Firstly, I think JC is slowly losing the pulse of the hardware. “The things that you get in there are the geometry shaders and a few other things”; yes, because that’s all DX10 is, of course JC. He also never touched on DX11, which is a superset of DX10.
(I also no long put any real stock in what Tim Sweeney says either btw)
Also, I feel your claim that ‘developers’ are rejecting it as less than truthful. While the list of games isn’t huge I would say this is more down to the Vista requirement than any fundimental problem with the API. It’s not ‘rejected’ as ‘not cost effective’.
There is also the large legacy issue to consider
However, the rejection or otherwise of D3D10 isn’t really an issue, as MS haven’t “suicided DX” as DX9 is still going strong and games are still being made to use it and having seen their mistake with DX10 and problems MS are moving to do what MS do best; fix it. (for example; the people who made the choice to link D3D10 with Vista only no longer work there…)
(also Vista adoption continues to climb, up another ~3% according to W3 Counter, far out pacing OSX and Linux and taking it from XP)
As for what 3D API would be relivant in 5 years time, well I have to agree with Cass that DX10 and DX11 won’t be, it’ll be whatever MS have out then.
OpenGL might well still look like a 3D API, the problem is if the current trend is to believed it will look like a 3D API which was designed 20 years ago and not in any way reflecting the hardware under it. Mean while those who want a cutting edge 3D API will be using D3D1x and those who want to treat the ‘GPU’ as a large parrellel array will use either (a)whatever MS comes up with, (b) OpenCL or (c) whatever propritary system might exist then.
As an aside; Autocad has a D3D renderer now so can we please stop trying to blame OpenGL’s stagnation on the CAD programs. Thanks.
The idea that there is a ‘struggle’ is also a strange one;
- For max Windows coverage you want DX9 or middleware
- For consoles it’s whatever the native API is or middleware
- For Linux… well, most game companies don’t care but it’s OpenGL
- For OSX… slight more companies care, but it’s still OpenGL.
It’s not really that hard, the solutions are pretty much self evident.
As for standards, well, we have them, if anything we have more than we’ve ever had.
- D3D is a standard for 3D Gfx on Windows.
- OpenGL is also a standard for 3D Gfx
- OpenGL|ES is a mobile standard for 3D Gfx
Honestly, I don’t see the problem.