“For many years now, the question “Which should I use: Direct3D or OpenGL?” has elicited heated arguments. Most of the things said do very little to help you decide which API you should use. There are fanatics on both sides; some people will tell you that OpenGL is the only way to go, and others will swear by Direct3D. Others will talk about how they have used both, and that you should do the same and decide which you like better, but for someone starting out, that’s not much help either. The point is, it can be a tough decision to make, and I am writing this article to help you do it. My specialty is primarily in Win32 programming, so that will be my focus. No need to fear though, I discuss other platforms as well.” Read the rest of the article at GameDev.
A Developer’s Perspective on Direct3D vs. OpenGL
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’ve been using opengl tryed direct3d but it seemed just a tad worse
…has a way to use Direct3D stuff on Linux and Mac OS X. http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxglwrap/ .
I think Eugenia even had some experience with these guys. 8)
>I think Eugenia even had some experience with these guys. 8)
Hey, be careful what you say over here, my husband reads these forums…
(kidding
…but of course I already knew everything
What he says is true. DirectX code is long, complex and sometimes painful (like Win32 and the rest of MS APIs) but even though I want to continue learning it. You can’t really avoid it if you want to develop windows games.
At the same time I’m looking into OpenGL and I will probably do my evil experiments using both.
DirectX Common Files huh?
Is he talking about DXSDKsamplesMultimediaCommon?
Anybody know this?
Backslashes didn’t work…
Try 2
\DXSDK\samples\Multimedia\Common
Try 3
/DXSDK/samples/Multimedia/Common
Lets see…
D3D vs. OGL is the familiar story of MS’s embrace-and-extend coupled with their usual strong-arm tactics to lock in their proprietary stuff (in an attempt to destroy the already-established standard — OpenGL).
The article discusses none of *that* though. It’s the typical “well you like MS D3D
and you like OGL, so let’s compare and contrast!”
> It’s the typical “well you like MS D3D
and you like OGL, so let’s compare and contrast!”
Of course that is what it is. This is why is published on OSNews. And it ain’t so “typical” after all.
<em>And it ain’t so “typical” after all.
</em>
Whoops. Sorry — my subject line was wrong. It should’ve said “typical pro-MS approach to the D3D vs. OGL issue”. Thanks.