Yesterday I enabled OpenGL on my Raspberry Pi 3 and rebooted my Pi 3. The Pi showed text scrolling down the screen as normal and then the Desktop loaded!

To test OpenGL, I opened up the Terminal and typed in the following:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

glxgears

This installs and launches the glxgears program which shows three gears spinning around and in the Terminal, it says that it is running at around 60FPS, unlike when OpenGL is disabled where it says that glxgears is running at around 30FPS.

Now, to test OpenGL’s power, I opened up the Terminal and typed in the following:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install minetest

This installs Minetest, a game a little bit like Minecraft.

I launched Minetest from the Games category from the Menu and created a New World in Minetest. I entered it and the performance was amazing! Once I played Minetest without the OpenGL Driver and it really glitched out.

Today I switched on my Pi 3 and it booted successfully with OpenGL! I played Minetest again and it was really fun.

Sometimes my Pi doesn’t load into the Desktop with OpenGL Driver enabled on it so I have to unplug my Pi from the power supply and then plug it back in again a few times but eventually the Desktop loads.

OpenGL is finally working!

So you can try this out yourself. OpenGL doesn’t work on Pi 1s and Pi Zeros though.

Epic Chas Gamer 😎