Software renderer

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A software renderer, such as those available in GoldSrc and id Tech 2, uses the CPU to render 3D geometry, instead of a GPU. A 3D application using a software renderer can be considered to be running in software mode.

Software renderers often have limitations, and with the usage of CPU instead of GPU for rendering usually causes performance hit (especially for hardware at the time), thus, software renderers are largely deprecated in most games since the early 2000s (and the Source engine requires DirectX (or OpenGL, Vulkan) compatible graphics card in order to play the game.

The GPU is still used for processing the 2D image generated from the software renderer, but no 3D hardware is used.

Id Tech 2 Engine Software Renderer

Screenshot in-game of Quake (WinQuake), using Software renderer.

Features

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GoldSrc Engine Software Renderer

Screenshot in-game of Half-Life, using Software renderer.

Features

• 16-bit rendering for up to 65536 colors on screen at a time - Quake used an 8-bit renderer, which was limited to 256 colors
• Colored lighting - Quake simply had monotone lighting
• Transparent textures - Glass can now be used in maps
• Water ripples

Since 25th Anniversary

Software renderer support on Linux

Missing Features and Limits and Problems

• Lack of texture filtering
• 256x256 texture size limit
• No anti-aliasing support
• No Dynamic Shadows support
• Lower limits for drawing geometry
• No Water waves
• No Detailed textures
• Overdraw from brush entities and func_detail is more problematic
• Mid-poly or high-poly models will disappear.
• Overbright lighting on MDLs (instead of only map geometry)

See also

• Direct3D
• OpenGL
• Vulkan

External links

•  Software rendering
•  DOS Quake on Wikipedia
• Quake fandom wiki