Is OpenGL better than Direct3D?

[AmdInside]

Just noticing it seems a lot of older video game titles have trouble with newer cards which I am not surprised. However, OpenGL games seem to fair better although there aren't as many OpenGL games as Direct3D games. I can play all of my OpenGL games just fine. Is it me, or does OpenGL provide better backwards compatibility?

 

[imported_Scoop]

OpenGL used to work better than Direct3D in games, but I don't know what happened to it. It looked better and ran better but now there seems to be only a handful of OpenGL games.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: Scoop
OpenGL used to work better than Direct3D in games, but I don't know what happened to it. It looked better and ran better but now there seems to be only a handful of OpenGL games.

IIRC Microsoft has
a) put a lot of support behind Direct X. Vista OpenGL support is... annoying to say the least
b) Made it more and more powerful than OpenGL. OpenGL is slow to officially update because of the bureaucratic nature at work. Technically it can do all that DirectX10.1 does but not in the official packages. Unofficial add ons add the capability but haven't been fully adopted yet. Standaradization is important so devs only need to learn one way to do something.
c)DirectX is a gaming API. OpenGL is at heart a workstation API of the 250 some calls, only about 100 are useful for game development.
d) Most importantly, Microsoft has made listened to developers and made DirectX easier and easier to develop for as time went on and implemented features devs wanted.
John Carmack(of id fame, one of the most notable stalwarts of OpenGL gaming) had this to say about DirectX

"...DX9 is really quite a good API level. Even with the D3D side of things, where I know I have a long history of people thinking I?m antagonistic against it. Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step--they?re not worried about breaking backwards compatibility--and it?s a pretty clean API. I especially like the work I?m doing on the 360, and it?s probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I?ve worked with."

DirectX before 7 looked like crap and was hard to program for but Microsoft has sank a lot of resources into making Direct X now easier to access and code, regularly updated and listens to the gaming industry when rolling out new versions.

If you want to see more OpenGl, just open up just about any workstation software.

 

[BFG10K]

With backwards compatibility there are often other factors involved besides the API, factors such as the game and GPU drivers.