I would assume (without knowing) that OGL uses the driver directly.

Is there any particular reason you're avoiding DirectX... If all you need is VidMem access, it is IMHO the simplest way (And you DX3 is sufficient).

/Niels

Well I was wondering how it was done in the past, that's all.
But if I did want to do 3D stuff not supported by D3D I would just figure out the pixel format write it to memory and copy (or pass a pointer) of my memory to the video mem, right?

"just" is such an easy word

/Niels

I was wondering...
If you were doing a voxel engine in Win32, how are you able to gain access to video memory to draw your terrain? I'm thinking that multiple calls to primitive drawing functions in any API is unacceptable (performane-wise). Is there any way other than DirectDraw to do this (OpenGL must do something to draw to a window speedily, even though all you give it is DeviceContext and Window handles)?
Thanks,
JoeG

well, in the bad old days, the dos days, you could access vid mem pretty easily. it was just right there for you to do whatever the hell you wanted with it. but in these troublesome times of win32, that is pretty much impossible. you need something like directx or opengl drivers to drill through the "Windows layer" and get to the vid memory. windows effectively blocks your path. but directx gives you full access to the video memory, and every windows computer game (with the exception of myst, i think) uses directx, so you might as well just assume that directx is supported. please someone correct me if i am wrong anywhere here

______________Gecko___

[This message has been edited by Gecko (edited November 19, 1999).]