OpenGL definitely not dead

WHILE MOST GAME developers are opting for DX10 on the PC, we wrote this week about how Quake Wars developer Splash Damage is sticking with OpenGL, and is happy to see DX10 hardware features exposed in the software. Our article generated a wave of responses, some of which are reprinted for your viewing pleasure here.

I'm not worried about OpenGL dying because a royalty-free subset of OpenGL by the name of OpenGL-ES is the default 2D and 3D graphics API for a large number of current and impending handheld, mobile devices.

Microsoft has lost the war for empowerment of handheld, mobile devices and embedded computing. OpenGL-ES was the important battleground of graphical rendering from which Microsoft was driven, bloodied, humiliated and defeated.

Gene

Don't forget Blizzard... Their games run just great on Macs, using OpenGL. RWiker

Regarding OpenGL. Ever heard of Blizzard, you know, they are doing something called World of Warcraft? They are doing OpenGL.. ever heard of 3D-applications besids games, like Maya, AutoCAD, Cinema4D, 3DS Max? They are NOT using DX10 but OpenGL. Ever heard of Linux and Mac OS X? The are certainly not doing any DX10 stuff.. Ever head of PlayStation 3? No DX10 there either.. OpenGL all the way. Ever thought about taking your head out of the Windows bucket for a moment?

Henrik

As long as John Carmack is hanging in id Software, OpenGL will live. Honestly, without Doom 3, OpenGL would've died a long time ago. It's sad for people who are not using Windows, because OpenGL is the only way for them to play games natively. Personally it doesn't have such an impact on me because I won't be leaving Windows despite of some DRM issues and whatever.

So, when Carmack retires, OpenGL will be gone forever. In the end, though, it's all about how the game looks like, not about is it DX or OpenGL.

AZShadow

I assume your pessimism for OpenGL is reserved for the PC platform only :o)

Mick Jones

Normally D3D have been the "safe" middle ground for game developer. MS have with Vista and DX10 destroyed all the good work they did with DX8 and DX9.

Since both NVIDIA and ATI now shares most of the gamer market, and because both of their OpenGL implementations are solid on both XP and Vista, suddenly this API could play an important role.

DX9 and DX10 are VERY different. DX10 also makes a lot of premature changes to the way the GPU is used by the OS and how they are GOING TO BE designed.

And that's the way it's alway going to be. If you develop anything for a mass market, there are also limits for how extreme you can be. This goes for GPU's, API's, OS's and Games.

DX10 could in some way be the Itanic of graphics API's. More and more of the graphics coding is done inside shaders. So the amount of D3D code in a game is actually not huge anymore. While the amount of code in shaders is growing. Since a shader written in GLSL or CG can run "anywhere" this code is the most platform independent.

Vegar Kleppe

So there you have it. µ

See Also
OpenGL 2.x and 3.0 APIs arrive this year