What is Glide? (Aside from the obvious)

[DarkenRahl]

What exactly IS Glide, how does it work, what does it do? (brief = good =D)

Is it dead or not?

Is it worthwhile to purchase a supporting video card?

In other words, is it the super APO (is that the right 2 letter term?) that some people say?

 

[damocles]

Glide is a Graphical API.

Here is how I understand things, someone will probably correct me or say it better.

As I understand it, an API is a layer that interacts between Hardware and software. Programmers are able to code things for an API rather than having to code for individual hardware.

Microsoft?s D3D is the main graphical API. Initially D3D wasn?t very good and Glide became popular because it was stable and performed better (if you had a 3dfx Video Card). Later revisions of D3D have seen it improve significantly and it is now the default API that programmers will code for. However there are still a number of new software titles (games) that have been based on Glide. Notably Diablo 2, and Unreal engine games (inc. Deus Ex.). For playing these games, Glide is a superior option and as such isn?t dead. However, in the future less and less games will come out with Glide support and very few will support Glide exclusively (doing so will limit potential sales).

If you are buying a Video card, Glide support isn?t much of a plus, unless you wish to play the games mentioned above. It isn?t really a negative either, as any card that supports Glide will also support D3D. Pick based on its other attributes (Performance, FSAA, T&L etc).

 

[Eug]

Just a question re: Glide vs. D3D.

With Glide my V3 system is rock stable. I have left the thing on 24/7 for a week at a time, playing games and surfing, working on documents, etc. However, with D3D it crashes every once in a while during gaming.

Is this inherent to D3D or just 3dfx's implementation of it in UT?

 

[Sunner]

Dont forget OpenGL, IMO the API that should be the default since its open and exists for most platforms out there, unlike Direct3D.

 

[convex]

openGL isn't hampered by the same policies that d3d is. microsoft handles d3d very politcally as to where sgi likes to just advance opengl to get improvements to the technology. there's a good article somewhere out there with carmack about why he likes opengl so much..

 

[Killer Ape]

The difference as I understand it is that OpenGL is a specification, whereas D3D is a "Black Box" API.

This means that the HW/SW developer can code for OpenGL anyway he sees fit, as long as he meets all the requirements of the spec. This is why it's "Open". If there's an aspect of the spec that can not be met by the technology, then an "approximation" must be used in order to qualify as OpenGL certified. Say you're writing a driver for a vidcard that doesn't support trilinear filtering in hardware, then you must write a software routine for the driver that approximates it, say using dithering (I'm a little over my head here, so excuse me if this isn't 100% correct).

D3D on the other hand has predetermined/precoded how its features are handled, and the developer just has to write the driver to interface with it. It is the defacto standard because little is left "open" to the developer. This makes it a limiting, but some what fool-proof API.