OpenGL Games / DirectX Games

[dawks]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
We like being gimpy. And I find it ironic that DirectX is so popular, since OpenGL is the standard for all of the high-end 3D apps. I wouldn't be surprised if all of those game companies are using OpenGL tools to design the models and crap for their DirectX game.

OpenGL is and has historically been much more difficult to program for/with. Microsoft has made DirectX programming much easier. I remember a pretty famous game developer (forgot his name) say back in '99 how he was a little uneasy about the quality of games that would start comming out since DirectX 7/8 had made it so much easier to program a 3D game. Just about any old CS joe can get into it now.

OpenGL is still superior to DirectX... Just ask Carmack

 

[BFG10K]

Both UT and UT2004 are D3D.

The original UT had an OpenGL renderer that allowed high resolution textures and generally worked better than the D3D one.

UT2004 OTOH works better under D3D as the OpenGL renderer is missing features and is only offered for compatibility reasons.

 

[boran]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: boran
I'mho it's a good thing that MS invented and pushed DirectX, before DirectX you had a 3D rendering API for every card manufacturer + some extra's and it was a whole mess about which games supported what.

DirectX was Windows 95-era technology. What 3D rendering APIs existed back in 95 (at least for games)?
[...]

If i'm not mistaking:
3Dfx Glide
S3 Metal
Some Matrox Api (cant remember name)
MS D3D

And directX only took off together with nVidia (the Geforce) before that Glide was the dominating API.

But I'm bound to have missed some, and history aint my best thing.

 

[Zenoth]

Call Of Duty

Isn't that game OpenGL ?

If it is, then it's a pretty sweet one. It runs fast, it's scalable (playing on low-end, med-end and high-end machines) and great looking in my opinion.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: boran
If i'm not mistaking:
3Dfx Glide
S3 Metal
Some Matrox Api (cant remember name)
MS D3D

And directX only took off together with nVidia (the Geforce) before that Glide was the dominating API.

But I'm bound to have missed some, and history aint my best thing.

According to this article, OpenGL came first, but was generally abandoned by Microsoft due to lack of driver support among hardware vendors. Direct3D followed around 1995 - 1996, but when 3Dfx debuted the Voodoo chipset along with their proprietary Glide API, many game developers jumped onboard (since Voodoo was pretty much your only option at the time for 3D acceleration). I agree with your assessment that D3D became more popular once nVidia became a serious contender; developers were not interested in becoming locked into a set of non-compatible vendor-specific APIs.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: SonicIce

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

I think he meant UT 99, which was 3Dfx Glide at heart . this game worked better in direct3d than opengl anyway?

UT99 was MeTaL at heart. That was the fastest and best quality renderer. Glide was the ugliest, as always, due to low colour, low resolution textures and of course the banding and washed out look from 3dfx's hardware. Only after the game was unsaleable did the OpenGL with S3TC option surpass MeTaL, simply because faster cards were then available than the ol' S4 and S2000. Of course, 3dfx was still left out for lack of OpenGL compliance.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: SonicIce

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

I think he meant UT 99, which was 3Dfx Glide at heart . this game worked better in direct3d than opengl anyway?

UT99 was MeTaL at heart. That was the fastest and best quality renderer. Glide was the ugliest, as always, due to low colour, low resolution textures and of course the banding and washed out look from 3dfx's hardware. Only after the game was unsaleable did the OpenGL with S3TC option surpass MeTaL, simply because faster cards were then available than the ol' S4 and S2000. Of course, 3dfx was still left out for lack of OpenGL compliance.

I agree that Metal was the best API for UT for quite some time(had the pleasure of using it), but Glide was still it's basis at heart.

 

[SonicIce]

check out this nice OpenGL renderer for UT99. It runs much faster on my computer and has options for antialiasing and anisotropic filtering that never worked before with UT.
I think this is the latest version.