According to https://www.notebookcheck.net/VIA-S3G-UniChro … Pro.6947.0.html :

The 128-bit 3D graphic core offers hardware DirectX 7 support but without Transform & Lightning (T&L) unit. Two pixel-pipelines are able to render two textures per turn with a triangle rate of 4.5 millions triangles. The pixel filling rate amounts to about 200 millions of pixels per second (texels up to 400 millions).

So the hardware is extremely slow. In addition, it appears the software you mention, Stellarium and Celestia, requires shaders which your hardware does not support at all: https://github.com/erickt/celestia/tree/maste … elestia/shaders and so does Stellarium.

So in conclusion you need newer hardware, or perhaps an older version of Stellarium/Celestia that does not require shaders.

Thank you for the info! I think i have to learn a lot more about graphics. Maybe i can switch off this or that in the mentioned apps. Good news anyway: If my computer is too weak for OpenGL, i (probably) wo'nt ruin my system with some random download (again) ...

Just to mention: Stellarium 10 has a switch: "--safe-mode" (with two --) ... does'nt work for me.

Edit - if somebody wants to know: No OpenGL = no Stellarium (any version), no Celestia (found only v1.5 and 1.6)

Hello, me again (the original Tricia has lost her password)... I know this is the wrong board, but my stupid questions are not worth a new topic:

My graphics may be slow, but i got several "big" astronomy apps (= Cybersky 5, Das Planetarium, C2A, CNebulaX, HNSKY, ...) and a few apps based on the AIM-Engine (e.g. National Geographic Globe) which use directX (9.0c June 2010). They do about the same thing that Stellarium and Celestia should and everything runs smoothly. So my question: Anything i can try with OpenGL emulators? If so, which one or where to start?

You can emulate OpenGL but it'll be horribly slow, possibly barely usable at very low resolutions depending on processor speed.

Why the obsession with trying to run graphics demanding games and apps on a graphics card that was a POS on release?

In short: OpenGL != OpenGL.
There's a reason why DirectX uses a version number: support is limited to hardware that can handle the minimum functionality for a given version.
This means it's easier for people to explain that their old video chip is "DirectX 7" and the software requires "DirectX 9".

OpenGL works the same way, except the version numberings and features aren't communicated much.
So just because your video chip supports some variation of 'OpenGL' doesn't mean it can run all OpenGL software out there.

You're talking about an outdated budget video chip, which was not likely to have been very compatible with OpenGL software when it was new. In short: it's not going to work.

Thank you, DosFreak. "Obsession" is a strong word for my little experiments. I just want to find out what my beloved laptop can do. Years ago i wouldn't have thought that a magical thing like DOSBox or CCS64 would ever work on it... Today i've learned (at last) to forget about OpenGl (at least until my next shopping-tour on ebay).

Thank you, Scali - even for bad news!