OpenGL on Windows 95

Question

I recently installed VC++ 6.0 on an old machine with Windows 95. On Windows 95 there is a 3D maze screensaver made with OpenGL but the computer doesn't have a 3D video card. I would like to know how I can make 3D graphics like in the 3D maze for no 3D video cards.

If you know of a good tutorial or book, I would be happy with your suggestion.

Answer 1

OpenGL, if no dedicated 3D hardware is available, can render the graphics on the CPU. You might have noticed that, while the screensaver is running, CPU usage gets pretty high. If you want to learn more about OpenGL, the I would recommend that you take a look at https://stackoverflow.com/q/62540/1103747. My personal favorite is the OpenGL Superbible. But as a suggestion, if you want to learn 3D graphics and your target OS is Windows, I think that you should study something else (WPF, DirectX, XNA, etc). Obviously you will probably want to upgrade from Windows 95.

Answer 2

Many 3D games were written with graphics provided by software. Both Open GL and Direct 3D have modes that allow for software rendering.

The original version of Half Life can run without graphics hardware and this was one of the reasons for its success.

Back when Windows 95 was current, very few machines had graphics cards with 3D accelerators and so this was how PC games worked.