I''ve been told before that you can''t just ''sit on the fence''

Unfortunately, the choice between OpenGL and Direct3D is entirely a persnal opinion. I could end with that, but it doesn''t help anyone very much

My own personal preference is Direct3D, although I have used OpenGL before. Unfortunately, again, there are drawbacks...

Direct3D is much more difficult to setup correctly/effectively, you need to setup your surfaces, select a display mode (and create it!), attach a ZBuffer and more before you even begin to start drawing a usuable view

OpenGL allows you to create and start doing interesting things much more quickly and it is powerful (Quake3 uses it, what more of an example could you ask? ). Also OpenGL is much, much, MUCH more portable than Direct3D! (I personally write a rendering DLL, so if I do decide to port to another machine, I need only re-write that to support OpenGL).

However, once setup, Direct3D supplies you with much more information with the current system and your code can make decisions based on this (once written, the setup code can be reused, avoiding the tiresome setup). If you''re only considering Windows machines, place Direct3D above OpenGL (But, never put OpenGL outside the reaches of future development! Also if you choose to use OpenGL don''t ever put Direct3D out of reach from future development, you may never use it. But if you do, you''ll be so glad you considered it early!!!)

I can only conclude that you try both and decide for yourself (after all, both SDK''s are free! ). But that leaves me on the fence yet again

So to avoid the fence (and a sore bottom ) I personally prefer DirectX due to the control it supplies. But if Direct3D didn''t exist, OpenGL is a very close second (to me, at least!) :D

Anyone who claims that one or the other is more powerfull than the other is to arrogant to take notice of (a closed mind is no mind). My choice is personal, yours will be too. Sorry it''s not that helpfull to anyone trying to decide

n!

oh yes, another point I failed to make
Thanks spazboy, DirectX is much easier to follow and use if you''re familiar with OOP programming (speaking from a C++ standpoint, I haven''t tried DX with VisualBasic (is that OOP?))
So you may want to check out OpenGL if you don''t know what a virtual table is, or a this pointer Although at least try it, if you try both and choose one, at least you have reasons!

n!

Here''s the problem with directX: EVERYTHING IS IN CAPS.
Example: LPDIRECTDRAWSURFACECAPS7
Or: LPDIRECT3DVERTEXBUFFER7
And the god-awful Hungarian notation prefixes..
lpd3dvbaVertices; // pointer to a vertex buffer array

How''s this:
LPD3DDRAWPRIMITIVESTRIDEDDATA* lplpd3ddpsdaVertexComponents;

I think clean code must be against Microsoft company policy. AND ALL THEIR COMPUTERS HAVE THE CAPS KEY PERMANENTLY STUCK.

-RWarden (roberte@maui.net)

" I bet I surprised a lot of people writing such a topic"
Yes you really do.You never seem to run out of "innovations" for this forum heh?
And Witchlord:I completely agree with your doc except one thing that isn´t really true:I think most new Hardware-features are accesable through OpenGl FIRST ´cause the vendors mostly publish their Extensions at the timeframe the card comes into stores.If this TimeFrame is just after a new DirectX release the D3D-people will have to wait....One year....



To the discussion:
I think it´s just a political decision.Do I want to support M$ on their way to world-domination?For me the answer is definately NO(that´s why I use OpenGl.Despite this I see no reason to use D3D ´cause I don´t wanna live without OpenGl´s procedural interface).Even now the consequences of M$ monopol status are
un-tolerateable(spelled correctly?) - Just think about the Xbox thing which perhaps ruins the (PC-)Games industry.Bungie is the first developer who lost his soul+independence+innovations to M$ and belief me:Many will follow(The fact that even Carmack thinks about programming for the XBox scares me).

Greets,XBTC!

Edited by - XBTC on July 6, 2000 1:46:16 PM