How to learn the identity of the graphics card?

[Kevin Rushforth]

Scott is correct about the determining of the SW pipeline. To add to 
that, if knowing whether you are running on SW is sufficient, you can 
assume (for now as well as the foreseeable future) that 3D is supported 
only when running on a HW pipeline. So checking for 
Platform.isSupported(ConditionalFeature.SCENE3D) is a good indication 
that you are running on the SW pipeline (or on a device that lacks NPOT 
texture support although the intersection of cards that support Prism 
but not NPOT is vanishingly small on desktop platforms).

I think the suggestion about starting out assuming that animation will 
be OK and then backing off is a good one, if it is practical for your 
application.

-- Kevin


Scott Palmer wrote:
> I believe it is possible, though not through public API, to determine 
> if you are using the software pipeline or not.  If that isn't enough, 
> how about just adapt at runtime by starting out with the more 
> demanding animations and falling back automatically if the framerate 
> doesn't meet your minimum requirement.  Then at least you will be 
> drawing to the screen meaningful info and the user may never notice. 
>  You could even hide the measurement in an animated splashscreen or 
> something like that.
>
> Scott
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 7:25 PM, Kevin Rushforth 
> <kevin.rushforth at oracle.com <mailto:kevin.rushforth at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>     Yeah, that would be a bit of a problem. Without doing something
>     like that, though, it would just be an approximation, since the
>     performance of animation depends on the complexity of the
>     geometry, the performance of the GPU, the performance of the CPU,
>     etc.
>
>
>     -- Kevin
>
>
>     Mike Hearn wrote:
>
>
>             Would it be feasible for you to do some measurements /
>         calibration
>             on the system and make the determination based on measured
>         speed?
>             That seems more to the point anyway.
>
>
>         I don't know how to do that without actually drawing to the
>         screen, which I don't want to do.
>
>