System Preferences
GenesisII uses OpenGL to perform 3D rendering. This is the rendering system of choice for professional graphic applications. It is important that OpenGL is set up correctly on your system for GenesisII to give optimal results.

To alter OpenGL settings select Preferences from the System menu and select the OpenGL version you require from the dialog box. Note that changes cannot be made if there is a rendering window open.

OpenGL Drivers
GenesisII allows you to choose which set of OpenGL drivers you will use. GenesisII was developed using the Silicon Graphics (SGI) implementation in software. There are several different software OpenGL implementations available as well as numerous hardware implementations for 3D graphic accelerator cards. The SGI implementation has the advantage that it fully supports the complete set of OpenGL commands - other implementations often fail to implement some functions, contain bugs, or (for 'consumer' level 3D cards) are often optimised for speed at the expense of accuracy and give unsatisfactory results.

• SGI Software OpenGL: The SGI OpenGL dlls (opengl.dll and glu.dll) are included with the GenesisII distribution and installed into the GenesisII directory. If the SGI implementation is selected it will be used even if you have a hardware 3D graphics card.
• Hardware/Microsoft OpenGL: Microsoft distributed a software version of OpenGL with later releases of Windows95, Windows98 and Windows NT4 (opengl32.dll and glu32.dll). These dlls are replaced by vendor specific dlls if a 3D graphics card is installed. If you have a hardware graphics card it is worthwhile checking the rendering quality available as drawing speeds can be increased by up to 50%. However if you see problems such as poor surface definition (in either overlay of fractal mode) or missing vegetation, clouds or models then the 3D card drivers are most likely at fault.

OpenGL Rendering Protocol
These parameters determine how OpenGL will draw to your screen. By default OpenGL will render in memory, copying the image every few seconds to the rendering window. This protocol is robust and rarely suffers from compatibility problems with other software or hardware on the system. Alternatively you can render directly to the rendering window, this is slightly faster as time is not spent copying images, but on some systems may fail to work properly due to software or hardware conflicts.

• Render direct to window: When unchecked (the default) OpenGL will render in memory. Because rendering directly to a window is slightly faster and provides better visual feedback you are advised to try setting this feature on. If you subsequently suffer from refresh or other rendering problems revert to the default.
• Refresh rate: Only enabled if Render direct to window is unchecked, this determines how often the memory image is copied to the rendering window. Caution! - because this action takes a significant amount of time you are advised not to set this value to low, especially on slower machines where it may be possible to 'lock out' rendering because the system spends all available time copying from memory to the rendering window.

Global Paths
Most paths and similar parameters in GenesisII are project-specific. At present only the Templates path is common to all projects and is altered in this dialog.