Thanks Bill,
There is no installation as of now, you just unzip the PixelCNC zip file into a folder and the PixelCNC.exe file in there is the actual program you run to use it. This is only because PixelCNC is still in alpha stage of development and it wouldn’t be convenient for users to have to do a full installation process for incremental updates (which are-a-plenty during alpha stage). A one-time installation will be used once PixelCNC enters beta, and updates will be automatically downloaded by PixelCNC. In the meantime the focus of the alpha is on adding features and functionality.
That being said, I’m in the middle of working on the next big release for which I’ve devised some changes to have a more robust rendering pipeline for dealing with older hardware. These days most developers wouldn’t even bother supporting hardware more than 10 years old, because it’s such a huge headache of labyrinthian compatibility issues, but in PixelCNC’s case I know from first-hand experience that a lot of the target user audience is running on older hardware that is otherwise perfectly capable given some coaxing.
At any rate, your laptop’s GPU is limited to OpenGL 2.1, which is sufficient for what PixelCNC needs to do (huge vertex buffers), but drivers from the 2.0/2.1 era are very iffy with how they implement the functionality they claim to support, because there had yet to be a solid naming convention for everything, so finding certain functionality in the drivers can vary. As such I have been working on some changes to how PixelCNC interfaces with OpenGL to make it more robust. I’d already started on that work a few versions ago and it has resolved compatibility issues for most users with older hardware but obviously there’s still drivers out there that want things to be a very specific way in order for them to cooperate.
The big update I’ve been working on now adds quite a bit of functionality and so the newer robust OpenGL interface stuff won’t be released until everything else on the agenda is ready. At the rate things are being ticked off the todo list a conservative ETA for the update is about three weeks, so I’d suggest checking back around then. I’ll be sure to visit this thread to give everyone a heads up. Thanks again.