OpenGL Quad Buffering doesn't work in windowed mode

[Matthew]

As many of you know, nVidia and ATI long have not included support for OpenGL Quad Buffering with their consumer cards, even though it always has been part of the official OpenGL API. They have considered it a feature only for professional cards -- but with 3D now mainstream, that obviously isn't the case.

This has long been my main criticism of nVidia 3D Vision. It's a great product, but without an open API, it's use is very limited.

Last year, nVidia and ATI finally enabled support for OpenGL Quad Buffering on their consumer cards. With versions of Windows prior to Windows 8, it only works in fullscreen exclusive mode. But with Windows 8, it works in windowed mode as well, because Windows 8 has native support for stereoscopic window rendering.

At least it's supposed to, from what I've heard. I have Windows 8.1, and just bought nVidia 3D Vision 2 and an Asus VG278HE monitor. On my system, OpenGL Quad Buffering works in fullscreen exclusive mode, but not in windowed mode.

I've made a modified version of the open source Glide wrapper OpenGlide which allows you to play Glide 2 games in stereoscopic 3D. (If you want to try it out, you can get it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zt5vw7cbqj8bi ... oglide.zip) I've been using it to play King's Quest: Mask of Eternity in stereoscopic 3D, but there is a problem in which the mouse doesn't work in fullscreen mode, because it has to create a new window. To get around this problem, I had been using windowed mode -- but OpenGL Quad Buffering doesn't work in windowed mode, so I may never be able to play it in 3D with 3D Vision unless I can get that working.

Do any of you know why it doesn't work, or if nVidia plans to add support for windowed mode with OpenGL Quad Buffering? They already have it working with the other 3D APIs; there's no reason for it not to work with OpenGL. In fact, I had thought that nVidia did support it with Windows 8. I know ATI does (one of the members of the ATI OpenGL driver team said they did).

EDIT: In the time since I posted this message, I have found that although it requires full-screen exclusive mode, it will automatically enter that mode when a window that uses it is activated, switching the screen resolution if it is different. However, it will only work if the window has certain properties.

And with my version of OpenGlide, I have fixed the problems with fullscreen mode.

So this isn't a big problem. But with the nVidia 3D Vision API, stereo in a window works without having to enter fullscreen exclusive mode; there's no reason it shouldn't work with OpenGL as well. I suppose nVidia doesn't consider OpenGL driver support to be as big a priority.