Why did you chose opengl?

Self explanatory what are the reasons why you chose OpenGL over DirectX. This isn’t supposed one of those DX or OGL threads…I just want to know if there’s a reason why ppl chose it
thanks

because i don’t like microsoft?

Couldn’t find D3D for Linux.

Because I don’t like the name

Cause i find it easyer to work with

because Id Software is using it!

cheers,
yaro

Because “OpenGL” looks nicer than “DirectX” when you write it on the paper

anyone has a real answer?

i mean you cant just chose opengl because it looks good on paper lol

[This message has been edited by paneb (edited 03-21-2003).]

I prefer the API, and I didn’t want to learn COM to use DirectX (I think it uses COM right?). I find it much easier to work with.

yea it does use COM…yea, and i have a book at home on COM, and its not that simple…lol…i am just starting opengl (trying to init. a window…whooa ), but i get confused sometimes as to what a function does, and then i realize it just sets up the next couple of lines…like glMatrixMode (GL_PROJECTION) for example…its very fun…

It’s an open standard - not controlled by one company but a consortium of companies, meaning noone can hijack it for their own ends.

It’s available on the platforms I’m interested in (Win32 and Linux).

It’s syntactically much nicer to read than DirectX.

There’s one hell of a lot of documentation for it, much freely available on the Internet.

It’s a lot more mature than DirectX.

etc etc…

Hi

thats simple: some years ago I wanted to visualize vector algebra for myself and OpenGL SDK was provided with VS. It would be no fun to download a 170mb DX SDK with 56kbit …
Now at school it just takes 2 minutes and now I can fight with (or against ) DX 9

Bye
ScottManDeath

Oh, COM is not difficult at all. You should but use proper prog language(as Delphi). But I think OpenGL is more powerfull as D3D, it has nicer syntax and structure(the state machine - it sound just cool!). And I like API better, it’s easy extendable. And say: which D3D can make full use of GeForceFX capabilities? No one. Only OpenGL2 :slight_smile:

My primary reason was that it seemed a lot easier than direct3d. I had to start working on a 3d project and didn’t have much experience so simplicity was an important issue to me. I also saw the Carmac’s famous writing about how he prefers OpenGL over D3D, so that was enough for me.

-Ilkka

OpenGL is dead easy. It’s great for beginners, and it is sufficiently powerful for advance users. In a couple of days, with the help of glut, you can start having fun with triangles and cameras. It’s multiplatform, so great for educational and research purposes. I remember learning OpenGL on Silicon Graphics platform.

The interface is much more straight forward than DX. No vertex buffers to worry about, it’s a more high level approach. I like the matrix stack approach. It’s a bit counter-intuitive at first, but it’s very useful in the end. You can just render anything without worrying about data management, very useful for visualising debugging stuff.

I’m not very experienced with DX, but OpenGL is certainly easier on the brain for beginners. Also, it’s widely supported on WWW. For more advance effects, I’ll call a draw.

I just wished it supported quaternions

[This message has been edited by oliii (edited 03-22-2003).]

Out of interest, how exactly would you have it support quaternions? glRotate can rotate around an arbitary axis so it’s easy get that working with quaternions. And that’s about all there is that’s related to quaternions, unless you’d want some quaternion math functions, but then there isn’t even vector math in opengl. It’s a drawing API after all, not a maths library.

-Ilkka

because it’s cross-platform

cause I like the forum! Each time when I am confused, there is someone helping me.

Because I don’t like Microsoft.

Because I want to make my code portable. I also develop on a GnuLinux environment.

Because learning DirectX is harder than hell. I’d rather stick to cross-platform standards like OpenGL.

But I still think it just looks nicer…