I think that shaders requires T&L 3D Accelerator, so with Intel's graphics chips, you can't use shaders but I think that you can try to use materials but I don't have a computer with a non-T&L video card/chip. If you have a desktop PC with an AGP slot, you can buy yourself a AGP graphics card and install it in a AGP slot. But if you have a laptop, then you can't take out the video chip and put in a different chip. And so if you have a laptop, you might want to save up your money to buy yourself a "non-Intel Extreme Graphics" laptop -- something that have an ATI or nVidia chip in it.

Thanks Grayson. I'm stuck for the near term with what I have so out of luck there. Given the popularity of Dell systems (and possibly HP as well as I saw my brother-in-law's hp system seemed to have the same basic hardware setup) if there is not some sort of emulation mode then anyone using shaders for their games may have to consider some sort of fall back option or games on these systems may not look as expected?

Just for the record it is a Dell Dimension 2400...

For the record materials don't seem to work either -a warning to purchasers of the many popular budget systems and maybe something that people developing systems with lots of shader/material effects need to consider ...

The fall back option may work for some games.. however if you are using perpixel lighting, i dont expect any kind of fallback to work appropriately. My opinion is that a shader-based game should be purely shader-based, and you have to accept that it wont work on cards without shader support. There are enough cards out there that have shader support that i think the market is there.

I got you. I just have a feeling that with the increasing popularity of these systems with integrated budget video systems many users may not be aware of the lack of support for some features -I know I wasn't. I wonder what percentage of the market is represented by older cards and new budget systems that won't run these newer effects -anyplace to get that info?

I normally build my own systems by digging through the part bins but the price was so good and the $22 per month was in my budget -that'll teach me. I'm going to go put a suggestion in the Dell and Intel feedback boxes -an option to upgrade or an add on card/chip of some sort would have been nice.