OpenGL VS DX8

Who wins in this war of 2 titan?

You sure you wish to compare the entire DirectX suit with OpenGL? OpenGL doesn’t have support for input, sound, music, video, bitmapped graphics and so on, only 3D rendering.

And it’s useless to compare. Most of the people here are for OpenGL. If you ask the same question a DirectX board, the answer will be the oposite.

And OpenGL got a different target. It’s ALSO aimed towards the high-end computer market. DirectX doesn’t exists outside the gaming market.

Hi, where do u have your information about DX8 from? I just have the 7a and no possibility to download the 8 or infos about it.

There has been published a lot of previews of the features of DX8 all over the net, I don’t have any links, but a i think you’ll find some with a quick search on the net.
There are also beta versions of DX8 floating around on the net (i got one), but remember that those are time limited and will expire (and they can’t be uninstalled without manually erase the including files)

But really now… what about using the best of both worlds, OpenGL for the 3D stuff (instead of D3D) and DirectInput, DirectSound/Music for the input and sounds (for lack of better alternatives). Kinda like what a lot of the new 3D engines do (Void engine for example)… I personally cannot see too many down sides to that…

Direct Graphics (MS’s unified 2d and 3d graphics API) in DX8 will blow OpenGL out of the home consumer PC market if SGI/the ARB/whoever don’t pull their fingers out soon.

Go to Meltdown2000 for some nice PP presentations on the new features of the API: http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/meltdown/

The papers, “Pixel Processing” and “D3DX8” are especially interesting - nice hairy dog

I see that SGI has released a shader API for Irix - thats what we need to see on PCs for OpenGL to keep up with DX8. http://www.sgi.com/software/shader/

Opinions?

To The Wolf:

There a a lot of games that do so - because is one of the best solutions.

NewROmancer

Pauly- I checked out the DirectX 8 specs, especially the Direct3D 8, they look mighty impressive, apparently MS has been listening and improved on some of the tedious things in D3D like initialising… the only problem is that it is Win2k technology only and Win2k can’t play most games

>> …and Win2k can’t play most games

All games i have tried works nice in Win2k, some games works even better that on Win98/95, like runs faster and more stable. Even quite a few good old 16-bit DOS games works nice without problems. So the whole story about Win2k sucking at games is b/s.

ive got win2000 with 64mb memory prices nowadays, granted all games work but they just dont work well.
this is the truth me womans computer a 486 with 32mb + win98 , loads programs quicker than my celeron433 + 64mb win2000. this is no **** ive tested it both from a reboot, + have timed the speed that apps start up. win2000 with 64mb is not a happy sight

Agreed. Win2k pretty much sucks with 64megs. Its top with 128 though. I’ve not really had any problems with the games I play…

Yeah, I used to have win2000… Anyway, I ran a lot of the games pretty well… Some programs were running faster, including some games. However, I couldn’t get Half-life to run on my computer =(. So, no Counter-Strike. That’s when I took it off. Now, I am back to 98 and it’s blue screen.

450 K6-III, 128megs of RAM., 19gig hd… ran smoothly

DX8 is too futiristic and it’s current state has lower performance, using shaders, than implementing the same in opengl. This seems to be an implementation problem - shader “assembler” in dx8 is flexible - this makes it slow

Has any of you DirectX 8 SDK? I heared from some friends of mine that there is a beta version running… So I want it …

NewROmancer

Pauley-

>I see that SGI has released a shader API for Irix - thats what we need to see on PCs for OpenGL to keep up with DX8.
>http://www.sgi.com/software/shader/

This shader has a related paper in SIGGRAPH’00. It uses a multipass technique. That means it’s not efficient enough. But using the pixel shader in DX8, you can perform some subtle rendering just in one pass. With higher precision, more instructions and hardware acceleration in the future version of pixel shader, we will have a splendid prospect for the interactive photorealistic rendering.

OpenGL as already extensions that covers what will be included in Direct3D8.

(Please stop calling it DirectX8, cause OpenGL can’t compete against an API managing sound, music, 2d, 3d and input)

OpenGL is the nice Cross platform ever evolving 3D API.
Direct3D is a Windows only 3D API.

Direct3D catch up with OpenGL (in features, not in clarity) but OpenGL1.2 / OpenGL1.1 + extensions is always a little step farther on the road of the number of usefull features…

Direct3D success is linked to windows, windows is MS, MS may be broken, Linux or BeOS or QNX Neutrino might brake into the customer market, such bringing OpenGL to the scene…

Wait and see… and while waiting continue to code with your favorite most clean API : OpenGL

Argh, people comparing the two APIs again… but they forget a few things. An API such as OpenGL and Direct3D are just a layer between your application and the device driver which is another layer over your hardware. The feature set is defined by your hardware card, not the API. The bottom line is that if your hardware doesn’t support it, you won’t use it.

You choose an API for other reasons, like easy of use, development time, and portability. As a professional, I can tell you that development time is one of the most important factors. The more extra time you have, the more features you can add to your application.

If you find that OpenGL is slower, that is because the hardware vendor has supplied you with poor drivers not because of an API design flaw. Performance should be equal because you are using the same hardware. Demand better OpenGL support.

/skw|d

Inet said:
But using the pixel shader in DX8, you can perform some subtle rendering just in one pass.
Yup, but if you’ve seen the paper on Sigraph you’ll notice that it collaspes multiple passes into multitexturing the best it can. That’s dependant on your cards harware. No current consumer hardware could cope with the shader architecture of D3D8 right now anyway.

And remember that Geforce’s register combiners are ‘basic shaders’ in hardware…

What do you guys think about MS claiming that Direct3D 8 is now easier to use (+shorter initialization), anyone tried it? how does it fare against OpenGL when it comes to ease of use and overall functionality?

Shorter init code and easier to use tells me one thing: incompatibility.

This forces you do have the latest library to even compile newer sourcecode thats written in DX8. This is not the case with OpenGL, where all versions got the same structure.

[This message has been edited by Bob (edited 09-12-2000).]