Big Problem!

There is absolutely no help in the user forums. Every post has a problem and then more replies saying they have the same problem and no one helping these people at all. It does you all no good to keep designing more openGL apps if no one can run them. I found one reply on the whole first page with some sort of help outside of change your drivers (which hasn’t helped most ppl). Please come give us some help. Thx.

I don’t know if you’re talking about the OpenGL beginner’s and advanced boards, or if you’re just talking about the end-user boards. I can’t vouch for the end-user boards because I don’t ever go there but the two development boards, I must say, are the best message boards I’ve ever seen about helping each other out and being courteous. As for demanding the OpenGL developers to help solve end-user problems, there’s not much we can do to help aside from say, “install new drivers” or contact the vendor of your board. What else would you like us to do!?!?!? What else is there? I certainly can’t think of anything. You’re rant makes it plain that you yourself must not understand much about the way modern PC graphics work these days. Drivers are EVERYTHING on the end-user side of things. If there’s a problem, it’s either the fault of whoever wrote the drivers, or the fault of the developer of the software that’s using the drivers. Now, yes, that does involve us developers, but if someone’s having trouble running Half-Life in OpenGL mode, how can we help? All we can tell you is what changes you could make to the sourecode of the game to make it compatible. Do you have the sourcecode to Half-Life? I DON’T THINK SO! So once again, what do you want from us? Besides, you’re not going to get very far posting to the beginner’s board anyway. If you want help with something, go to someone with experience, not a beginner. I’m sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, but I simply won’t allow someone to berate this wonderful community that has been so helpful, friendly, and courteous to me and has helped me with SO MANY problems. These are good people and have helped more people in more ways than you can imagine. I won’t let you insult them.

Furthermore, I suggest that you’d get more help asking the maker of your video card and/or chipset or, if the problem is game/application specific, ask them. These are the people who have some answers. In the VAST majority of circumstances, we do not. Unless, ofcourse, you’re having a problem with a game we happen to have written. :slight_smile:

I’m talking about the user boards. Of course ppl get the latest drivers, read the manuals, contact manufacturers, etc. But when that isn’t doing it we look to the “help” forums. And you summed it up nicely when you said “I can’t vouch for the end-user boards because I don’t ever go there…” No one who could help goes there. Why was that board created? Ppl come with problems that they can’t solve and get no answers other than “update your drivers” or “contact tech support”. That is what I am saying. Where’s the luv:P

Geeze Punchey, what do you mean you can’t help me? I have a Super fast machine with a 486DX66, and great EGA gfx, and I can’t get openGL to work!! HELP!!

Kidding aside, what app/game? is giving you problems? What is your hardware, and what does all this have to do with PROGRAMMING, which gasp this message board is all about?

If you have a old card, stop crying and get a new one, you can get a TNT2 for under $60, you can get a Rage 128 for $50…or as Punchey said, get new drivers for your card, and blame THEM.

By the way it wasn’t my intention to berate anyone; I was wondering if no one can help than why is there a “help” forum? Sorry for the tone of the message.

I don’t want to speak for the others here, but my problem is, that I don’t play games so much (though I play counterstrike quite a bit… ). If I program something, I play around with it until it works on my machine. That is developer-side bug fixing. But I don’t play around with the drivers to get it working.
The difference is, that you want to play around with your windoze installation or some drivers to get it working, which is an attempt from the other side. For me, this explains why I can’t be of any help on the user boards. Because of that I don’t go there very often and may miss some rare posts where I could be of help.
Maybe the commercial game developers should create boards or faq’s where known problems are listed.

Well I was just hoping that you high and mighty programmers would come over to the user forum and help us idiots be able to run these awesome apps you create. With my P3 800, Geforce DDR, 256K PC133 system or my T-Bird 1Ghz, Evil Kyro 64MB, 256K PC133 the results are the same. Any appl is too dark to see even with all the newest drivers, gamma peaked out, and AGP 1X. I have been through all the tech supports, user manuals, etc. Nothing. So after reading a bunch of nothing on the “User help” forum I came here and asked if someone would stop by and give us some help. I guess it’s too much for you hotshots to get off your pedestals and help us lowly ppl who are your potential consumer base learn how to use OpenGL, which your products will based on anyway. Sorry to have bothered you.

Sorry about that Micheal. Was not directed at you at all. You posted while I was ranting away on my keyboard. I appreciate your response and do understand ppl don’t have all the answers.

ok Hope you’ll find the answer anyway.

My guess is that your problem has nothing to do with “using” OpenGL. As I said, it has something to do with how your games were coded (sorry, I didn’t code your game), or how the drivers were coded. That is, if D3D does work. If D3D doesn’t work any better, then it probably has nothing to do with OpenGL. Honestly, I know you don’t like hearing this but, if it happens accross all games and OpenGL apps you use and in nothing non-OpenGL, it MUST have something to do with the drivers. I cannot think of any other possibility.

LOL, you do not like hearing it is a driver problem, but that IS the problem. Why don’t you increase the contrast and or brightness of the monitor?

Better yet, hit usenet (use deja.com) and do a search for “gamma geforce” or “gamma kyro”, and I am sure you will get lots of hits.

There are also 3rd party utilites that boost the gamma, refresh rates, and whatever else. There are also MANY Nvidia fan web sties (use google.com and search.) you can goto and your question will most likely be answered, since that is what those sites are there for. Like I said, unless someone on this board made the game, or have the same game/hardware as you, then all we can do is say either “nothing”, or rant. :stuck_out_tongue:

Now THAT’S what I’m talking about:P Thx guys I definately have a better grasp after reading your responses. I wish there were ppl browsing the user forums wanting to help as you all have. Incidentally I found out some things. OpenGL drivers stink for virtually every card out right now and will until more games are made specifically for OpenGL. Also if I turn my monitor all the way up I can just barely see enough to play but there is a white haze over the whole thing and it just sucks. Have no problems with D3D, just can’t use it for some games that I would love to play. I will get right on those suggestions. Thx a million

Anyway, I had a similar problem and it was my monitor, I think it was ‘burned’. Ive changed it and now I can play all the games without any problem…

Well I can play all the games as long as they support D3D. My monitor is only 8 weeks old so I still have 4 weeks before the warranty is up and it burns out

I think your wrong. Only some cards have bad opengl drivers. Take anything from S3, or NEC, and voodoo 1/2, (well I guess those do not count), and it seems to me, that only Nvidia, and ATI rage 128/radeon have good openGL drivers.

For D3D/DX, some of the drivers are worse than opengl, but that is another story.

1sikbITCH: Just a suggestion, but if you’re looking for the ‘high and mighty’ programmers who wrote the games you’re trying to play, you might have more success if you didn’t target the forum called “OpenGL coding: BEGINNERS”. A good chunk of us can’t even draw a sphere right <g>.