On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Thomas Shikami <[email protected]> wrote: > Gareth Nelson wrote: >> >> The question is in the subject line - can the viewer use another API >> instead of DirectX? Where is DirectX actually used currently? >> We have OpenAL for sound, OpenGL for graphics, normal winsock stuff >> for networking........... so where does DirectX come into play > > DirectX comes into play for hardware detection. OpenGL doesn't give all the > informations DirectX can give. That's what I heard so far.
For Windows, DirectX works better than OpenGL for most lower end chipsets. That's gradually changing, but for now, adding a DirectX back end would add benefit for a couple years. A quick and dirty substitution hack is feasible for someone who knows both rendering subsystems well, but it would take quite a few eyes on it over many releases to iron out all the eccentricities DX would introduce. The better solution is to rework SL to replace all OpenGL use with a retargetable engine like Ogre, which can speak GL, DX, and god knows what else. At least one viewer project's working with Ogre. However when last I looked, they only seemed to be using it to add features, running it in parallel with the built in rendering instead of trying to excise the OpenGL calls. _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
