Re: IDL crashing badly on my solaris 8 system

[david(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Jonathan Joseph writes:
 
> Well, I had the notion that it might possibly have something
> to do with hardware rendering (which I didn't realize was
> turned on by default).
> 
> Once I figured out how to toggle to sofware rendering
> (in IDLDE preferences) BINGO,  it worked beautifully.
> 
> So, 2 questions:
> 
> 1) is there a similar way to turn off hardware rendering
>    from the IDL prompt (not in IDLDE mode)?

There is no way to turn hardware rendering off
from the IDL command line, to my knowledge. But
you can select software rendering on your draw
widget with the RENDERER=1 keyword.
 
> 2) what can I do to get hardware rendering working on this machine?  

Get a decent graphics card.

> and is it worth it?

Hard to say. 95% of the craziness in object graphics
programs can be tied directly to the hardware rendering.
On programs I write that are suppose to run everywhere,
I always render in software. Surprisingly enough, for
a great many things, this is even faster than hardware!

If your object graphics program does things that *can*
be speeded up in hardware (lots of polygon rendering,
I think), then it may be worth it to you to upgrade
your graphics card. But just be sure your boss upgrades
hers as well, or your cool demo is likely to fall flat
on its face at the worst possible time. :-(

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
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