Quote Originally Posted by ector
I just find it completely ridiculous that D3D10 is approaching 2 years
As far as I can see, it's approaching 9 months or so. DX10 wasn't really available until what, january, february?

and there's not even a working alpha version of OpenGL 3.0
Well, GL3.0 isn't meant to compete with DX10 as such, is it?
That sounds more like Mt.Evans to me.
Shouldn't 3.0 be seen more as a major clean-up effort, than a "let's focus exclusively on G80 and later cards" like DX10 does.
DX10 isn't very successful with that either. It'll probably become so, in a few years, but now? How many DX10-exclusive games have you seen? How many are under development?

And seeing it not learning the lessons of D3D10 (cutting old junk like alpha test, specifying a reasonable minimum level of functionality) makes it even worse.
Isn't the lesson from DX10 that cutting *all* old junk is a terrible idea that means no one will rely on your API for the next 4 years?
You have to strike a balance. DX10 removes support for everything before G80, which makes it unviable to use now, tomorrow, or next year. On the other hand, they have DX9 as a fallback, so overall, DX is doing just fine. But 10 in particular isn't much good at the moment.

GL tries to strike a different balance, one that doesn't require you to use a parallel legacy API for the foreseeable future. The goal with GL3.0 is that you should be able to switch to it and use it exclusively.
Not switch to it for the 3% of the userbase who has the hardware for it, and fall back to GL2.1 for everyone else.

Quote Originally Posted by Lindley
Microsoft doesn't define standards. They just write code that everyone conforms to despite its non-standard-ness.
How so? DirectX looks like a standard too. It's defined by Microsoft, and it specifies a standard behavior that GPU's conform to. Doesn't that make it a standard?

Looking past all the MS-bashing, DirectX does have its advantages. It's a shame that there are zealots on both sides who refuse to even consider what's going on with the "opposite" standard.
Wouldn't it be nice if OpenGL evolved as quickly as DX? (but still made the "right" decisions of course)
Wouldn't it be nice to have access to tools like PIX for OpenGL development? That in particular, would rock.