I'm worried... to this simple-minded end user, OpenGL seems to be falling behind DirectX...
I'm worried... to this simple-minded end user, OpenGL seems to be falling behind DirectX...
I mean... the whole fiasco with Epic announcing that DirectX will be their focus in their future games... (supposedly this is "resolved" now, but I still have my doubts)... this doesn't look good.
so one company looks at DirectX, and suddenly OpenGL is doomed?!
There is more to the opengl market than just PC consumer games, you know.
yes, but i don't think you can tell me that games and entertainment aren't often the primary "push-the-envelope" driving force in computer technology... or maybe you can? i dunno...
Fear not. When you get games like MDK2 coming out featuring breathtaking graphics and effects and actively supporting only OpenGL, there is hope.
Epic is only one developer. I suspect their primary motive for preferring Direct3D is the better support for manipulating texture surfaces.
Ciao...
SHAYDE
That's right: game's _aren't_ the only motivating factor in developing graphics hardware. People seem to get very excited when the Geforce arrived with transform and lighting engine in silicon. It seems amazing that some voodoo has a hardware accumulation buffer. It is astonishing that all the consumer level graphics cards have all these cool hardware features seemingly to acclerate games.
But! Silicon Graphics/SGI machines have had these things for a lot longer than that. Can SGI justify a multimillion dollar Onyx2 RealtityEngine for games? Do their promotions advocate them as the ultimate Quake machine?
I conceed that, yes, some IR's are used for games, but there is more behind graphics *than* games, particularly on the high end graphics machines. SGI's had this stuff before nvidia crammed it onto a chip for the mass consumer market. But SGIs are used for scientific visualisaion (the visible human, molecules and chemical experiments, volumetric data sets, visualising the mars terrain etc.); for (military) simulators (where theres loadsamoney from the USA goverment); visualising nuclear explosions; rendering visual effects for films; and so on and so on.
It may well be games that push this technology onto the little computers, but it isn't necessarily games that push the technology on the big machines.
my 2c worth.
cheers
John
sorry about the confusion everyone. yeah, i'm mainly talking about us "little computers"i came to this forum just as an end user, not an opengl developer or graphics professional. so i' a little game-centric.
sorry. thanks for all the input though.
Take a look at the extensions registry at http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/Originally posted by john:
That's right: game's _aren't_ the only motivating factor in developing graphics hardware. People seem to get very excited when the Geforce arrived with transform and lighting engine in silicon. It seems amazing that some voodoo has a hardware accumulation buffer. It is astonishing that all the consumer level graphics cards have all these cool hardware features seemingly to acclerate games.
But! Silicon Graphics/SGI machines have had these things for a lot longer than that. Can SGI justify a multimillion dollar Onyx2 RealtityEngine for games? Do their promotions advocate them as the ultimate Quake machine?
I conceed that, yes, some IR's are used for games, but there is more behind graphics *than* games, particularly on the high end graphics machines. SGI's had this stuff before nvidia crammed it onto a chip for the mass consumer market. But SGIs are used for scientific visualisaion (the visible human, molecules and chemical experiments, volumetric data sets, visualising the mars terrain etc.); for (military) simulators (where theres loadsamoney from the USA goverment); visualising nuclear explosions; rendering visual effects for films; and so on and so on.
It may well be games that push this technology onto the little computers, but it isn't necessarily games that push the technology on the big machines.
my 2c worth.
cheers
John
The extensions that provide major new functionality have recently come mainly from companies like nVidia, ATI and 3dfx, all looking to differentiate their products for gamers.
Mike F
yes, I conceed that games are a factor in extending opengl. My assertion was that they are not the *only* factor. Keep in mind that the initial opengl specification was based on silicon graphics' API's, so already a huge proportion of opengl has come from a non-game sector.
I'm curious, what specifically does Direct3D have that OpenGL doesn't? Because of the extension mechanism new hardware features are often available in OpenGL before Direct3D. Multitexture and Register Combiners are two examples. NVidia's Register Combiners functionality will not be available until DX8 I believe. As for Epic, the problem isn't so much with OpenGL but rather the Windows driver model which is why they're dropping OpenGL support for windows. Microsoft, of course, in rather unmotivated to fix the problem.
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