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Asked: 2026-05-11T14:54:08+00:00

I’ve been thinking about starting a new graphics project and I want to use

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I’ve been thinking about starting a new graphics project and I want to use Java. Java has wrappers for all of the relevant GL functionality but I wonder how many people, including casual users, actually have decent GL drivers installed. By decent, I mean somewhat stable and fairly new (GL 1.5 support would probably do although the GLSL support that comes with 2.0 would be great). I could DirectX, even with Java, but I pretty much hate it and this project is supposed to be ‘fun’. Also, I like the at least near-cross-platformedness of GL. So, anyone know of any non-imaginary stats on what percentage of Windows users have the drivers to run a GL app?

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  1. The Steam Hardware Survey is probably the best and most detailed source for info about what gamers have. Accurate statistics for the general population will be harder to come by. Instead, you should look at this in terms of how recent you want the graphics hardware. For example, any ATI chip from the R300 series (Radeon 9550+) onward supports OpenGL 2.0. On the NVidia side, any GeForce 6000+ series chip will support OpenGL 2.0, and their predecessors, the FX series, almost supported OpenGL 2.0. The R300 series and the FX series were both introduced in 2002, so if you know what portion of your target market is using a PC from 2003 or later, you’ll have a fairly good idea of how widespread OpenGL 2.0 support is among users with discrete graphics.

    If you want to support integrated graphics (which are the largest segment of the market, but aren’t particularly common with those who are serious about graphics of any kind) your users will need at least a GMA X3000 for hardware acceleration of OpenGL 2.0 features, which means their system has to be from 2006 or later.

    If you’re interested in support on other operating systems, any Intel Mac will support OpenGL 2.0 with software fallbacks, and hardware acceleration whenever the chip would support it under Windows. On Linux, any system with Mesa 7 or later (June 2007 or later) will support OpenGL 2.0 software rendering. Hardware acceleration is less reliable, but there are decent open-source drivers for ATI chips from R300 and newer.

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