Some may have read that I have been going through my course "library" and have been having problems with some courses hanging on my Windows 11 systems that have the embedded Intel GPUs and with the dgVoodoo wrapper from Links corner installed.
There does seem to be something in some courses that triggers the hang on the systems. The nature of the hang is that Links goes from full screen to a black bordered window and that is it you have to terminate the software and the course cannot be resumed, it is repeatable. You seem to be able to delay the hang for a couple of holes by setting the quality slider all the way to the left. The message in Event Viewer is that LinksMMIII.exe stopped interacting with Windows, not overly helpful.
No fairly recent courses I have played exhibit the problem, these are the courses posted since my return to Links last year.
As I am not a designer and have no knowledge of APCD I have no idea what the trigger could be. I have been noting any course I find that does this and if I can note on which hole it is. I would not say it is a bug in the course per se, just a problem it is triggering.
Since I started to see problems I have done some more targeted testing, initially in playing the course I was just looking to see what real course renditions are worthwhile from Access/Microsoft courses onwards.
In the testing I have found the problem is not present when using Links on Linux, still with an Intel GPU but with Wine and no dgVoodoo. I think this points to what ever it is, is triggering something upstream from Links.
I have taken it to the next step. On my desktop I dropped in an Nvidia HBA, as I am using an Acer SFF machine I have little choice on HBA, so just dropped in a GT1030, FWIW performance with Links is very good.
I then played the noted courses still with the wrapper in place, so no changes other than the HBA added and its driver, I did not touch Links. They played without any problem at all.
As a further test, removed the wrapper and Links is still running fine, plus translucent shadows are back on Windows.
Based on this I am thinking that the problem looks to be in the Intel GPU drivers on Windows, on both of my machines, they do have different GPUs, Iris Xe vs UHD 730, there would appear there is something in some courses that triggers it. It is affecting less than a dozen courses at the moment, mind you I have not tried all that many, and at this stage I am not certain what course I tried on what computer, given my initial objective. Given my limited testing I am not too certain how widespread the problem is, if some designers are impacted more than others, a particular design technique being used? etc.
I do remember the days when some driver versions worked better with Links than others, but that seemed to be more across the board than with specific courses if memory serves.
With any new courses that come out I will try to test them across the platforms I now have.
Based on what I have found perhaps my latest notebook should have had both an Intel GPU and an Nvidia GPU like my previous one :) The notebook is a convenient machine to have Links installed on.
Des