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Is is possible to do Open GL development and run programs on a computer with out a graphics card? (e.g. my netbook running Ubuntu)
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Sure. Many software only implementations of OpenGL exist. Check out the Mesa project at http://www.mesa3d.org/ for one of the most popular. There are parts of the shading language not fully supported, and it tends to lag the standard a bit in general, but that is the case of all software API emulators.
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.
CPU-GPU Cooperation The architecture of OpenGL is based on a client-server model. An application program written to use the OpenGL API is the "client" and runs on the CPU. The implementation of the OpenGL graphics engine (including the GLSL shader programs you will write) is the "server" and runs on the GPU.
Update This was many years ago, the link is not available anymore, and there are probably newer, better, builds now.
Yes, you can use MESA.
For your convenience, I've compiled it in both 32- and 64bit at:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9496269/mesa.zip
Simply put them where your executable file is located.
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Sure. Many software only implementations of OpenGL exist. Check out the Mesa project at http://www.mesa3d.org/ for one of the most popular. There are parts of the shading language not fully supported, and it tends to lag the standard a bit in general, but that is the case of all software API emulators. Its still very full featured and can be used in production code for many common uses.
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