Shader support for Software Renderer?

If you are a new Irrlicht Engine user, and have a newbie-question, this is the forum for you. You may also post general programming questions here.
Post Reply
sunnystormy
Posts: 105
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2014 2:32 am
Location: Washington, D.C.
Contact:

Shader support for Software Renderer?

Post by sunnystormy »

I wanted to know if it was possible to use GLSL with the Software Renderer? I'm working on a project that may not have access to a GPU, but wanted to see if it was still possible to get shaders to run?

Please let me know. :)
My blog: http://fsgdp.wordpress.com "The Free Software Game Development Pipeline"
hendu
Posts: 2600
Joined: Sat Dec 18, 2010 12:53 pm

Re: Shader support for Software Renderer?

Post by hendu »

Not with the irr sw device. For that, you need a software GL implementation, of which Mesa has four (swrast, softpipe, llvmpipe, swr). They can be used even without a display, and on any OS, though most users are on Linux so if you're on Windows/other, it may need some work.
Mel
Competition winner
Posts: 2292
Joined: Wed May 07, 2008 11:40 am
Location: Granada, Spain

Re: Shader support for Software Renderer?

Post by Mel »

It would be really one tough task to add a shader renderers for the software drivers XD Perhaps it would be interesting to have a driver built upon a software GL, i think i've seen a video of a MESA implementation running on the ancient MS-DOS... And perhaps in the end the diference would be which library are you linking to.
"There is nothing truly useless, it always serves as a bad example". Arthur A. Schmitt
hendu
Posts: 2600
Joined: Sat Dec 18, 2010 12:53 pm

Re: Shader support for Software Renderer?

Post by hendu »

It's several million lines of code, and completely outside the app - you can run the same GL app against a hw or sw driver. So wouldn't make sense to have at irr driver level.
Post Reply