Raspbian gets hardware acceleration for OpenGL games on Pi 2

The Raspberry Pi 2 gets an OpenGL driver in Raspbian for playing games using hardware acceleration by the GPU. According to the Raspberry Pi Foundation, as a result, more games are suddenly playable on the computer.

Due to memory limitations, the new driver only works on the Pi 2 and users of the first Pi and the Pi Zero are out of luck. If the feature is enabled via an SD card installation and users insert it into a Pi or Pi Zero’s SD slot, the system won’t boot, the Foundation warns.

The OpenGL driver is disabled by default. To enable it, users must enable the GL Driver via the version of raspi-config in the command line under Advanced Options. It is disabled by default, because it is a test version of the driver and bugs can occur. In addition, it can affect the display of gui elements, the camera application and video playback.

The driver makes games based on OpenGL much better. For example, the driverless demonstration glxgears on the Pi 2 would run at 23fps with flicker, while the driver runs at 60fps. The driver comes out for Raspbian, the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s proprietary operating system based on Debian Jessie.