what are the differences in vue 2014 between open Gl 2.2(shader 4)and open GL (fixed hardware pipeline)? I am using a geforce Titan graphics card that has 6GB RAM.Vue chose open Gl 2.2(shader 4)by default ,so what are the reasons for using one over the other ?Where might I expect see any benefits of one over the other ?Rest of the system is intel i7 4007k 8 thread haswell cpu @4.5GHz and 32 GB RAM 2 x 2TB hard drives.

Shader 4 model lest you preview highlights on objects, in views and in terrain editor, and allows you to see normal mapped ecosystems, instead of flat billboards (which is not always a good thing, they look better, but their size in shaded/normal mapped mode is inaccurate most of the times).

As my graphics card supports both which is likely to be the better one to use?

I'd go for the Shader model, better preview of objects, as for ecosystems, you can always change the preview quality in the ecosystem material/painter dialogs if you feel you lack precision with shaded billboards. I find the shader model useful in the terrain editor, highlights help "feel" smooth parts of the terrain, imho.

ok, well thats what vue chose anyway so I will stick with it , thanks for the help

The main difference is that old GPU's weren't programmable, they had a fixed set of functions. Modern GPU's are much more flexible and can be programmed. They still have a number of fixed functions, but also have parts that leave a programmer free to fill in functions as he sees fit.

To make sure Vue works with older GPU's as well, E-on offers different stages of Open GL, but you really should use open Gl 2.1(shader 4), especially with that power house like yours :)

The real shame is though that Vue still uses hopelessly outdated OpenGL version. OpenGl 2.1 is from 2006. Our previews could be so much better if E-On would finally update the OpenGL to 4. With that, you could perhaps even be doing GPU rendering.

Another problem is that after all these years, Vue's OpenGl is still buggy and faulty. Using the same OpenGL for 8 years now that still is very unstable after all these years is just not so good, is it? Also Vue can only use 1Gb of your card.... so if you have a lot of stuff in your scene, Vue may still crash, no matter how good your card is, due to Vue's limitations.

So you may have everything you need, but Vue will still crash. My graphics card can handle OpenGL 2.1 Shader 4 with easy, but Vue will not let me, it crashes all the time and I know this is a problem with more graphics cards.

But I don't think you will have a problem and let's hope that the next version of Vue will have OpenGL 4.x so you can harnass all the power your Titan offers. I just hope you didn't purchase that one especially for Vue ;)

**Thanks for your imput **aeilkema as vue chose shader model 4 I think i will stick with that, previews look better and as far as I can tell vue crashes about the same.fortunatly At just over £800 I bought the Titan for gaming as well (yes I know shock horror I use my pc to play games)It is indeed a shame vue cant do GPU rendering Ive used reality with GPU rendering its about 20 times faster than my i7 @4,5GHZ when doing the same scene! Again its disapointing to have 6GB graphics RAM and can only use 1GB its like EON just hobble vue so its unable to take full advantage of more modern hardware. #### **
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Shame on you for using a pc for games :tongue1:  We have an Xbox for that :thumbupboth: