Using software rendering

[CZerta]

Hi there.
I'm bloody desperate newbie in graphic programming and I need help. My graphic card support only OpenGL 2.1 and GLSL 1.2 and I need to use some functionality of newer GLSL, so I wanted to use mesa and its software rendering. I tried to set environment variables, change packages, but whatever I did, it throw error

GLSL 1.30 is not supported. Supported versions are: 1.00 ES, 1.10, and 1.20

Probably it's some my idiocy, but it's for my university project, deadline in coming and as I said, I'm desperate now
I use Debian wheezy and its official mesa packages.
Thanks for any help...

[Kano]

Simple Nvidia GeForce G210 cards only cost around 20€ + shipping, whats the big deal to buy a new one? What's your current card?

[CZerta]

Intel Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics, I'm working on my laptop

[archibald]

I don't think mesa's software rendering supports anything above OpenGL 2.1. Is it possible for you to create a script that runs a program and collects results? That way other people could run it on OpenGL 3.0+ capable hardware for you. When is your deadline?

[droste]

I don't think mesa's software rendering supports anything above OpenGL 2.1. Is it possible for you to create a script that runs a program and collects results? That way other people could run it on OpenGL 3.0+ capable hardware for you. When is your deadline?

There's no OGL 3.0 but GLSL 1.3, at least with latest mesa:

$ LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 glxinfo
[...]
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on softpipe
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.2-devel (git-12c0cce)
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
[...]

[curaga]

Softpipe supports that already in Mesa 8.0.

OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on softpipe
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 8.0.3
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30

[ChrisXY]

I want to add a general question:

How do you choose which driver to use? I compiled mesa with --with-dri-drivers=i915,i965,swrast --with-gallium-drivers=swrast but when I do LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 I get llvmpipe instead of softpipe.

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.2, 256 bits)
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.2-devel (git-b63b301)
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL extensions:

I thought that maybe DRAW_USE_LLVM=0 would maybe make it not use llvmpipe but it doesn't (it certainly does something, glxgears gets much less fps when draw_use_llvm is set to 0).

In /etc/xorg/modules/dri I only have dummy_drv_video.so i915_dri.la i915_dri.so i965_dri.la i965_dri.so swrast_dri.la swrast_dri.so.
So maybe I don't quite understand what softpipe ans swrast exactly is. Is softpipe included in swrast? Why do I get llvmpipe even though LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose shows that /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/swrast_dri.so is used? Is llvmpipe also included in swrast? Configure says " Driver dirs: galahad identity llvmpipe noop rbug softpipe trace" so it should have been built I guess?

[Calinou]

Simple Nvidia GeForce G210 cards only cost around 20€ + shipping, whats the big deal to buy a new one? What's your current card?

Any graphics card with DDR3 is a scam...

[curaga]

@ChrisXY

Use GALLIUM_DRIVER to select between llvmpipe and softpipe.

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 GALLIUM_DRIVER=softpipe glxinfo


What I don't know is how to choose between swrast (classic sw renderer) and softpipe, but swrast is pretty dead nowadays.

[ChrisXY]

Thanks, that does the trick:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 GALLIUM_DRIVER=softpipe glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on softpipe
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.2-devel (git-b63b301)
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30

I had read this documentation page: http://www.mesa3d.org/envvars.html
And this was not on there.