified Intel drivers I get some errors when trying to load 3.6.10:
 - some thingie about ogl 1.2 and 1.1
 - GL extension missing
"Press Ok to break into debugger, cancel exits"

I press Ok on both (without actually having a debugger installed), then the error messages disappear.
Finally the following happens:
 - Screen resolution is changed
 - Background music of FS2 can be heared, BUT fsopen stays invisible (ie:nothing appears on screen)

A solution for this would be to rip a build of fsopen from OpenGL 1.2 to 1.1, if you understand me, however my lack of knowing about C/C++ and the source code of fsopen make me discard that idea, unless one of the programmers can make that.

[chief1983]

It's probably not possible to reduce the OpenGL requirement any further, especially considering all the changes that have been tacked on to support _newer_ OpenGL features while still maintaining 1.2 support.  Only a few coders would be able to stand a chance at it anyway, and they're busy with other things at the moment.  I get that it worked with D3D in 3.6.9, but my point is that D3D support was disabled in 3.6.10 because of the bugs, as you guessed.  No one can/will fix them so it's not being supported any longer.  And I agree, trying to make hardware that's 1.1 compliant work with 1.2 is likely not possible with a simple driver switch.  It just can't do it.  Like putting a square peg in a round hole.

[Zacam]

It is possible for older hardware to support newer OpenGL.

There are cards that were created before OpenGL 2 was finalized that now have OpenGL 2 Support in their drivers. Same with OpenGL 3.

The issue is mapping how the OpenGL operates within the hardware and to what exent the extensions are supportable by the processing capability of the GPU and memory transfer.

So it is not un-feasable for a OpenGL 1.2 file (as a microupdate between two, vs from Open GL 1 to 2) too provide some operation, hence why I suggested it.

[chief1983]

Ok so it's like putting a square peg through a round hole, you can't do it without cutting the corners off the peg first

[Rapsodius]

Mmmm... quite interesting stuff in here.

D3D and 3.6.9 are discarded, mediavps are no more and 3.6.10 is possibly in the ways of strange driver manipulations...

Could you post some rough guidelines about opengl 'hacking' and how to change the drivers without fooling the machine and making it CRASH?

[OFFTOPIC mode on]
What in the hell are all those 'mom' that suddenly appeared in the middle of all the posts? (and not specifically on this thread only)
[OFFTOPIC mode off]

[TopAce]

It's an (silly) April Fool's joke. It will go away soon, hopefully.

[chief1983]

I don't think any amount of hacking is going to make it run on that hardware, I'm sorry.

[Rapsodius]

It is possible for older hardware to support newer OpenGL.

There are cards that were created before OpenGL 2 was finalized that now have OpenGL 2 Support in their drivers. Same with OpenGL 3.

The issue is mapping how the OpenGL operates within the hardware and to what exent the extensions are supportable by the processing capability of the GPU and memory transfer.

So it is not un-feasable for a OpenGL 1.2 file (as a microupdate between two, vs from Open GL 1 to 2) too provide some operation, hence why I suggested it.

Oh yes! I got it, I'll try it first and see if that works, on the page I linked on a previous post said that was just the DRIVERS that didn't support 1.2 version, not the hardware so getting drivers (and changing opengl) for another intel card may work

EDIT: I ripped the OpenGL drivers of a newer chipset and integrated them into my actual drivers, however that didn't do the trick.

Perhaps i'm not doing things the right way.

Zacam: When you talked about opengl files on fs2 dir, what files were you talking about? opengl32 and glu32? or the intel drivers?

[Zacam]

A few ways to handle this.

Install regular Intel driver to the system, place an updated OpenGL (from a newer driver) into the FS2 dir. This has almost (but some possibility) no chance of success, so don't be discouraged if it doesn't work.

Convince newer drivers to recognize and install themselves for your card. This requires some INF editing, and will result in windows complaining that the drivers are not digitally signed. Not usually a big deal, but choosing the right drivers to "convince" can be irksome sometimes.

There are some other more esoteric things that can be done, though if it gets to that point, it would simply be a lot easier to shell out for a new card. I'm thinking about setting up something like a donation drive to help people acquire "bare minimum" cards that will do the job, since I really want to see more people enjoying FSO and all it's TC's and Mods/Campaigns rather than miles of postings about how "feature X is great if only it would run on my pos".

And to address about the OpenGL and GLU32 files, while those are useful, they generally don't do much good without something to interface between them and the graphics driver, as (as I understand it) those are simple libraries of what OpenGL is and does, not really on how to use and display it.

[Rapsodius]

I think I did well too many inf hacking and even the catalog! When I tried the OpenGL thing on my computer I just stickied intel opengl driver files iglicd32.dll and igldev32.dll from a newer card onto the previous for my current card that where named different, so i needed to open the cat file with an hex editor and replaced carefully the filename of both files, so what I really did was to put the OpenGL drivers from the new card at disposal for ALL windows, not only fso, so pasting the drivers on fso folder won't really do anything on that state.

However, I know that I did something the wrong way since now I lost all opengl acceleration, and even worse, I can't install any display drivers over my hacked drivers, I open the Add/remove hw wiz and when it finishes the following appears on the last screen:

windows can't install the driver (...) the following error occured: "The system could not find the specified file"

or something like that, that happens anytime I want to install other driver!
I should say that in the error message, it doesn't says what file it's talking about, sounds strange

[Rapsodius]

Well since it has been a time since I last posted, time to say:

This was like way too much for a simple problem, i now decided to use 3.6.9 and d3d, however I would be glad if there is a workaround for the beam crashes. No more hacking and dealing with obscure parts of windows. Just a fix for a ¿simple? problem

[chief1983]

The simple problem is that it simply isn't designed to run on that hardware, and the simple solution is to get some form of dedicated graphics card that's better than the onboard.