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So I have been wanting to venture into the world of Graphics programming lately. After hours of learning how to use the OpenGL Unofficial SDK elements, I was finally able to figure out what I needed to do.

Small problem though: My Intel Graphics Card ("HD") can not support OpenGL beyond 2.1.

The book I am reading teaches through OpenGL 3.3 and after from what I can tell. I have heard this book is really good and I want to keep using it, but it seems like my hardware has destroyed my chances, and any other books that I can find are very recent, or were made in the 90s and are very outdated. I am very frustrated, so my question is is there any way I can create modern OpenGL applications on my current setup?

I may be able to get a new Graphics Card, but I am not sure, so any advice would be wonderful.

Colton
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2 Answers2

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Intel HD Graphics has always been behind supporting new OpenGL extensions.

Your best bet is to get a graphics card from one of the major vendors (Nvidia or AMD).

Xavier Ho
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  • That is what I thought, quick question, is any graphics card compatible with any computer? I am on an Asus Laptop, so could I just buy a Nividia card and install it? – Colton Nov 26 '11 at 23:28
  • @Colton: No. Laptops generally do not have components that you can just buy and install. You might get away with dropping some new RAM or something, but not a whole videocard. You'd need a new computer for that. – Nicol Bolas Nov 26 '11 at 23:52
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Well if your hardware supports only OpenGL 2.1, just use OpenGL 2.1, whats the problem with that? Of course you can use OpenGL.

cli_hlt
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  • I can get some examples to work yes, but I know it is somewhat outdated. – Colton Nov 26 '11 at 23:37
  • Well with an old graphics card you cannot expect to have the latest features up and running at maximum performance, right? For the purpose of learning how graphics works at all it should be quite good enough, shouldn't it? – cli_hlt Nov 26 '11 at 23:39
  • It is not that old of a graphics card so I expected it to be able to run modern day applications, it sucks that Intel is so behind with OpenGL. I want to be able to start off right with the modern features, and since any other book I have found has been from the mid-nineties, they will be extremely outdated. – Colton Nov 26 '11 at 23:47
  • If you want to start of with the latest features, get the latest NVIDIA or AMD graphics card just to find out that it will be also outdated at least 6 months after you bought it ;) Computer Graphics is around way longer than the latest features are (btw games companies wouldn't sell a single copy if the just targeted the latest hw). My recommendation is first learn how computer graphics works. Therefore your Intel card is good enough. When you got the basics, advance - step by step. – cli_hlt Nov 27 '11 at 00:05
  • You can use the GL3.3 tutorial you got - the biggest difference is that you can only use GLSL shaders version 1.10. You also don't have a few functions, but chances are you won't need them. – Xavier Ho Nov 27 '11 at 08:03