In retrospect, I regret contributing anything to this thread.

We might as well have a discussion about Islam vs. Catholicism vs. Scientology. I appeal to the reason within everyone that reads this, please let this thread die.

I thought this was a topic on games?

If you want to argue on the merits of Opengl, argue about it in a topic not concerning games using opengl.

Game wise, opengl is garbage.

But I will admit your right, for most things opengl is great on. If you want to go that route it is overall better then directx...

Personally I wish Linux could use Directx (No not the joke that is Wine), and opengl, then you'd have the ultimate OS.

But we can dream.

The main issue here is, why is anyone concerned about games for Linux anyway?

Gaming on Linux is alot worse then windows, even for native apps.

Linux is meant for alot more then gaming and looking pretty. It's meant for you to customize it into a hugely powerful OS.

I use Vista on this machine because it's a DX10 gamer.

I personally wouldn't care if I had an OS that looked like dos as long as it was highly customizable.

I apologize for being so harsh, and I guess I myself am conceited, but it's hard not to be when your experience predates the internet, and a bunch of noobs suddenly appear and whine over things (like viruses), that you do your best to avoid.

Some of the computer fields are so lovely. Patch up a network, patch up a person's pc, and then 5 minutes later they fucked it all up.

It's enough to make you go insane sometimes.

Have any of you actually done real DirectX or OpenGL development work on 3d interactive applications? (could be a game, could be a tech demo, or could be an educational project) I'm just wondering because I get the feeling I'm the only one here that has.

Mainly gaming myself. My personal results were that opengl worked on alot of video cards, but the ones that supported directx wholy ran alot faster.

This was with directx 8 and above (never used anything beyond 9 (no c).

I probably should stop acting like my experience is fact. Perhaps someone else has had different experiences?

I dunno.

I kinda wish both standards could merge like Compiz and Beryl. God, that was an improvement for Beryl. One of the reasons I hated the pretty graphics was because Beryl crashed every 5 minutes.

Yes, though primarily OpenGL. Most of the applications I've written involve a head-mounted display or a large projection screen (image-based rendering technique). I've done a little DirectX under C#, and I do like it, they offer some nice libraries to use with their API.

I won't fluant that Linux is 'superior' I guess it for my router as I have a lot of computers in this household (four desktops, three laptops, a 360, ps2 and ps3 all connected to the network)

It works great in that capacity, and while I also have it as a duel boot on this computer, I primarily use windows because it's a lot easier to use (I've been using windows since the days of 3.1)

I don't know why people seem to think insulting one another will solve anything, in fact, it only proves that a couple of you can't argue intelligently and curteously. Can someone from Stardock please lock this thread? It went from being interesting to being nothing more than a thread filled with hatred..

Fact -

Windows is the dominant operating system, pick your flavor.

Fact -

Like it or not, Directx is built into, and supported by, said operating system.

Fact -

OpenGL was the shizzy back in the day, but business is business, and by hook or crook Microsoft has managed to leverage DirectX into being the dominant contender in the market for game development.

Fact -

Linux can't run DirectX - and never will be able to.

Fact -

Linux will NEVER be a 'gaming' platform for that reason.



Now we can argue back and forth about what OS is better, which is cooler, easier whatever. But the facts are the facts and nothing short of a complete collapse of Microsoft based on opensource Linux will change that. And the chances of that happening are beyond zero so everyone just give it a rest. Linux is great, cool for server applications, and desktops if you really want to run it. But each and every one of your Linux sack riders knows damn well that you have a Windows OS boot partition because in the end that's the reality of this world -

IT RUNS ON WINDOWS *.*

Case closed - thank you for playing.

I again apologize, and I'll leave the topic, not because if I don't somebody will kill me, but because I'm acting in a non honerable fashion.

I don't like the ways things are going, people going for fashion and then screwing themselves over, and then asking people who know something to fix it. It drives me nuts.

But it is their opinion, and I should let them be.

Ok, one more time



True, some people are like that. I am not one of them. I know that my system probably isn't locked down as tightly as it should be, but a blanket declaration that people use it to feel more secure is asinine at best.



I won't link directly to the page out of respect for our servers, but take a look at the "Lab Usage" link at www.cs.usask.ca/ Notice all of the little Ls on the computers? Those are the Linux machines.



Ok, how about this: Beryl isn't being used all that much anymore, it's been merged back into Compiz. The package is called compiz-fusion, and last I checked it was pretty damn stable.



As I said, I don't use Ubuntu. And the reference wasn't at you, you're not unhelpful - it was at the people who were unhelpful to me when I was first starting out. I'm actually quite enjoying this



My appologies, my dates were wrong. I meant to say 10 years. I installed my first version of Linux in 1998, and I decided to install (because I hadn't heard of anything else at the time) Mandrake 5.2. That would put me at the ripe old age of 13 at the time, which isn't unreasonable for a person who enjoys working with technology.



Before my time, but I did do a bit of Basic on my 486! And if you're really old enough to have actually programmed on those machines, then you'd know that the 'better' operating systems back then were Unix based.



Once again with the insinuations of Ubuntu use, and yet you accuse me of not reading your points? And good grief, where the hell did you get the idea that I think Vista looks as good as a well-tuned *nix install from? I think the entire Vista UI is terrible - too much fluff and not enough function. I'll agree that lots of the new users are after the pretty desktop effects. But then so are lots of the new Mac users. There's nothing wrong with being after the fancy desktop stuff, but that's beside the point. I'll also agree that there is some segmentation in the distribution ecosystem, but that's not necessarily a bad, or a new, thing - remember that variety is the spice of life!

What we're discussion here is pretty much irrelevant to this thread - I'm not going to change your mind, and you're not going to change mine. And I suspect that with this petty bickering, we're not changing anyone else's either.

I feel bad leaving anything completely unsaid, and I regret not being able to make a full statement on the subject earlier. Below I've provided a few links and some extra information for those genuinely interested in the topic. I've tried my absolute best not to over- or under-present any aspect of either DirectX or OpenGL.

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1775.asp

-Direct3D vs. OpenGL: Which API to Use When, Where, and Why

This is an old article (2002), but it is a good introduction to the differences between the two and the history and conflict between the two. The state of things now (as in right now) is basically equivalent to the state of things in this article. When DirectX 9 came out, it was more feature-complete and had better support for various things than OpenGL. However, OpenGL has very modular updates and simply added the missing features and support in after the fact.

As it is now, OpenGL 2.1 (the current version) is equivalent in feature-completeness and support to DirectX 10 (this is not me stating this, I haven't done API programming in years; this is direct from a guy that has used both OpenGL and DirectX since DirectX 5).

For those of you that are interested, here are some slides from nVidia's Michael Gold about the upcoming OpenGL 3.0. A lot of things have been streamlined in this major update.

http://www.khronos.org/developers/library/2007_08_siggraph/siggraph%202007%20bof-gl3%20overview.pdf

(Now's a good time to uninstall Adobe Reader and switch to Foxit Reader, by the way .)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenGL_and_Direct3D

-Another Comparison

Here's a fairly good, slightly more modern comparison with (most of) the fanboyism (of both sides) left out.

Keep in mind that the history of Microsoft, DirectX, OpenGL, nVidia, ATI, and lots of others are all very intertwined in a complex web. They all, in some way or another, depended on one another and fought for and against each other in complex moves.

------

Concerning my earlier comments, I do not think DirectX is a bad platform. I simply am more philosophically aligned with OpenGL and feel it is a better long-term option for everyone involved (apart from, perhaps, Microsoft). DirectX, despite being a child of Microsoft, is actually well-developed and has become better over the years despite early setbacks. It is a good platform, and Microsoft has streamlined its use with a series of tools and cross-compatibilities with other things like .NET etc. OpenGL doesn't have the benefits having lots of streamlined tools (for games) and lots of popular engines with good support (though John Carmack is doing his damndest to stop this; check out idtech5).

Both platforms, in a vacuum, have no large differences even (amazing what hardware has done to drive them along the same path). As it is now, though, DirectX is as much a marketing brand as it is a development platform. One curious point today is that DirectX is basically equivalent to Direct3D. DirectSound and DirectInput and all that is fairly deprecated today and only commonly used with things like rootkit implementations (Starforce etc.). DirectX supporters used to be able to say that it was a whole platform while OpenGL was only a graphics solution, but these days it just doesn't fly, and DirectX has to compete on its graphics alone basically.

The reason I am personally more aligned with OpenGL is that it allows for more overall freedom for developers and for users in the long run. If DirectX dominates the market somehow in a few years, people will have less and less choice as developers are pushed more and more to make DirectX games as opposed to OpenGL games. Everything but Windows gaming will suffer (and that might even suffer if Microsoft gets comfortable enough [see Vista/DirectX 10]). I don't like the idea of being forced, some time in the future, to buy a new operating system at the cost of hundreds of dollars just to be able to play some games. As Microsoft showed with Halo 3, they are willing to go this route. This is just my personal view of the matter, and others are welcome to disagree for their own reasons. But saying things like 'DirectX > OpenGL' demonstrates a lack of understanding and only leads us to heated debates that will eventually get nowhere.

I encourage developers to use OpenGL because of this. If more developers show interest in OpenGL, we will end up with better methods, better examples, better tools, and a better OpenGL community. This is better for everyone in the long run (in my view), because it leaves us with more choices, more ways to accomodate more people.



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As Ceylin said, the two are just graphics API's. One isn't FUNDAMENTALLY different from the other.

The specific example he cited is true, and it just demonstrates that Microsoft has made a poor decision in gimping DirectX 10 to be 'Vista only' when it doesn't really have to be that way. That's not a mark against DirectX 10, but it just demonstrates (in my opinion) that developers can't depend on Microsoft to do sane things forever, even with something as excellently-developed as DirectX.

As it is now, OpenGL doesn't lack anything compared to DirectX except EXAMPLES of real IMPLEMENTATIONS. No one's made a 'Crysis' (or pick another game for a better example, if you like) yet for OpenGL (though John Carmack is working on this). While this doesn't really matter intellectually (such a game can be made with OpenGL), it matters for the visibility effect since OpenGL is not something that is marketed.

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To sum up, both are good platforms for developing games with DirectX having the ease-of-use advantage (because of Microsoft tools and 'integration') and OpenGL having the cross-platform and (in my view) future-proof advantage. In a vacuum, the choice between one and the other is basically a coin toss. But when considering the long view, I'd rather that games run on an open standard instead of at the whim of Microsoft. Others may disagree.

Hopefully this post has been helpful and has positively contributed to this thread. Yes, it is 100% on-topic. Gaming on Linux basically translates to implementing games in OpenGL.