Gaming Minecraft question

[Sora de Eclaune]

A friend of mine on MSN is trying to figure out why Minecraft runs on one of her computers.

Minecraft requires a pixel shader of 1.0, I believe, but her computer has NO pixel shaders. Yet the game runs. That is the only game that requires pixel shaders that runs on that computer. All other games that require pixel shaders do not run. She is not using any sort of program to simulate pixel shaders, as well, since the game runs at a very decent frame rate (unlike if she were using a program to simulate pixel shaders).

She said that if her sister gets off of that computer, she can try to get a screencap of everything.

Why does this game run, even though it requires the pixel shaders the computer does not have?

 

[Celice]

Is it because it's a Java applet? I dunno, but maybe there's something fancier going on in there than the computer could provide. Which might explain why it runs but not other games.

Not that this is a good explanation mind you XD