[4/5] WineD3D: Work around a bad crash in fglrx

[Ben Klein]

2009/5/6 Francois Gouget <fgouget at free.fr>:
> I have a feeling that Wine is the only 'application' that really tests
> the Unix OpenGL drivers, by virtue of being the only application to run
> the really complex vertex and pixel shaders that are found only in
> Windows games. Maybe I am wrong, but if I am right it means that the
> driver developpers would do well to take Wine seriously, and probably
> use it as a matter of course, if they want to produce quality code.

I've been in contact with developers at Linux Game Publishing for a
while (and am now in fact a Junior Developer for them :D), and from
what I gather, regular OpenGL apps on Linux implement hacks to work
around bugs/shortcomings in ATI/AMD drivers. Wine is a special case
where it's been decided that hacks for specific drivers is a bad idea
except in extreme cases, and that there should be generalised
solutions for everything (which is, by the way, the whole point of
OpenGL :) ).

As a result, the question of hacks in Wine comes up quite often
(ATI/AMD card owners want their games to work!) and it's (almost?)
always rejected. With any luck, we'll see some sensible, functional,
open-source radeonhd drivers coming soonish, so the issue of hacks at
the application level can be minimised.