10 Jan
2012
10 Jan
'12
5:39 a.m.
In article <596A2D12-27B2-42B0-BA44-361654A89DD7 at gmail.com>,
David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> writes:
Direct3D, since it is not managed by a large cabal
intent on preserving
compa tibility amongst several (often warring) factions, tends to advance
a little fa ster (for better or for worse).
True. OpenGL has been kinda adrift since SGI fell from grace. It
used to be that they were the single guiding hand to OpenGL. now it's
petty squabbling.
Depending on what you're trying to do with it and
how early you consider
portability issues, it can be relatively simple or d evilishly complex
to translate Direct3D operations to OpenGL;
For games, its not that hard to have it work on both. The parts that
don't map well between the two APIs (logical ops on pixels, indexed
color both come to mind) are not the areas that are used by games.
With OGL you have to have the right extensions, i.e. have a modern
card, or the game won't run, but what else is new.
lots of developer s with cutting-edge engines just
don't find it worth it
to try to support OpenGL as a "second-tier" solution, which necessarily
ties the games to Windows or X Box 360 (which, as I understand it,
runs a very modified NT kernel).
It's generally not that hard to have an engine that works well on both
D3D and OGL. Xbox 360 is more like D3D9, while the PC is using a much
more advanced shader model whether it's via D3D{10,11} or OGL.
For so-called "AAA" titles, console portability is more important to
them than reaching the Mac. That means Xbox 360 and PS3. Both of
these have proprietary SDKs with details that are under NDA; I know
Xbox 360 looks like D3D9 with a few extra features and more direct
access to the GPU (you are, for intents and purposes, the only process
running and the hardware is fixed, not variable). I don't know what
the PS3 API looks like, if it's OpenGL or something more low-level and
you're on your own to build higher layers of abstraction on top of it.
IIRC, it's got a commodity GPU in there somewhere in addition to the
Cell BE.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>