Re: [GD-Windows] Omega Drivers? (shudder)

[Neil S. <ne...@r0...>]

I expect drivers must be signed in some way, even if they are not WHQL
certified. If they are signed by NVIDIA, ATI, etc., then there might be some
way to check that the certificate is valid. I don't know if this is easy or
even possible, but it might be the only reliable way of being certain you
are dealing with official drivers.

If there is no current way to do it, it might be possible to get the IHVs to
provide something in the future, especially if they also perceive this as a
serious problem that needs to be solved.

Pretty much any other method is going to be useless, as it will depend on
information that these 'alternative driver teams' can spoof easily.

The only other thing I can think of is to perform a set of correctness tests
at the start of the app (or during a 'safe mode' startup of the app) to
check that everything is working as expected. The problems with this are:

a) the tests are not guaranteed to find stuff that actually goes wrong in
the game (unless your game *is* the test)
b) some official drivers may fail the tests but otherwise be OK
c) user driver options such as texture performance will make the tests hard
to measure
d) the 'alternative' drivers may pass the tests and may even work fine in
your game.

Although (d) could be seen as a non-issue ("if they work, then what's the
problem?"), there are also cheating issues such as wireframe mode for FPS
games which these people may see fit to include, even though the IHVs have a
self-imposed ban on such things.

- Neil.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Watte" <hp...@mi...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 11:22 PM
Subject: RE: [GD-Windows] Omega Drivers? (shudder)