If OpenGL hardware acceleration is disabled in RFEM 5, RFEM 5 uses an OpenGL library that is supplied by Windows. This library implements the OpenGL functions in such a way that the graphics card driver is more or less bypassed. The OpenGL functions are calculated on the CPU. This makes the graphics slower, but also much less susceptible to errors in the graphics driver.
However, this Windows library has not been maintained by Microsoft for years. In order to implement graphical features in RFEM 6, we were therefore forced to look for an alternative.
This alternative is the MESA renderer. In principle, it does the same thing as the Windows library. The difference, however, is that it also supports newer OpenGL functions that we need in RFEM 6.
To activate the MESA renderer, it is necessary to copy a DLL to the RFEM 6 program folder. This requires admin rights. However, RFEM does not usually run with admin rights and therefore cannot copy the DLL.