Every time I try to find something on NVidia’s site, nowadays it seems that they are slowly throwing out OpenGL out of the window and shifting solely into DirectX. There is this NVToolkit (which now very kindly include OpenGL headers) and most of the demos for new stuffs are in DirectX .Why is this happening ? OpenGL is still ahead of DirectX on a lot of issues (not trying to start a war, so forget it), it just sucks to see OpenGL getting kicked around because of an evil sibling who started off with no virtue but happen to have a rich father.
Its because Direct 3d doesnt suck as much as it used to, and microsoft is upgrading it faster than opengl is evolving.
At least thats the way I see it. I still use opengl exclusivly, and have helped write an implementation of it on a console at one point, but from coworkers all I hear is good stuff about DX8. Thinking about switching soon.
Jon
We’re throwing OpenGL out the window? That’s news to me.
- Matt
you’ll find all the activity with d3d over at the nvidia over the last month has to do with the release of d3d8 im sure it die down a bit soon. if/when! opengl1.3 comes out im sure we’ld see the same thing for gl
The real reason is that there are far more users using windows, than say linux, or mac os, or unix combined. Seeing that, most companies that are NOT seeking to port to other systems then pick DX. (It is also pointed out tht DX8 is MUCH better than anything it had before hand), but it is a closed API, it isn’t available for any other platform BUT windows.
Having said that, it is also MS fault that they don’t update opengl32.dll to support multi-mon, or some of the other stuff.
Opengl is still a good API, it still is easier to use than any verion of DX (including 8), and it is multi-platformed centered. That is still a big plus for many people. (and a few companies)
Just a remark here: before the DX8 release (as stated above), almost all new demos (I mean, the one with source code, not the commercial ones) on nVidia’s site were OpenGL only (you know they have this nice features on top of the page with ‘OpenGL’ or ‘D3D’ only… Shame they don’t do it for the commercial demos…).
If you look at their latest demos, they are all focused around pixel shaders. Keep in mind that this is closely related to GL_NV_vertex_program… When nVidia FINALLY (youhou Matt,Cass,Sebastien !) releases an OFFICIAL driver that implements this extension, we should see all the same demos for OpenGL… At least I hope so…
Best regards.
Eric
Is it just me, or does anyone else here think OpenGL is going forward at about the same speed as Direct3D? Remember that OpenGL isn’t just the core, it’s extensions aswell. OpenGL is almost exclusively evolving throug extensions that become part of the core. You have to look at the extensions aswell, and not only the core. It have been said that the new features in DX8 is not usable on todays hardware, so why count them today? And most/all features in DX is available in OpenGL aswell, though extensions. And even though there are certain freatures that aren’t present in OpenGL today, I’m pretty sure it is features that isn’t practically usable in DX8. When the hardware is capable of doing DX8 in hardware, I have no reason to think that the features won’t be usabe in OpenGL in one way or another.
I think from nVidia’s point of view it makes perfect sense to support both the DirectX and OpenGL API’s, which they do. The reason their developer site has been crammed with DirectX 8 demos is because DirectX 8 has just been launched and the XBox looms, enough said.