The 2010 Orbiter Client has the graphics engine and the physics engines separated. This means that the graphics engine can be developed by a 3rd Party.
The default graphics Engine is DirectX 7. This a problematic because Windows Vista and 7 only emulate DX7 rather than having hardware support.
By using the OrbiterNG client, you are able to select which graphics engine you want
OpenGL with OGLA,
DirectX 7 (The same as normal Orbiter),
DirectX9 (Which is older, but very popular and has hardware support) and DirectX 11 (latest and greatest and only works with Win 7).
Each are in different stages of development with DX9 and DX11 in active development and OGLA in hibernation.
Hi
Thanks for the explanation. However, it still doesn't tell me what I should be using. I'm on a laptop with Win7. To be honest Orbiter looks ok with the stock setup but maybe I can benefit from something else. I have intel 4 series express chipset. It seems that it cannot work with DX11.
Can you please recommend which one I should use?
It feels to me that we need a table summarizing the 'ideals' and requirements. E.g.
SOLUTION..PREF..OS............HW..................MOBILE Support
DX7...........4......XP, WIN7...No HW Support...Integrated GFX support!
OGLA.........3......XP? WIN7...HW Support?......Int GFX support?
DX9...........2......WIN7........HW Support?.......Int GFX support?
DX11.........1.......Win7........HW Support!.......No int gfx support :-s