   Software Rendering
  Quick Question, lets say your going to be going on Vacation and have a laptop that only supports OpenGL 2.1, but your wanting to do 3.0 and 4.0 stuff......is there a way to like "software" render 3.x-4.x (or an easy way at least)I know Direct X lets you define Software Rendering when you set up the swap chain but does OpenGL allow that?   
  MesaGL has some (though by no means complete) 3.0 and 4.0 support, and I think it compiles under win32. Give it a try. Don't expect it to work without some pain and source-munging, though.   ;  I though MESA3D (mesa3d.org) supports GL 2.1 and your GLSL shaders would be 1.20, which is a bit different than shaders in GL 3.0.There was nvemulate but I haven't touched that in years and it is for nVidia.   ;  The shader version is older, but as I mentioned, some of the other 3.x and 4.x functionality is exposed.   ;  I suggest a fallback code to the traditional opengl pipeline. You will also need this if you release your software, opengl 3+ is too new. I personally would not even touch anything above opengl 2.1   