laptop video card required?

[JMOwens]

Hi all,
I was wondering if anyone's had any experience running Vizard Lite on a laptop with integrated graphics. I'm pondering buying a MacBook (which comes with Intel's GMA X3100 graphics processor), but I'm wondering if the jump to the Pro would be necessary to develop in Vizard, since that comes with an NVidia card. I wouldn't be running anything full-screen since it's the Lite edition, but I would like it to be able to run demos smoothly. Thanks for your input!

[JMOwens]

Just to clarify - I will only be using the laptop to develop virtual environments and show demos; I don't intend to drive an HMD with it! Thanks :-)

[mspusch]

our experience with laptops is that nvidia cards are recommended for everything that requires larger polygon counts and more advanced features (custom shaders etc.).

typically vizard itself runs fine on Intel's integrated graphics, which means you can most likely do development even without the nvidia card.

so bottom line, if you plan to use the laptop for showing demos, the option with the nvidia card is probably the better option.

[JMOwens]

Thanks, Matthias! Just to probe a little more - I would only be installing the lite edition, which doesn't run full screen anyway. Do you think the integrated graphics would be able to run a small window (say, 1/3 of the screen) smoothly, or would even that be too taxing? Thanks for your help!
-justin

[mspusch]

it's not fully predictable what will work and what not, it's very similar as if you are planning to use this computer for games like halflife etc. -- but most likely Vizard will run 100%fine even on the version without the nVidia card with just the intel onboard graphics.

and as you say, if there is a performance issue, you can always reduce the window size.
i had a toshiba satellite laptop from 5 years ago for a long time, and it worked OK with vizard as long as the texture memory was not exceeded and I was running in a very small window.

we have Vizard running on several computers here at the office with Intel based onboard graphics, and it tends to run 100%fine on the newer ones of those onboard graphics units.

so you are probably OK with the non-nvidia option, however, it's not 100% sure that everything works ...

[JMOwens]

Great - thanks. As I understand, Apple just updated the graphics chipset in the Macbook, so it's likely that it will run ok. Our environments are pretty sparse and simple anyway. I'm sure it would also depend on whether I did a compete boot into windows or used a virtualizer like Parallels. I think I'll just try to track down someone here who has a macbook and see if I can borrow it for the afternoon! Thanks again.