[natethomas]

I've had an idea that I wanted to run by the devs. The title pretty much says it all. It seems like a lot of headaches and questions could be prevented by having XBMC check OpenGL (like it does on startup) during the installation. If OpenGL returns 1.1.01 or some other unsupported info, a message could pop up saying XBMC may not run until the latest drivers are downloaded from the manufacturer.

Does that make any sense, and would something like that be possible?

[WiSo]

Yeah should be possible. It's just not done yet
Patches are welcome.

[althekiller]

It would be best to do at app start up. The drivers could rather easily get screwed after install I'd imagine. Linux actually already runs a python script (from the shell not within XBMC) before executing and pops up a dialog if incompatibilities are found.

[Gamester17]

It would be best to do at app start up. The drivers could rather easily get screwed after install I'd imagine.

...so maybe do it in both?

Perhaps just give a pop-up that the user can choose "OK" or "Ignore" on?

[spiff]

would be neat but the problem is windows doesn't ship python, and most people do not have it installed.

[WiSo]

I used a messagebox from inside XBMC now. It needs the opengl context to be initialized in order to get the version and vendor. Hopefully it will come that far if MS drivers are installed. Reports are appreciated. Anything after r19915 should do the trick.
http://trac.xbmc.org/changeset/19915

[natethomas]

I'll recommend a release after that point to anyone in the WIN forum who says XBMC "crashes on startup," "crashes instantly," or "doesn't work."

As I figure that should be about 10 people per week, it should be tested frequently.

Many thanks!

[natethomas]

Quick update from this thread:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=39959&page=6

Originally Posted by natethomas
j33g, if you happen to read this BEFORE updating your drivers, could you install this version of XBMC?

http://www.mediafire.com/?qkxy1mody3l

This should produce a pop-up if the drivers are old or incompatible. Unfortunately, the people who might test it already have up to date drivers, so testing it is tricky.

Didn't work for me - I just updated one of my boxes to Win7 7100 and it didn't indicate anything was wrong but:

14:49:13 T:5176 M:828407808 NOTICE: GL_VENDOR = Microsoft Corporation
14:49:13 T:5176 M:828407808 NOTICE: GL_RENDERER = GDI Generic
14:49:13 T:5176 M:828407808 NOTICE: GL_VERSION = 1.1.0
14:49:13 T:5176 M:828407808 NOTICE: GL_EXTENSIONS = GL_WIN_swap_hint GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_paletted_texture

I'll hold off on updating drivers if you want to try some other tests...

-stoli-

[kareem613]

I'm getting the dialog, but I have the latest drivers installed for my video card.
What version of openGL is required?
I have 3.11.
I'm running an ATI Radeon 9000.