I have an old Thinkpad which has an Intel HD Graphics 3000 video card built in. Unfortunately, the latest Windows video card drivers only support OpenGL 3.1.0.
I would like to try to run Blender 2.8 via Windows 10 on this laptop, even if it runs slowly. My understanding is that I should be able to run Blender 2.8 with an old OpenGL version via the command line like this:
blender.exe -d --debug-gpu
I downloaded blender-2.80-7e9389b83d8-win64 here, and when I try running Blender with the above command, I still get the “Blender requires a graphics driver with at least OpenGL 3.3 support” message.
My terminal window looks like this:
Switching to fully guarded memory allocator.
Blender 2.80 (sub 33)
Build: 24/11/2018 17:38 Windows Release
argv[0] = blender.exe
argv[1] = -d
argv[2] = --debug-gpu
read file
Version 280 sub 24 date unknown hash unknown
Warning! OpenGL core profile not available.
Warning! Ignoring untested OpenGL context profile mask bits.Win32 Error# (3221692565): The specified OpenGL version and feature set are either invalid or not supported.
Warning! OpenGL core profile not available.
Warning! Ignoring untested OpenGL context profile mask bits.Win32 Error# (3221692565): The specified OpenGL version and feature set are either invalid or not supported.
Warning! OpenGL core profile not available.
Warning! Ignoring untested OpenGL context profile mask bits.Win32 Error# (3221692565): The specified OpenGL version and feature set are either invalid or not supported.
Warning! OpenGL core profile not available.
Warning! Ignoring untested OpenGL context profile mask bits.Win32 Error# (3221692565): The specified OpenGL version and feature set are either invalid or not supported.
Warning! OpenGL core profile not available.
Warning! Ignoring untested OpenGL context profile mask bits.Win32 Error# (3221692565): The specified OpenGL version and feature set are either invalid or not supported.
Warning! OpenGL core profile not available.
Warning! Ignoring untested OpenGL context profile mask bits.Win32 Error# (3221692565): The specified OpenGL version and feature set are either invalid or not supported.
Warning! OpenGL core profile not available.
Warning! Ignoring untested OpenGL context profile mask bits.Win32 Error# (3221692565): The specified OpenGL version and feature set are either invalid or not supported.
Honestly … maybe it’s time for you to visit your local purveyor of “genlty used” computer equipment.
Then, make sure that you’re running the latest version of the Windows (or Linux …) OS on it, since it is the software layers which Blender relies upon to do its work.
Blender is a fairly resource-intensive application and, within reason, attempts to get it to run [well …] on “old” equipment are most likely just wasting your time. (I did that for too many years myself.)
Blender 2.8 makes very good use of modern graphics hardware to produce (IMHO) significantly better workflows – but it does this by leveraging hardware resources which, well, must exist.
OP here – just a quick followup to my original post. For a little while, I dual booted into Ubuntu on my laptop and ran Blender 2.8 in Linux. It turns out that Ubuntu’s laptop video card drivers supported a higher version of OpenGL than the official IBM laptop video card drivers in Windows. But ultimately, I disliked switching back and forth between Linux and Windows. (Linux is fine, but there are utilities and applications that I depend upon in Windows that have no Linux equivalent.) So I ordered a new laptop with a pretty beefy built-in video card (essential for running DaVinci Resolve, which is more hardware-hungry than Blender is).
Anyway, if you don’t want to buy a new laptop and aren’t afraid of Linux, consider dual booting into Ubuntu and see if you get usable Blender/OpenGL performance. It may work, it may not – but it might be worth a try.
Another thing that might work is VirtualBox: a free virtual-machine monitor that runs on nearly everything. You can then run Linux (or, Windows) on a virtual machine. Instead of klunky re-booting, the guest runs in a window.
VirtualBox is produced by Oracle – yes, the “über-database people” – so it works extremely well even though it doesn’t cost anything. (Unlike the various VMWare® versions that are expensive “hobbled horses.”)