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Stellarium uses OpenGL because it is a requirement of the GPL Licence. Direct X is the Proprietory garaphics accelerated owned by MS. It can never be used by stellarium because they don't distribute source code.
ATI has been quite tardy in distributing drivers for their video system that keep up with the development of OpenGL but the situation is improving and there are drivers available now for most systems. Stellarium has also included some work arounds that let it display video quite well on chipset drivers that are not up to date.
Version 0.10.3 which is about to be released has a greatly improved video card compatability.
However Stellarium may not be everyone's "cup of tea" which is quite a pity because it has a marvelous 3D display in real time and it will always be free. Remember the old saying "never look a gift horse in the mouth"
Barry
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