NvOpenGl.dll same as OpenGL32.dll ?

[Riptides]

Well i weighted and measured my wants.
Do i want to wait to get a Video card, or do i want to play games..
Well.. i wanted to play games..
So i retired my V5-5500 in favour for a PNY Geforce4 Ti4200 this weekend.
Great card. btw.. i am impressed, very very impressed.
So, I did the usual cleaning procedures. Registry.. the works.

But what i ran into is this. I had to replace the OpenGl32.dll in my system folder with one that would work with the nvidia card.
When i tried renaming the NvOpenGL.dll file, no games would work running under OpenGL. Btw, they weren't working with the current opengl.dll i had in there either.

So i did have a backup of an opengl.dll file (size:736kb /date:Friday, April 23, 1999 10:22:00 PM) i renamed it to work and Now all my openGL games work fine.

But i assume i AM using an older version of the opengl icd, correct ?

I thought that the NVopengl was the Nvidia version of the current ICD ?
So I am curious as to this not working properly in games.

When i run the games i get an error in the .dll when using the NV version.

Anyone care to give me the lowdown on what might be happening here ?
Still on a Win98 SE system.

(Edit) Also using 29.42 Nvidia drivers, if someone could suggest better drivers, would be appriciated. (/Edit)

 

[BoardBonobo]

Didn't 3DFX produce their own flavour of OpenGL ICD? That may have replaced the one in your system folder. Try replacing opengl32.dll with a copy from a Win98 CD, or another machine. The nvidia opengl dll is just a wrapper for the system opengl ICD and not a direct replacement.

 

[Riptides]

Answered exactly what i was wondering.

i was curious to what the nvidia dll was, and you answered my suspicions about it being a wrapper of some sort.
didn't mean to make my above post sound like a tech question.

it just makes me wonder why nvidia says their drivers include the opengl 1.3 icd. when it seems in reality.. they dont.

 

[Crusher]

You shouldn't have had to replace the opengl32.dll file in your system folder, that's a Microsoft file, it's not supposed to be touched by video card drivers. 3dfx's drivers shouldn't have replaced it either. I think you confused that with the opengl32.dll file that some games used to put in their directories to get 3dfx cards to work, since 3dfx didn't use to have full OpenGL support.

Nvopengl32.dll is supposed to be in the system folder along with the opengl32.dll file; why did you think you should be renaming it?

 

[Reverend]

The opengl32.dll that comes with your OS is not an ICD. The nvopengl.dll is an ICD and is not a "wrapper".

 

[Nick[FM]]

I might be totally in the woods, but GLSetup might help you out?

http://www.glsetup.com/

It's for Win95/98 only..

edit: errr.. It hasn't been updated since.. September 17th, 2001, so maybe it's better not to use it after all!

Maybe simply uninstalling your GeForce4 drivers, and installing them from scratch will do the trick?

 

[Riptides]

The opengl32.dll that comes with your OS is not an ICD. The nvopengl.dll is an ICD and is not a "wrapper".

Thanks Reverend, for totally confusing me now

Nvopengl32.dll is supposed to be in the system folder along with the opengl32.dll file; why did you think you should be renaming it?

There is actually a set of 3rd party drivers for the V5 that does replace the opengl.dll in the system folder. I believe this is because of the new Glide file being worked on by 3dfx-U.

So the main issue was, upon installing the Nvidia drivers, Opengl wouldn't work.
So i thought that renaming the Nvidia file (leaving a copy of Nvopengl in the system folder as well) would work which it, of course, didn't.
But in the end, i just renamed opengl32.bak to .dll and everything works now, but i was assuming that i was using the older windows verison 1.1, and that there being a version 1.3 now, that i needed a newer updated file.
So YES i got OpenGL working with my card, by using the backup file.
So thats not the problem now thanks tho.

What i was really posting to find out, if NVopengl was the same as Opengl32. I have to admit the whole OpenGL issue confuses me thoroughly.

I was just hoping at this point someone would please explain the whole concept behind opengl.dll being an older file, and Nvidia saying that their drivers contain opengl 1.3.

Highly optimized Microsoft® DirectX® 8.1 and OpenGL® 1.3 with NVIDIA extensions pipelines

How does this work exactly ?
If the Nvopengl.dll is the Nvidia ICD, Do certain games look for this file first in the system folder ?

 

[Sharkfood]

Yes, there were lots of enthusiast monkey groups, homebrew driver makers and the like that messed around with windows\system files in ways they never should have. If you used strictly 3dfx drivers, no issues would have occurred.

There were spurious claims by some "enthusiasts" that by monkeying around with the registry and replacing the Microsoft OpenGL32 dll with a transparent 3dfx one, that performance would be better (even though both cases were running through the same ICD). So lots of kids wrote installers, hacks and tweakers that did just this. 3rd party OpenGL drivers (such as Wicked3D) would put a custom 3dfx-compat only copy of an opengl32.dll in the game directories themselves as windows will open a DLL in the current directory, then path, then Windows\system (in that order). This allowed them to have game-specific versions of optimized dlls, so be sure to scour your system for any left over opengl32.dll's that may be lingering in some game folders.

In all, a properly configured system will have a Microsoft OpenGL32.dll in the windows\system folder (contains software support and wrappers for HW ICDs) and a 3rd party vendor OpenGL ICD, with the registry handling which ICD to use (this allows primary/secondary videocards and selection for which ICD to use by "default").