All new Geometry Games software uses the standard cross-platform OpenGL graphics library, which in turn uses your computer’s graphics circuitry to draw the games. A piece of software called an OpenGL driver forms the bridge between OpenGL and the graphics hardware. On home computers this all happens automatically and you never have to think about it. Computer manufacturers like Dell, HP and Gateway pre-install a high-quality OpenGL driver on every machine they ship, so if you bought a standard PC, the geometry games should run fast and well. On lab computers, though, you probably installed Windows yourself, perhaps from your own slipstreamed disk including WinXP, SP2, and whatever other software you deploy. If that’s the case, please read on…
Microsoft Windows XP comes with an OpenGL driver that ignores your computer’s good, fast graphics circuitry and instead draws the games using “software rendering”, which can be 200 times slower, too slow to be usable. If you installed Windows XP directly from a Microsoft Windows disk (or a slipstreamed disk based on it) or downloaded a driver from Microsoft Update, you got Microsoft’s crummy driver.
To correct the problem, you need to download a good driver from the web site of the company that manufactured your graphics adapter. To determine who manufactured your graphics adapter, go to Start : Control Panel : System : Hardware : Device Manager, click on the ‘+’ next to your computer’s name to see the list of hardware types, and then click on the ‘+’ next to Display Adapters to see what graphics circuitry your computer has. Most likely you will have Intel Integrated Graphics, an ATI graphics card or an NVIDIA graphics card.
Intel Integrated Graphics. Say, for sake of discussion, you find your computer has Intel Integrated Graphics 82865G. You would then go to Intel’s download page, choose Graphics from the menu on the left-hand side of the page, select your particular graphics controller (82865G in our sample case), and follow the instructions.
ATI. If you have an ATI graphics card, go to ATI’s site, choose Drivers & Software from the menu stretching across the top of the page, choose your operating system, and follow your nose to find a driver (most likely the Catalyst driver) for your card (most likely some sort of Radeon). ATI makes life simple by supplying a single Catalyst driver that works with all Radeon cards.
NVIDIA. If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, go to NVIDIA’s site, choose Download Drivers from the menu stretching across the top of the page, choose Graphics Driver, select your particular model, select your particular operating system, click Go and follow the instructions to download and install the driver.