> Heres an idea.. How about a simple way to have the SDL find out what the
> quality setting you are using is? ... However, as far as I can tell
> from a brief search, none of the INI settings can be checked inside the
> SDL. It makes sense to not allow changing them, but not even finding out
> their current values?!

That's a good point. Other systems let programs
query their environmental settings (e.g., getenv())

That could also be used to thwart global settings,
however, e.g., "if(setting is on) { do the opposite }"
Sometimes you want a master override switch
that there's nothing the scene can do about.
I would categorize overrides as being different from
environmental variables. You could do a quality
setting at either level for those times:

- When you want to "tell" the scene what you'd like, and

- When you want to force it to do what you like,
  no questions asked.


Here's a (possibly contrived) example: you're setting
up a web gallery and asked to render a hundred third-party
POV scenes into thumbnails. So you configure the quality
settings to omit intensive effects like radiosity/blur/etc.
because you must get all the thumbnails done in 24 hours,
and set up your system to batch render overnight.
You come back the next morning to discover that it's
still halfway through the third picture, becase it
has something that thwarthed the overrides.

Ray

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