   SDL using hardware acceleration?
  When you create a new SDL screen you can specify a few flags for it including SDL_HWSURFACE (hard ware surface) or SDL_SWSURFACE (software surface). However, i''ve also read the SDL doesn''t actually use any hardware acceleration. So what''s the deal? I''m trying to implement some rather basic animations based on a timer object, but if there are too many animation objects on the screen, the timer slows down and so does the animation frame rate (blitting takes too long). I''m wondering if this is because SDL only uses software rendering. Any thoughts? 
  SDL will use DirectX (DirectDraw) on Windows if it is available, which it most likely is for you.  So it does use hardware acceleration, but of the 2d variety.  It does not, however, use 3d acceleration, which is what is meant when people say that it doesn''t use any hardware acceleration.So if all your surfaces are in video memory and you are not doing any alpha blending, it should be quite fast.  Using the 3d hardware would be much faster though, and would give you access to some cool features for free.  Like scaling, rotation, alpha blending, lighting...  Apparently, SDL integrates nicely with OpenGL, so that would be one route to go if you want the power of 3d graphics.Good luck, and I''m just starting with SDL (did my last game with another library, CDX) so feel free to correct me if I''m wrong...   James SayerDingo Gameswww.dingogames.comHome of Jack of All Trades;  I''m working with SDL on Linux mostly, but my game is cross-platform and may work faster of windows (?) if what you say is true. The game i''m making is based on the ParaGUI lib which is built on top of SDL which is built on top of OpenGL, which is why i posted in the OpenGL forum :-) However, learning hardcore OpenGL just to get some fancier looking graphic tricks is overkill given the game (a TBS), but i''ll save that learning adventure for another game project. ;  hmmm, sorry about the somewhat useless content of this post, but i was under the impression that SDL used OpenGL as a 2d backend on linux to give it some hardware acceleration :o ;  Oh ok, sorry I assumed you were using Windows .  I didn''t know how SDL was implemented under Linux... I quickly checked on the SDL website and couldn''t find anything.  SDL does seem to have a pretty active newsgroup here, so you could try checking that out.  There are no doubt SDL gurus who could easily help you. James SayerDingo Gameswww.dingogames.comHome of Jack of All Trades;  SDL_HWSURFACE creates the drawing surface in hardware memory; SDL_SWSURFACE creates the surface in system memory.Hardware to hardware blits are usually accelerated, or are at least a bit faster, but take up video RAM. If the system supports it, software to hardware blits can also be accelerated. Under windows, DirectDraw will be used - if there''s acceleration available it will be used. Under Linux, it depends on your video drivers and your XFree86 setup - if XFree86 supports accelerated stuff, it will be used. No specific hardware acceleration, mind, just what the system provides.Check the SDL_VideoInfo structure to see what''s available and what''s not. SDL_OPENGL overrides that setting since it depends on the OpenGL implementation. 