It is my understanding that z-fighting occurs when the depth buffer has not enough resolution (due to floating point math). How is that related to whether it's hardware accelerated or not? You can easily get z-fighting with hardware acceleration.
Well, granted this is my experience, but if done properly you would rarely see this sort z-fighting in hardware acceleration. Usually when I saw that it was because of two surfaces trying to exist on the same plane regardless of orientation. Which I believe is what you are describing.
Thinking it over I may be incorrect in referring to this in the way I have. The issue I'm seeing is the back-to-front rendering (I'm assuming this is what the example is doing) of a smaller object being displayed on top of larger object and the renderer getting confused on the draw order.
Edit: ghusbands points out my confusion below
Granted, I'm not a 3D programmer but I built enough levels for 3D engines back in the day to have to be aware of these issues to design around them. This is all from memory so I could be totally off but this what it seems to me.
