On Thu, 2005-06-23 at 16:29 +0800, Matthew Healey wrote: > > Yeah. Unfortunately, there a few reasons developers use DirectX that > > aren't easily written off: > > > > (a) hardware manufacturers tend to do a better job of their DirectX > > drivers and support on their consumer cards; Quality OpenGL is > > relegated to pro models. > > > > Does that mean that all this time, Quake 3 and Doom 3 based games > actually haven't been working on the PC?
No, of course not. It *does* mean that Id had to spend time working around and/or fixing OpenGL issues, identifying bad drivers, etc. Also, remember that Id has the market power to go to a graphics card manufacturer and say "if you want your card to be listed as supported by Doom 3, fix this bug" - and have the card manufacturer jump to comply. Id have always stuck with OpenGL. They're also one of the prime movers behind OpenGL 2, and possibly the biggest factor in finally getting it out the door as a finished standard. I strongly suspect they're what's kept it alive on Windows for consumer cards, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were one of the main factors in growing manufacturer support for OpenGL 2, either. > > (b) Until recently, OpenGL sucked compared to recent DirectX > > versions. Only with OpenGL 2.0, which is still only now seeing > > some adoption, is this rectified. > > > > Ahh how things change. Not long ago it was DirectX that sucked like a > vacuum. Don't get me wrong, it still has its problems. Lots of them. However, when developers can do something more quickly and efficiently using new DirectX shader magic, that's likely to be an attractive option. Sure, they could probably use an OpenGL extension, but only if they can confirm it's widely - and correctly - supported by cards and drivers. With OpenGL 2, things should hopefully be on more of a level regarding technical capabilities. > Well the newly released NVidia 7800 supports OGL2 out of the box. I noticed that - and it makes me rather happy. -- Craig Ringer
