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I've written a game engine in OpenGL and developed it on my computer with an NVidia GTX 1060. I'm now ready to start releasing it into the wild but I'm worried about hardware issues. I compile my shaders during start-up. I'm wondering if there's any software available that will let me virtually compile my shaders against different hardware. Or am I stuck releasing it, logging out crashes, and asking for user logs?

Thanks in advance!

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I highly recommend getting at least 1 card from one of the other vendors like AMD. It doesn't have to be fancy, the cheapest thing you can get off ebay will help. Just make sure it supports the same version of OpenGL that game system uses. Software rendering will not exercise your code on other hardware drivers. But if you get your code working on any other hardware it will at least give the code a fighting chance. If that isn't possible find folks that are willing to help you. There are people out there that are willing to test as long as they get free software. Also, make it as easy as possible to send errors. Such as shipping with an extra bit of code that will automate the sending of the logs. Whatever you don't just send the logs! Bring up a dialog that says there was an error, say that you want to send the logs and ask if that's okay. Also make a way for them to complain. For the bugs that your code doesn't detect. You can send errors to an email. That will help avoid malicious users. So long as the number is relatively small, which it should be for a version 0 test.

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    $\begingroup$ Just wanted to circle back on this. I followed your advice, and you were right! I bought an AMD card and it ended up being very necessary. My shaders wouldn't compile initially, then I was getting driver crashes, then I had to work through some blank screens. All told there's no way I could have solved the issues going back and forth asking for logs. Still a bummer that there's no strong software solution but still I really appreciate the answer! $\endgroup$
    – JHall
    Mar 16 at 17:49
  • $\begingroup$ Don't forget to run it on the Nvidia hardware again. $\endgroup$
    – pmw1234
    Mar 16 at 20:45

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