Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

[RCA]

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/0...rectX

I stumbled upon this and it seems to be a popular article. I didn't read it because I don't know enough about the specifics of the arguement, but maybe some PC gaming NICOnauts have something to say.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I've expressed my irritation at MS's haste to outrun hardware with D3D these days. Fortunately, game developers don't seem to keen to follow suit...they'd rather wait until support is there. Nvidia won't have D3D11 compatible cards out until MARCH. ATI already has some, but that's only "half" the market, so no one's going to go crazy with it in their games until hardware availability has caught up. Hopefully this clues MS in that they need to maybe let hardware have some kind of lifecycle before superseding its features. Nobody wants to buy a new damn videocard JUST for the latest API support when their current card is still completely adequate performance-wise.

It's also worth noting that a lot of games run much better under DX9 than DX10. In Crysis, I gain 20+fps just from switching to DX9 mode. Sure I lose a few post-processing effects but it's really nothing you'd notice unless you were looking for it.

Both have their strengths, though.

One big thing to note is that the article should be saying Direct3D, NOT DirectX. DirectX covers ALL "Direct-" APIs, which includes networking and audio APIs as well as graphics. There are open source alternatives to DirectSound, too (OpenAL, etc.) but OpenGL only targets DirectDraw and Direct3D.

[s0m3th1ngAZ]

I remember I had a lot of trouble running Half-life and it's mods on D3D. It would get decent FPS but there would be a 1-5 second command lag. Switched to OpenGL and never looked back.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Yep, with HL back in the day it was the same story for me. D3D worked great in software mode, but with hardware acceleration (from my cutting edge Diamond 3D accelerator) I got the best results with OpenGL.