How To Get GPU Capabilities Using Pyglet

Question

Is there a way to programmatically get the capabilities of my GPU at runtime using Pyglet?

I am making a game and would like to enable anti-aliasing. On my desktop (w/ nVidia Quadro), this works just fine:

import pyglet

class MyWindow(pyglet.window.Window):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)

        self.batch = pyglet.graphics.Batch()

        self.circle = pyglet.shapes.Circle(
            self.width / 2, self.height / 2, 100,
            batch=self.batch
        )

    def on_draw(self):
        self.clear()
        self.batch.draw()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    config = pyglet.gl.Config(sample_buffers=1, samples=8)
    game_window = MyWindow(width=480, height=360, config=config)
    pyglet.app.run()

and I get a nice anti-aliased edge on the circle. However, on my laptop (w/ integrated Intel graphics) I just get a white screen that never updates. Setting config = None makes everything visible again. Because I would like the game to be theoretically playable on any system, I want to selectively disable anti-aliasing for any GPU that doesn't support it. Something like:

import pyglet

class MyWindow(pyglet.window.Window):
    ...

def GPUSupportsAntialiasing() -> bool:
    # magical pyglet and/or OpenGL stuff

if __name__ == '__main__':
    if GPUSupportsAntialiasing():
        config = pyglet.gl.Config(sample_buffers=1, samples=8)
    else:
        config = None

    game_window = MyWindow(width=480, height=360, config=config)
    pyglet.app.run()

Is this possible within Pyglet or another Python graphics module?

Answer 1

Pyglet queries the driver asking for the configurations supported with the settings passed and should choose the best one matching the settings provided.

By default with config=None, the following settings are provided pyglet.gl.Config(double_buffer=True, depth_size=24), with a backup of depth_size=16 if 24 is not supported and picks the best.

That being said, I have an intel GPU and can replicate the the issue with the config pyglet.gl.Config(sample_buffers=1, samples=8) making the circle disappear in your example.

The trick is to provide at least double buffering: config = pyglet.gl.Config(sample_buffers=1, samples=8, double_buffer=True) after this the circle shows with AA. Some graphics cards I think are a lot better about no double buffering, but I think the most compatible will be leaving double_buffer=True.

To answer the original question of determining the max sample size the hardware supports you would have to query the driver directly. Pyglet doesn't offer a built in way, but you can still do it by utilizing OpenGL calls:

import pyglet
from ctypes import c_int, byref

max_samples = c_int()
pyglet.gl.glGetIntegerv(pyglet.gl.GL_MAX_SAMPLES, byref(max_samples))

print(f"maximum samples: {max_samples.value}")