Copyright: Copyright (C) 1998 SciTech Software, Inc.
Citation: Copyright © 1997 SciTech Software, Inc.


Introduction

This section provides an overview of what the SciTech GLDirect is, and provides an overview of the features of SciTech GLDirect.


About SciTech GLDirect

SciTech GLDirect is a utility package that allows games and applications written to use the OpenGL version 1.2 or earlier API’s to run on Microsoft Direct3D 6.0. SciTech GLDirect can run using the Direct3D software emulation layers, or via the Direct3D hardware device drivers provided by your manufacturer.


Benefits for Windows 98 and Windows 95

In some cases it is difficult to track down functioning OpenGL drivers for your graphics card, and for some older hardware devices, the hardware manufacturer may never implement OpenGL drivers. However every shipping consumer 3D graphics, comes provided with DirectX 5 or DirectX 6 compatible drivers. Many older graphics cards have shipped with earlier versions of DirectX, and you can usually download DirectX 5 or DirectX 6 compatible drivers from the hardware vendors web site.

By combining the power of OpenGL with the wide availability of Direct3D hardware drivers, SciTech GLDirect enables just about any OpenGL application or game to run on Direct3D compatible hardware under the Windows 98 or Windows 95 Operating Systems.


System Requirements

SciTech GLDirect requires:

•	A Pentium or later or compatible processor

•	Windows 98 or Windows 95

•	A 100% DirectX 6 compatible 3D graphics card

In order to run using hardware acceleration, SciTech GLDirect requires a graphics card that is 100% DirectX 6 compatible with 100% DirectX 6 graphics drivers installed. In many cases SciTech GLDirect may run well with older hardware, or with drivers from earlier releases of DirectX but your results may vary. Sometimes older hardware may have limitations that will not allow the latest applications and games to run, and unfortunately this type of problem cannot be solved with software.

Note that Windows NT is not currently supported because Microsoft does not support Direct3D on Windows NT.


Obtaining the Latest Release

SciTech Software recommends that you use the latest release of SciTech GLDirect. The best places to download new versions of SciTech GLDirect are from the following locations:

World Wide Web	: http://www.scitechsoft.com

FTP	: ftp://ftp.scitechsoft.com

You can also contact SciTech Software and order an update to be sent via postal mail for a nominal fee.

If you want to be automatically notified via email when new versions of SciTech GLDirect are released, you can log onto the SciTech Software web page at http://www.scitechsoft.com and add yourself to the mailing list.


Installation & Setup

This section provides information about installing SciTech GLDirect onto your system, what happens during the installation process and how to remove SciTech GLDirect if it does not fit your needs.


Installing SciTech GLDirect for the First Time

SciTech GLDirect must be installed using either Windows 98 or Windows 95. To install, simply follow these steps:

1.	Insert the SciTech GLDirect installation media into the appropriate drive. Note that the CD-ROM version may not be available.

Floppy Disk: Choose Start, then select Run, then type a:\INSTALL.EXE.

CD-ROM: Choose Start, then select Run, then type x:\SETUP.EXE (where x: is the letter of the drive with the SciTech GLDirect CD-ROM).

Then press the Enter key to begin the installation process.

The installation program will start, and you will be presented with an introductory screen containing information about the product and an option to view the release notes. Next you will be presented with a screen containing the Software License Agreement. Please read and understand this agreement fully, and then check the ‘I Agree’ box when you are done. Once you agree to the Software License Agreement, you, you will have an option to check the SciTech Software web page for updates to the software. Then, you can simply follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation of SciTech GLDirect.


Configuring Applications to use SciTech GLDirect

When SciTech GLDirect is first installed, you will be presented with the ‘SciTech GLDirect Configuration’ dialog box. You should ensure that ‘SciTech GLDirect’ is selected as the active driver and the rendering option is set to ‘Direct3D’. This dialog box will also list all attached 2D DirectDraw and Direct3D devices in your system. Choose the device you wish to use for SciTech GLDirect output as the DirectDraw device. If you only have one display adapter in your system, only one device will be listed. If you have more then one display adapter (for instance if you have a secondary Voodoo graphics adapter, or a multi-monitor configuration under Windows 98), your secondary adapters will also be listed. If you have a Voodoo graphics adapter SciTech GLDirect should automatically select this device first, but if not you probably want to be using your Voodoo graphics adapter as the DirectDraw device. Once you have chosen the DirectDraw device to use, make sure you have selected ‘Microsoft Direct3D Hardware acceleration through Direct3D HAL’ as the Direct3D device to use. If you select any other option SciTech GLDirect will be running in software only mode and will be very slow.

Once SciTech GLDirect is installed and configured, you need to make sure that your software applications are configured to use it. Most OpenGL based games allow you to select either a chipset specific ‘mini-gl’ driver, such as for 3Dfx Voodoo graphics hardware, or to select the ‘System’ or ‘Default’ OpenGL driver. SciTech GLDirect is installed as the ‘Default’ driver in the system, so you want to choose this option in your game to ensure that it works correctly. Most games will re-start the game before selecting the new OpenGL driver.


Determining if SciTech GLDirect is running

Once you have started your game and you are running on SciTech GLDirect, you can verify you are running on SciTech GLDirect by checking the renderer string information returned by the OpenGL driver. Many OpenGL based games (such as GLQuake and Quake2) have a console that displays status messages. Quake engine based games will list the renderer strings returned by the OpenGL driver, and when GLDirect is running the strings should read as follows:

GL_VENDOR: SciTech Software, Inc.
GL_VERSION: 1.2 Mesa 3.1
GL_RENDERER: GLDirect xxx

Where the ‘xxx’ is a string that represents the graphics hardware currently configured by SciTech GLDirect for use. For instance on a 3Dfx Voodoo graphics card this string is:

‘GLDirect Voodoo Graphics 3D Accelerator’


Disabling SciTech GLDirect

You do not need to uninstall SciTech GLDirect from your system in order to disable it. The most common requirement for disabling SciTech GLDirect is to allow your existing OpenGL drivers to be used in place of GLDirect. If you need to turn off SciTech GLDirect, use the following method:

Disabling via the Configuration Dialog Box

You can disable all SciTech GLDirect functions by selecting ‘Microsoft OpenGL’ as the active driver in the ‘SciTech GLDirect Configuration’ dialog box. This will effectively disable GLDirect in the system and you will be running on your existing OpenGL drivers. Note that unless you have hardware OpenGL drivers installed, this option may be disabled or may run your applications extremely slowly.


Uninstalling SciTech GLDirect

SciTech GLDirect comes with an uninstall program to allow you to automatically uninstall all the files in the product. In order to remove SciTech GLDirect, simply click on the Uninstall program icon, located in the SciTech GLDirect Program Group in Windows. You will be asked to verify that you indeed want to remove the software from your system. If you select yes, then the software, program groups and icons will be removed from your system, and your original (if any) OpenGL drivers will be restored.


Registering SciTech GLDirect

SciTech Software allows you to use SciTech GLDirect for 21 days before you are required to purchase a license for the software or uninstall it from your system. If you have an unregistered trial version of SciTech GLDirect, you have determined that it solves your problems and you would like to continue to use it, you should purchase a license from SciTech Software.


Why You Should Purchase SciTech GLDirect

By purchasing a registered copy of SciTech GLDirect, you will be supporting SciTech Software so that SciTech can continue to offer new, innovative products that support your graphics card. This trial version is based on a “try before you buy” concept, but it is not free software. You are required to purchase the software if you continue to use it past the 21 day evaluation period.


Electronic Registration by Credit Card

To register via the internet, log onto the SciTech Software web site, http://www.scitechsoft.com. You may then proceed to use your Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover card to purchase a license for SciTech GLDirect. Within two weeks (slightly longer for international orders), you will receive your personal registration code and installation media via postal mail. When you get your personal registration code, install the retail version and enter your registration code (see: Entering your Registration Code) and you will have a fully registered version.


Telephone Registration by Credit Card

To register over the phone by credit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover), you can call SciTech Software’s toll free number (1-800-486-4823) in the US and Canada, or (530) 894-8400 for other locations, and SciTech Software can give you a temporary registration code over the phone. Within two weeks (slightly longer for international orders), you will receive your personal registration code and installation media via mail. When you get your personal registration code, install the retail version and enter your registration code (see: Entering your Registration Code) and you will have a fully registered version.


Registration by Mail or FAX

To register by mail or fax, simply print out the order form from the SciTech GLDirect Start Menu Group. If you mail in your registration, make sure to include a check or money order for the proper amount or include your credit card number, cardholder’s name and expiration date. If you fax your order in, make sure you also include your credit card number, cardholder’s name and expiration date.


Entering your Registration Code

Once you get your registration code and installation media from SciTech Software, you will need to register the installed product. You can register it by bringing up the ‘SciTech GLDirect Configuration’ dialog box, which is accessible from the start menu group into which you installed SciTech GLDirect. When you first open the configuration dialog box (if the product evaluation period has less than 5 days remaining) or click the ‘About’ button, click the ‘Register…’ button to start the registration process. You will be asked to enter your name and registration code. Enter your name and the registration code that you received from SciTech Software exactly as given to you on your registration card and hit ‘ENTER’. The product will be registered.

Note that you do not need to reboot your system or re-install SciTech GLDirect in order to register it.


What Happens if You Don’t Register?

SciTech GLDirect will not “self-destruct” or destroy anything on your system if you do not register it. If the 21 day evaluation period ends before you get a chance to register, your version of SciTech GLDirect will be automatically disabled.  If you decide to register after your 21 day evaluation period expires, the product will be completely re-enabled with all available features.

If you decide not to purchase the software, you are expected to uninstall the product and discontinue using it. See the section on uninstalling the product for more information on how to do this.


Using the Control Panel

SciTech GLDirect includes a Configuration Control Panel to allow you to control all aspects of SciTech GLDirect. The SciTech GLDirect Control Panel is the centerpiece for controlling SciTech GLDirect, and allows you to see the change the current hardware configuration.

Figure 1 shows a typical SciTech GLDirect Control Panel Display.

Figure 1 - SciTech GLDirect Configuration Dialog Box


DirectDraw Devices

The DirectDraw devices list box will list all available display devices installed in your system. In the example shown in Figure 1, the user has a Matrox Millennium PCI adapter as their primary display adapter, and a 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics 3D accelerator as their secondary adapter (connected using the VGA pass-through connector). Since the Matrox Millennium is not a good 3D accelerator for games, the Voodoo Graphics 3D Accelerator is chosen as the active DirectDraw driver.

Selecting the DirectDraw device in the control panel determines to which graphics device SciTech GLDirect will send it’s output.

Note that you must click ‘OK’ before the change will take effect and become permanent.


Direct3D Devices

The Direct3D devices list box lists all the Direct3D devices that are attached to the selected DirectDraw device. There is usually one or two devices listed, and the first device listed is always the ‘Microsoft Direct3D RGB Software Emulation’ driver. This driver does all rendering entirely in software and will run on any DirectDraw device, however this driver is generally quite slow for games and applications intended to be used with hardware acceleration. The second device listed is usually the ‘Microsoft Direct3D Hardware Acceleration through Direct3D HAL’, which is the Direct3D device that provides hardware acceleration services to SciTech GLDirect. You should usually choose this device as the active device in the system to enable support for hardware acceleration.

About the only reason to choose a device other than the ‘Direct3D HAL’ device is to determine if there are bugs in your display drivers. If you have tried to run a particular game or application, and the results were not as you expected, you can try selecting the ‘Direct3D RGB Software Emulation’ driver instead. This will do all rendering via the software emulation libraries and should display correct output if your application is functioning correctly. Of course selecting this option generally makes the game or application run very slowly.

Note that you must click ‘OK’ before the change will take effect and become permanent.


Select Display Driver to Activate

This section of the dialog box lists two settings that you can change. The first setting is ‘SciTech GLDirect’, which selects and activates GLDirect as the active driver in the system. If you wish to temporarily disable SciTech GLDirect, you can choose ‘Microsoft OpenGL’ which will select and activate the default Microsoft OpenGL driver in the system. Unless you have hardware acceleration for Microsoft OpenGL provided by your display drivers, selecting this option is usually a bad idea because your games and applications will run extremely slowly.

Note that you must click ‘OK’ before the change will take effect and become permanent.


Rendering

The rendering settings allow you to change the way that SciTech GLDirect renders the display on your system. The first two radio buttons allow you to change the active renderer to either ‘Software’ or ‘Hardware’. You should usually select ‘Hardware’ as the active renderer. Selecting ‘Software’ will enable the Mesa Software Emulation driver, which implements the OpenGL functionality using the freely available Mesa libraries. The only reason to select the Software driver would be to determine if there are bugs in your Direct3D drivers causing problems with your application. If you have tried running your application on the Direct3D HAL or on the Direct3D RGB Software Emulation drivers and you still have problems, you can try selecting the Software driver to see if your application runs correctly with this driver.


Use Multi-Texture if available

SciTech GLDirect provides support for hardware multi-texturing on hardware devices that support this. Hardware multi-texturing can provide up to a 2x speed improvement in applications that utilize it, since advanced effects like dynamic lighting and shadows can be drawn in a single pass by the hardware. This option can be used to enable and disable support for multi-texturing in SciTech GLDirect, allowing you to determine if your application runs better with or without the multi-texture extensions.


Sync SciTech GLDirect to refresh

This option allows you to enable or disable the support for syncing SciTech GLDirect to the refresh rate of your display. When running in fullscreen or windowed modes, enabling this option should eliminate any ‘tearing’ artifacts on the screen as you move around in your 3D scene. The drawback of using this option is that is cause be a performance decrease so you might want to try running your game or application with this option disabled.


Always blt (primary only)

When running on your primary display adapter in fullscreen modes, this option allows you to force SciTech GLDirect to always draw to an offscreen memory buffer and then ‘blit’ the image to the main display. If this option is disabled, SciTech GLDirect will determine if the application is running in a fullscreen display mode and if so will enable fullscreen double buffering and page flipping. Page flipping in fullscreen modes provides the smoothest animation possible with no tearing, but it can cause a performance decrease as the update rate of your application will be locked to a multiple of the refresh rate.

Selecting ‘Always blt’ and disabling the ‘Sync GLDirect to refresh’ will provide the highest performance rendering method, but can produce unsightly tearing artifacts on the screen in some games. Choose the method that provides the best tradeoff between performance and image quality to suit your tastes.


Enable Mipmapping

SciTech GLDirect supports a hardware feature called ‘Mip-mapping’ which increases the image quality of scenes using lots of textures. This option enables you to optionally disable mip-mapping. Generally you should leave mip-mapping enabled unless this feature is causing problems in your game or application.

Note that you must click ‘OK’ before the change will take effect and become permanent.


Troubleshooting

This chapter will help you troubleshoot any problems you may be having with SciTech GLDirect as well as provide you with additional technical information.


Diagnosing Your Problem

If you are experiencing problems running SciTech GLDirect, please do the following:

1. 	Check that you have the latest, preferably DirectX 6 compliant graphics card drivers for your graphics card. To locate the drivers for your card, visit the web site for your graphics hardware vendor. You can also visit the link pages on the SciTech Software home page which connects to all known hardware vendor home pages.

2. 	Review all of the sections of this Troubleshooting chapter to see if there are any issues documented that are similar to the problem you are experiencing.

3. 	Check the Troubleshooting section and ReadMe file to ensure that your graphics card does not have known issues with SciTech GLDirect. If the problem is a known issue, please do not report it.

4. 	Check the Troubleshooting section and ReadMe file to ensure that your application/game does not have known issues with SciTech GLDirect. If the problem is a known issue, please do not report it.

5. 	Try running the sample programs that ship with SciTech GLDirect (accessible via the SciTech GLDirect Start Menu group) to determine if there is a problem with your DirectX 6 compatible drivers. If you have serious problems running the sample programs, chances are your DirectX drivers need updating. Please inform us of this (and please ensure you have downloaded and are using the absolute latest drivers before you report this problem). Also please inform your graphics hardware vendor and/or your application vendor of this compatibility problem, so we can try to work with them both to resolve it.

6. 	If all else fails and this appears to be a new, unreported problem, please go to the SciTech Software web site and fill out a SciTech GLDirect problem report. Make sure that you go into the SciTech GLDirect control panel and enable ‘Crash Proof’ debugging and ‘Info, Warnings and Errors’ in the logging and debug level sections. This will generate a log file (gldlog.log) in your application’s directory which must be attached to all problem reports.


Common Questions and Answers

If you are encountering problems with SciTech GLDirect, please carefully review this entire section and see if you can find the solution to your problem. Please also consult the 'Known Bugs and Problems' section which may mention the problem you are having.


Why Should I Replace My Existing OpenGL Driver?

You may already have an OpenGL driver from your graphics card vendor. Using SciTech GLDirect is an option that you may want to try our for a number of reasons. We are constantly adding new features to SciTech GLDirect, and our driver may provide support for new features that your vendor supplied drivers have not implemented yet. SciTech GLDirect is easy to try out and uninstall, so you have nothing to lose by trying it and seeing how it works for your hardware.


What Happens if I Don’t Purchase SciTech GLDirect?

If you don’t register SciTech GLDirect, yet continue to use it, the program will shut itself off after 21 days. You computer will not “blow up” and nothing will be erased. If you decide to purchase SciTech GLDirect, everything will be turned back on, it will load faster and you will no longer get the message asking you to purchase the software.


What Other Products Does SciTech Software Make?

SciTech Software’s other products are currently focused on applications development. SciTech Software’s developer tools include the free SciTech Multi-platform Graphics Library (MGL) with source code for writing graphical application programs for multiple Operating Systems.


Obtaining Technical Support

If your problem is not covered in this manual, you can access several resources for technical support information:

1. 	The SciTech Software Web Site (http://www.scitechsoft.com/tech.html) has the latest technical information on this product.

2. 	Post a message on SciTech GLDirect Newsgroup (news://news.scitechsoft.com/scitech.gldirect).

3. 	Fill out the Online Support Request Form on the SciTech Software web site (http://www.scitechsoft.com/tech.html).

4. 	Send email to: support@scitechsoft.com

5. 	Send a fax to: (530) 894-9069

6. 	Telephone Technical Support is available to registered users of SciTech GLDirect by calling (530) 894-8400 during normal business hours (8:30am-6:00pm Pacific Time, Monday through Friday). If you are using the trial version of SciTech GLDirect and you want telephone technical support, you can call SciTech Software and pre-register and speak to a technical support representative. If your problem can be solved, SciTech Software will process your order.

7. 	Mail a complete description of your problem to:

SciTech Software
505 Wall Street

Chico, CA 95928

ATTN: Technical Support Department


Appendix A: Developer information

This section provides information for developers about SciTech GLDirect, such as the programming tools and utilities that SciTech Software provides along with the appropriate VESA specifications that you may wish to investigate.


SciTech GLDirect programming information

For information about how to allow your programs full access to SciTech GLDirect, please log on to SciTech Software’s developer tools web page for up to the minute information, sample code, recommended books and peer support newsgroups.

To start out, you may want to try the following references:

•	SciTech Multi-platform Graphics Library (MGL)

•	Microsoft OpenGL Help Files (usually comes with most compilers)

•	OpenGL SuperBible (available from most book stores)


Distribution Licensing Information

If you are the developer of freeware, shareware or commercial product and wish to distribute a trial or linkable version of SciTech GLDirect with your product, you must sign a Software License Agreement with SciTech Software.

Please contact SciTech Software directly for software licensing information and pricing (please provide a fax number with your inquiry):

SciTech Software, Inc.

505 Wall Street

Chico, CA 95928

USA

ATTN: Distribution Licensing Department

Phone	: (530) 894-8400

Fax	: (530) 894-9069

Email	: oemsales@scitechsoft.com

See the Software License Agreement at the beginning of this manual for further software distribution information.