ForthCad-3D^® hardware home

Operating system and hardware..

Operating system.

• Windows^TM Vista, XP, 2000, NT.
• Windows^TM 98, 95, Millenium supported, but less stable.

Hardware.

• Pentium III (2.4 G).
• Memory RAM minimum 512 MB.
• Hard disk with 100 MByte free to install ForthCad.
• CD-ROM is used initially to install the software.
• Extended standard keyboard with separated numeric-pad.
• Internet acces enable on-line updates.
• Screen (17" advised minimum) with true color.
• OpenGL^TM compatible 3D graphic card. See below.
• Photo quality printer.

Graphic card.

ForthCad can be tested without 3D OpenGL graphic card (will go in "software mode"). Full quality, productions applications should use a good 3D OpenGL compatible graphic card.

OpenGL^TM feature needed:

• Fast OpenGL^TM version 1.51 (2.0 advised) compatible.
• Resolution 1024x768 pixel (advised minimum, more resolution is better)
• Front and back (see below) 32 bit RGBA colors buffers.
• Depth buffer 24 bit (advised minimum).
• Stencil buffer 8 bit, hadware accelerated.
• Accumulation buffer 64 bit RGBA.
• Accelerated PBuffer support.
• Vertex shader and fragment shader (silhouette and phong rendering).

Double Buffering

ForthCAD requires a double buffered main frame buffer.

Among other things, double buffering is responsible for smooth display of changing scenes and fast repainting after highlighting. The way that the front and back buffers are swapped is important to ForthCAD and varies according to the OpenGL implementation. Ideally, buffer swapping is assumed to be done by copying the back buffer to the front buffer leaving the back buffer intact.

If buffer swapping is done by exchanging the buffers' entire contents, you may check the PSEUDO_SWAP_BUFFERS option in the File / Parameters dialog box.

Common drivers.

• ATI drivers.
• NVIDIA drivers.