Webots User Guide - chapter 1 - section 4

Webots User Guide


1.4 Verifying your graphics driver installation

1.4.1 Supported graphics cards

Webots officially supports only recent nVidia and ATI graphics adapters. So it is recommended to run Webots on computers equipped with such graphics adapters and up-to-date drivers provided by the card manufacturer (i.e., nVidia or ATI). Such drivers are often bundled with the operating system (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), but in some case, it may necessary to fetch it from the web site of the card manufacturer.

1.4.2 Unsupported graphics cards

Webots may nevertheless work with other graphics adapters, in particular the Intel GMA graphics adapters. However this is unsupported and may work or not, without any guarantee. Some users reported success with some Intel GMA graphics cards after installing the latest version of the driver. Graphics drivers from Intel may be obtained from the Intel download center web site. Linux graphics drivers from Intel may be obtained from the Intel Linux Graphics web site.

1.4.3 Upgrading your graphics driver

On Linux and Windows, you should make sure that the latest graphics driver is installed. On the Mac the latest graphics driver are automatically installed by the Software Update, so Mac users are not concerned by this section. Note that Webots can run up to 10x slower without appropriate driver. Updating your driver may also solve various problems, i.e., odd graphics rendering or Webots crashes.

Linux

On Linux, use this command to check if a hardware accelerated driver is installed:

$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL

If the output contains the string "NVIDIA", "ATI", or "Intel", this indicates that a hardware driver is currently installed:

$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 8500 GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 3.0.0 NVIDIA 180.44
...

If you read "Mesa", "Software Rasterizer" or "GDI Generic", this indicates that the hardware driver is currently not installed and that your computer is currently using a slow software emulation of OpenGL:

$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.4 (1.5 Mesa 6.5.2)
...

In this case you should definitely install the hardware driver.

On Ubuntu the driver can usually be installed automatically by using the menu : System > Administration > Hardware Drivers. Otherwise you can find out what graphics hardware is installed on your computer by using this command:

$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8500 GT (rev a1)

Then you can normally download the appropriate driver from the graphics hardware manufacturer's website: http://www.nvidia.com for an nVidia card or http://www.amd.com for a ATI graphics card. Please follow the manufacturer's instructions for the installation.

Windows

  1. Right-click on My Computer.

  2. Select Properties.

  3. Click on the Device Manager tab.

  4. Click on the plus sign to the left of Display adapters. The name of the driver appears. Make a note of it.

  5. Go to the web site of your card manufacturer: http://www.nvidia.com for an nVidia card or http://www.amd.com for a ATI graphics card.

  6. Download the driver corresponding to your graphics card.

  7. Follow the instructions from the manufacturer to install the driver.

1.4.4 Hardware acceleration tips

Linux

Depending on the graphics hardware, there may be a huge performance drop of the rendering system (up to 10x) when compiz is on. Also compiz may cause some display bug where the main window of Webots is not properly refreshed. Hence, on Ubuntu (or other Linux) we recommend to deactivate compiz (System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects = None).

release 7.0.2
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