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Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

408 points by intull 13y ago

taspeotis 13y ago
API use was shifted in favor of DirectX by Microsoft's two-pronged DirectX campaign around the launch of XBox 360 and Windows Vista, including the spread of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the future of OpenGL, and wild exaggeration of the merits of DirectX. I thought it was because that, at the time, the OpenGL API was shit [1]. By the time of OpenGL 2.1, OpenGL was running into a problem. It had a lot of legacy cruft. The API wasn't easy to use anymore. There were 5 ways to do things, and no idea which was the fastest. And really, the author of the blog post should have known this when the blog post was written... By David Rosen on January 8th, 2010 OpenGL 2.1 came out in 2006 [2]. [1] http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055/7067 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055/7067 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#OpenGL_2.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#OpenGL_2.1
- ekianjo 13y ago
  It's also a legacy issue: once developers start using DirectX, it's harder for them to go back, and traditionally PC development has been Windows-only (more or less) for many years. Now that the market is becoming fragmented again between different platforms, there is more incentive to go for a cross-platform API than before - and that's where standards matter.
  - MaulingMonkey 13y ago
    Not really 'legacy' per se either... good luck running OpenGL on Microsoft's consoles or as a ModernUI application! DirectX being a broader and, in my opinion, better designed API certainly doesn't hurt it's adoption either.
    - shiven 13y ago
      What about OSX? Does DirectX work (at all/well) on it? Linux? How feasible is it to program with DirectX on any non-MS platform? Edit: I guess the point I'm making is, OpenGL runs on non-MS as well as MS platforms (perfectly/badly is another question), but DirectX is locked to Microsoft only. That is what makes it of little to no value for people like me who need to care about cross-platform products and support.
      - computerslol 13y ago
        A Microsoft OS still runs on over 90% of the desktop market.
        deleted 13y ago
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        runjake 13y ago
        I wonder what the percentage is when you figure the entire "computer" gaming market (eg. consoles, tablets, and phones). I suspect Microsoft's dominance on gaming is (and will become even more) weaker than we believe. OpenGL seems like a no-brainer for future survival as MSFT platform dominance exhibits entropy.
        runevault 13y ago
        Is PS3/PS4 development OGL or a proprietary API? Because if it is OGL then yes that makes said API far more useful for sheer amount of access to hardware.
        LukeShu 13y ago
        The PS4 uses OpenGL (4.4?). The PS3 used a proprietary API based on OpenGL 1.0.
        runevault 13y ago
        So yeah, OGL grows more useful as the PS4 grows its user base. Thanks for the info
    - shadowmint 13y ago
      Yeah, don't worry about those mobile devices. We've got plenty of directx support for those too. What are they again? Surface? Windows phone? I think I know one guy who has one.
      - sologrrl 13y ago
        I don't know anyone that uses desktop Linux, unless I count my sister who I saw using Red Hat at her CAD/CAM workplace four or five years ago. However I am afraid to to state this on HN, given how sensitive and hostile the crowd here can be about Linux.
      - computerslol 13y ago
        I have one of each.
      - gtirloni 13y ago
        One is usually enough for a guy.
      - MaulingMonkey 13y ago
        This isn't to say you won't possibly need more than just DirectX. But this is to say you quite possibly need at least DirectX.
      - theg2 13y ago
        Not an Apple or Google product? Gotta be awful! Love how people treat competition as something awful when it doesn't follow their own brand loyalty. Edit: It looks like the authors snark isn't as obvious to others as it was to me. I'm all for cross platform development and doing whatever makes sense your company/brand in terms of development, all my side projects use tools that make them as portable as possible.
        danudey 13y ago
        No one was making a qualitative judgement against Windows Phones, just a quantitative comment about install base.
        13y ago
  - yuhong 13y ago
    And to continue the story started from the stackexchange post, again the depreciation turned out to be a good decision. Guess what OpenGL ES that is used today on mobile devices and WebGL in browsers basically is?
- kbenson 13y ago
  That stackexchange post is very, very good. Points just for bring that out.
  - guiambros 13y ago
    It was a great read, indeed. And yet, it was locked by SE mods as out of topic. While I love Stack Exchange and I'm thankful for the value it brought in so many ways, this policy of locking reasonable and valid questions is just upsetting.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- noselasd 13y ago
  OpenGL was not in any way shit when DirectX started overtaking OpenGL. It became so around the time GPUs started being programmed by shaders - prior to that era OpenGL was quite pleasant compared to DirectX, yet DirectX mostly overtook OpenGL
  - Narishma 13y ago
    I'm not sure I agree with your last point. With the exception of Direct3D, pretty much everything from DirectX has been deprecated at one point or another and replaced with external libraries that usually originate from Xbox development.
    - kabdib 13y ago
      DirectInput, for instance. Over-engineered and badly designed, then virtually abandoned (because who ever gets promoted for fixing bugs? You get promoted for features). Definitely not what anyone really wanted from an input API.
- fritz_vd 13y ago
  thank you.. this is awesome.
treeform 13y ago
It feels like a lot and nothing has changed since that 3.9 year old blog post. On one had webGL, steamOS, Mac games, iOS games, and Android Games. On the other hand gaming PC is still a windows PC. What are your thoughts?
- goldenkey 13y ago
  DirectX has a way better API which might be why. DirectX has been COM oriented, OOP design, for years. While OpenGL was handle-based, purely procedural.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Yes, many that bash DirectX never experienced how the whole ecosystem works and the existing offers in terms of tooling for performance analysis.
    - deleted 13y ago
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    - exDM69 13y ago
      > Yes, many that bash DirectX never experienced how the whole ecosystem works and the existing offers in terms of tooling for performance analysis. Usually people don't "bash" DirectX or D3D. Most OpenGL programmers acknowledge that it is a better API with more corporate backing (ie. budget). But at the same time it is still Windows only, and for a lot of people it simply isn't an option. For OpenGL, the tooling is provided by individual vendors, and yes, it's not as good as d3d. But the situation has improved in the past few years and keeps on improving.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        Which vendors? Besides gDEBugger there isn't any tool that I am aware of, that can match the performance monitoring of DirectX and console specific APIs. Even NVidia only started to invest in OpenGL performance measuring tools, after their Android support started.
b0rsuk 13y ago
By David Rosen on January 8th, 2010
pjmlp 13y ago
Again that post. Spreading the lie that all game consoles support OpenGL. Yes, OpenGL is a great API if one cares about portability and FOSS. Reality, the game industry cares about their IP and getting games released no matter what technology stack is used. Many AAA studios don't even develop for all platforms, rather target a main one, leaving the port to subcontractors. Back in the golden days of the arcades, many subcontractors were not even given source code. There are plenty of subcontractor stories about having to play through games while taking pictures or recording on tape. When you have development processes like this in place, the gaming API doesn't matter that much.
- exDM69 13y ago
  > Many AAA studios don't even develop for all platforms, rather target a main one, leaving the port to subcontractors. AAAs are one thing and are mostly based on engine technology that has been in development for years. For them D3D vs. OpenGL is a non-issue that was solved a decade ago. Or they stick to being Windows only. And they have the budget to port (or hire a subcontractor to port) one way or another. For indies, on the other hand, the most money these days is (probably, don't have any stats at hand) coming from Android and iOS, which both use OpenGL (ES). Using off the shelf game engines is a very popular option but a lot of developers roll their own tech.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    Many studios use game engines that either abstract away the graphics API or at least greatly simplify it. Building your own AAA engine is quite expensive even if you have a lot of resources. OpenGL ES 2+ is more like DX10 and less like Open GL.
    - exDM69 13y ago
      > Many studios use game engines that either abstract away the graphics API or at least greatly simplify it. Not only do they abstract away API details, perhaps even provide an api independence layer but they actually make the 3d magic hapen. OpenGL/D3D have no notion of "3d", there are no models, cameras, scenes, etc. > OpenGL ES 2+ is more like DX10 and less like Open GL. Not really. OpenGL ES is still like OpenGL. It's a subset of full OpenGL and does not fix the inherent design issues with the API. Feature-wise OpenGL ES 2 is like DX9 which is like OpenGL 2.1 sans the legacy crap. OpenGL 3 is comparable to D3D10 and OpenGL 4 to D3D11. OpenGL 2.x was the "big change" from the old fixed function pipeline to a programmable shader based pipeline, but nothing was removed or deprecated in order to provide an incremental porting path. OpenGL 3 actually deprecates some of the old features but does not change the API, only removes the old parts. But the API is still a horrible mess with a global state and weird side effects, even if a lot of stuff was removed. For the programmer, D3D is a lot nicer than OpenGL in many ways and that is unfortunately not going to change for the foreseeable future. OpenGL gets the job done but it's very uncomfortable to use.
kayoone 13y ago
As a sidenote, Wolfire is currently working on http://www.wolfire.com/overgrowth http://www.wolfire.com/overgrowth which is quite impressive in terms of game mechanics. They also post development videos on Youtube regularly which i find highly interesting: http://www.youtube.com/WolfireGames http://www.youtube.com/WolfireGames
- frik 13y ago
  Yes, but thanks to their HumbleBundle.com success, over the years Overgrowth looks more like a engine tech demo and vaporware.
  - Jach 13y ago
    It's wrong to call it vaporware when after you preorder you can download alpha builds as they come and experience everything shown off in the videos... There's also a small modding community.
  - Erwin 13y ago
    They seem to be happy to let you pay $30 for the Alpha version though, despite it being in Alpha since at least 2009 (based on the date on the FAQ). I'm surprised PayPal will let you pre-order something that has been more than 4 years in development and has no release date.
    - chii 13y ago
      It's playable, and you can use the in game editor to make your own maps/scenes. Not too different from what minecraft was when it was early alpha.
    - Tmmrn 13y ago
      On the one hand you keep reading "developers need to eat" and on the other hand you keep reading comments like yours. Buying the alpha means paying for continuous development... Also, you get a new download of the current state every time they have some significant changes.
kayoone 13y ago
Isn't this more or less a problem of the past? Today with tools like Unity3d, UDK, CryEngine, Shiva Engine, MonoGame etc, game developers are at a point where they can pretty much stop worrying about the OpenGL/DirectX layer beneath their engines. Those Engines have become so powerful and affordable that it hardly makes any sense to roll your own. In fact, imo you would need a very strong reason to build your own engine these days instead of focusing on your product. Soon all of these will support WebGL/HTML5 as a target and even render most of the (still very basic) WebGL engines obsolete. Now if you were in the business of creating your own tools or engine, you would need to support both of OpenGL and DirectX to be able to support all the major platforms anyway.
- exDM69 13y ago
  > Isn't this more or less a problem of the past? Yes and no. If you want to be writing a typical 3d game like an FPS, and RTS or 3rd person platformer, you can and probably should use an off the shelf 3d engine and stay away from the lower level APIs, OpenGL and d3d. However, if you want to do something more exotic, say processing your webcam input stream with your GPU, or write a space scale render of the solar system or do anything that diverges from the use cases you typically use 3d engines for, you might still be better off using D3D or OpenGL directly. Then there are aspiring future game engine programmers and hobbyists who want to use OpenGL directly. It's arguably more interesting than paying for a 3d engine but it's more work of course. So most people do not need to touch D3D and OpenGL, in the same way that most people do not need to write C. But some people must and some people want to.
  - kayoone 13y ago
    Sure, they are some edge cases where it might make sense, but even then i would analyze requirements very carefully. I have quite a bit of experience with Unity3D and besides being really simple to use you can basically extend it with any C#/C++ library that you see fit. Support for Webcam input streams is there out of the box and id argue theres hardly anything it cant do. Of course, if you want to be (or are) an engine programmer, go for it and get your feet wet using OpenGL/DirectX, but for the broad mass of game developers, these aren't issues anymore. Playing with it directly can be fun yes, but it can also be frustrating if all you want is so much easier with a game engine.
deviltry 13y ago
I rememver Overgrowth, I was looking at the development back when I was still using Linux... Still hasn't released. Nice credibility for OpenGL - use OpenGL for vaporware!
frik 13y ago
This articles is from 2010 and is really dated. Even Microsoft supports WebGL (based OpenGL ES 2) in Internet Explorer 11. Beside that the article doesn't mention that OpenGL 2 came late (and 1.x is way outdated). And to bootstrap OpenGL 2+ on Windows you still need a OpenGL 1.4 context to create an OpenGL 2+ context. So not so trivial at all :/ As the article is pre-smartphone era: the future for OpenGL/WebGL is very good now. You can run WebGL on every device/OS (beside Windows, OpenGL 2/3 but no ES driver).
- gtirloni 13y ago
  It's funny how many old stuff (that is supposed to rely on current data) is posted on HN. I am still getting used to this. I was reading the article and he mentions WinXP is half of all gamers.. I couldn't believe my eyes. These things should come with a disclaimer here like "really really old stuff, i just want to pick a few points from it which are this and this. ignore the rest".
jasin 13y ago
Portability etc notwithstanding and purely from an API point of view, there's no question that DirectX is superior to OpenGL. There are lots of examples, but the mere fact that you need _another_ 3rd party API such as GLEW even to be able to use OpenGL's latest features in the first place should speak volumes.
- vetinari 13y ago
  You don't _need_ GLEW, it is just convenience library.
  - jasin 13y ago
    Well, of course you don't _need_ it. You can always go and parse the extension string yourself, then call LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress() to manually setup pointers to the extension functions etc. The point is that you don't have to care about any of that crap when using DirectX. Bear in mind, this is just one example.
    - vetinari 13y ago
      In DX you have to care about version and capability bits (up to DX9) or speed (same caps, some may be implemented in software, DX10+). Same thing in slightly different way.
- pof33 13y ago
  Pathetic Microsoft shill.
be5invis 13y ago
One of my friend, a game developer, said that, once you get familiar with the DirectX 11, you will not want to use any other APIs. They look outdated. And seriously, the GNMX API (a high level wrapper of GNM) of PS4 has more similarity to DirectX than OpenGL.
- girvo 13y ago
  Game developer, or engine developer?
spikels 13y ago
And since this article was written Microsoft has pretty much admitted defeat by incorporating WebGL (a simplified version of OpenGL) in IE11.
- ygra 13y ago
  Has there ever been a competing option of WebDirectX they could have tried to push instead? Or is admitting defeat in this case the same as admitting defeat by implementing Flexbox?
  - hansjorg 13y ago
    Silverlight?
- kevingadd 13y ago
  There's no way they ever would have exposed DirectX to JavaScript. It's not really admitting defeat to implement a web platform feature that customers want when you have no alternative. They used to be pushing Silverlight as a way to do 3D rendering (which made sense, because it had the DirectX bindings from XNA and .NET is a superior platform for rendering code when compared with JavaScript) but now that Silverlight and basically every other native plugin is on the way out, there's no way they can lean on that anymore.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    Exposing DirectX to JavaScript would be like allowing the browser to run VBScrpt code. They tried.
    - bitwize 13y ago
      There was a time when Internet Explorer could run VBScript code... you said <script language="VBScript"> ... What I think you mean is letting the browser run scripts in the Windows Scripting Host, which gives you unlimited access to the filesystem, etc.
romanovcode 13y ago
>However, there's one big problem: they don't work on Windows XP! Half of PC gamers still use XP, so using DirectX 10 or 11 is not really a viable option. This problem does not exist anymore.
- voltagex_ 13y ago
  I know what you mean but http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey still shows 14.63% on XP - not a huge amount but still hanging on.
  - shootinputin 13y ago
    Windows XP 32 bit 6.17% -0.26 it says
jheriko 13y ago
this is old, its also wrong in many ways. i keep hearing 'OpenGL' is cross platform. This is a quantifiable lie. I have written cross platform rendering engines and worked with many, I can tell you right now that platform and vendor specific hacks for OpenGL are a necessary evil if you want your stuff to work properly. If you are working in a cross platform environment you abstract away rendering then whether you are using DX or OpenGL (or anything else - RSX, or whatever...) is not really important. The question I always wonder is why OpenGL isn't this... if I can make it so can anyone else, absolutely. Its not hard or especially time consuming and gives you the power of actually being cross platform. This is a constantly improving situation though... for example I no longer need to tell a large number of Intel graphics cards that clockwise is infact counter-clockwise for face winding - because they are obsolete and the drivers have improved. There are still many problems of that nature though... you might not realise that the driver is processing your vertex shader on the CPU for instance which makes for a significantly different performance profile to similar hardware in that class...
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girvo 13y ago
I'm amazed at the comments here on this thread... Personally OpenGL is strictly superior to DirectX, solely due to being cross platform. With the release of the Steam Box and a push from Valve to look at Linux as a first class target for games, hopefully we'll see development proceed to create better tooling to rival that and exceed DX. This is good for all of us consumers, as the lock in inherent to the technology choices made my game devs will be diminished. I can only see that as a good thing. And besides, middleware is getting so good, how many of us really need to hack on an engine anyway. My games logic is done in Lua, not C/OpenGL :)
- Narishma 13y ago
  I don't know of anyone who does game logic in OpenGL.
  - girvo 13y ago
    That was my point, I was being snarky. Man, text totally is the worst for that sort of thing...
remon 13y ago
"..on January 8th, 2010"
ewzimm 13y ago
For a 4-year-old post about the progress of Overgrowth, it doesn't really convince me to use OpenGL, considering that Overgrowth is still in alpha. It's a 4-person team and an ambitious game, so I'm sure it's not related to OpenGL use, but it's still kind of funny.
AshleysBrain 13y ago
Isn't mobile and the web the decider these days? Article is from 2010, but consider if you want to develop 3D on any of these platforms: iOS - OpenGL ES Android - OpenGL ES Mac - OpenGL Linux - OpenGL HTML5 - WebGL (based on OpenGL ES) - even in IE! Emerging platforms like Tizen, Firefox OS - OpenGL ES/WebGL DirectX is just for Windows and Windows Phone. Isn't it getting to the point where the bother of having to write a DirectX port might cause developers to skip the Windows platforms, or stick to OpenGL on Windows desktop? Windows isn't as overwhelmingly important as it used to be, and couldn't the fact that DirectX is different start to work against MS? Imagine if Blackberry came out with their own custom 3D API - wouldn't that only serve to hurt them?
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Game consoles - proprietary 3D APIs OpenGL != OpenGL ES != WebGL, yes they are all based on the same concepts, but require separate code paths and different shader versions.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - CodeWithCoffee 13y ago
    > OpenGL != OpenGL ES != WebGL Whilst technically true, WebGL is designed to have API compatibility with OpenGL ES (2), which in turn is based off of OpenGL (2). OpenGL ES 3 and WebGL 2 are beginning to emerge and are based off of OpenGL 3. In my experience shaders that work with WebGL will also work with OpenGL ES 2 and OpenGL 2.1. Equivalent versions tend to use the same concepts. On the other hand, code written for desktop (v3+) won't work on mobile, because the desktop version is one version ahead of mobile (and I imagind that it will be for several more versions).
  - rpedela 13y ago
    On Linux (I assume Mac too but haven't tried), you can force yourself to OpenGL ES. In fact, I would recommend it. The nice thing about OpenGL ES is that there is only one main way to do things so it is a lot harder to use something slow like glBegin().
blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
Honestly, up until IOS and Android there wasn't a large "cross platform" gaming market. Now there is and OpenGL is starting to gain more use...the good thing there is that there are more people writing, buying, and playing games. (Not that OpenGL is being used.) These vehement kinds of slashdotty style articles about MS's being this controlling conspiracy...you would almost think that...gasp...its a large corporation doing everything it can to make money for its shareholders. I mean, if the roles were somehow different and Apple were the market leader for the most popular gaming platform they would be all sweetness and light and no one would have any reason to complain. (Oh wait...) It turns out that businesses in that position tend to make "lock in" plays. This post kind of glosses over SGI's history with OpenGL as if they were only ever kind and loving shepherds of an open standard that was created to help children. Don't use directx cuz "evil" is stupid. If you were writing an application that needed to be cross platform...like a 3D authoring environment...you would probably want to look at opengl. (instead of writing your own...) If you were targeting the windows ecosystem directx has some platform integration features that are interesting. Tooling and developer experience also matter. This kind of breathless nonsense is boring and silly.
csmuk 13y ago
Even Microsoft ships WebGL with IE11... Perhaps they're getting the point?
- mistercow 13y ago
  What choice do they have? The don't have the market share anymore to launch a proprietary alternative based on DirectX.
  - csmuk 13y ago
    Exactly! It's a good thing.
Tloewald 13y ago
The big problem for OpenGL was (a) Windows platform dominance, particularly in gaming, and (b) weak support for rapidly improving 3D hardware (but that was largely a case of already in progress network effects -- OpenGL drivers suck because very few people care, so even fewer people use OpenGL). OpenGL was kept on life support in the aughts by high-end 3D products which are often cross-platform (e.g. Maya), and Apple (which switched to OpenGL from QuickDraw 3D after the spectacular failure of the latter -- incidentally OpenGL being "open" was SGI's proactive defense against QuickDraw 3D), and then rebuilt the entire Mac UI architecture on top of it. OpenGL ES and iPhone have completely revived OpenGL's fortunes -- there's nothing much to worry about now unless Android and iOS both fail in the marketplace. (It's entertaining that the Stackexchange post linked elsewhere was written more-or-less as a final "this is why OpenGL died" -- it's not dead yet... getting better...)
davexunit 13y ago
You should use OpenGL because DirectX is proprietary and only available on proprietary operating systems. Simple as that.
JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
Microsoft use to be on the OpenGL board (I believe in the 90s?). OpenGL was geared towards scientific development, and we know Bill Gates wanted PC to be gaming platform. OpenGL at the time wasn't good enough, nor were they willing to make the necessary changes to meet Microsoft's goals. DirectX was born out of necessity, not proprietary greed. Edit: Maybe its time to take another look at OpenGL - open is better than closed, especially for the multi-platform aspect. But does it have the same features as DirecX? Tesselation, shader programming, etc.
- blaenk 13y ago
  It does have tessellation support and a programmable pipeline.
- seabrookmx 13y ago
  > shader programming Of course it does. Even OpenGL ES 2.0 and WebGL (based on the same API as ES 2.0) do as well. The fixed function pipeline of old has been deprecated in recent versions, so you don't have a choice but to use GLSL.
- Tmmrn 13y ago
  ... http://www.opengl.org/wiki_132/images/RenderingPipeline.png http://www.opengl.org/wiki_132/images/RenderingPipeline.png (blue = programmable)
laveur 13y ago
When was the last time MSFT updated DirectX? I think they killed it off not to long ago with the release of X and its just part of the OS now.
jamra 13y ago
Could anyone recommend a book on programming shaders for OpenGL? I know the shader language is not OpenGL, but I never knew where a good point to start was.
- emddudley 13y ago
  I think any recent book on OpenGL worth its salt would cover shaders in detail. I've just picked up the OpenGL SuperBible (6th ed.) and it's got several hundred pages dedicated to shaders.
GnarfGnarf 13y ago
Why does Unity use DirectX on Windows, and OpenGL elsewhere? You'd think once they went to the expense of porting to OpenGL, they'd re-use that code on Windows? Or is it because they get better performance with DirectX on Windows?
- pjmlp 13y ago
  They get better performance and more stable drivers. Many cheap computers have GPUs with shitty or non-existent OpenGL drivers.
dsugarman 13y ago
Please cite that this was from 2010 in the title. [1] There is a reason why openGL is the primary library used in research, it is awesome. [1] - http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidRosen/20100108/86330/Why_You_Should_Use_OpenGL_And_Not_DirectX.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidRosen/20100108/86330/Why...
Shish2k 13y ago
A series of relevant tweets from https://twitter.com/wolfire https://twitter.com/wolfire : My old OpenGL vs Direct3D post is #1 on hacker news! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6852961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6852961 Maybe time for a 2013 update -- a lot has changed since then. 1. D3D 11.1+ only supports Windows 8, which only 20% of Steam users have. OpenGL 4.4 works on all versions of Windows. 2. NVIDIA and ATI both now have good profiling and debugging tools for OpenGL that were formerly only available for DirectX 3. OpenGL Core is now lean and mean, making it easier for hardware vendors to create efficient and correct drivers. 4. Valve now strongly supports OpenGL with their own games and with SteamOS -- helps ensure the future of OpenGL itself, and vendor support. 5. Humble Indie Bundle creates an extra commercial incentive for indies to support Mac and Linux, which is much easier if you use OpenGL. 6. All the old points still stand -- OpenGL works on Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, iOS and Android. Direct3D only works on Windows and XBox.
- info128 13y ago
  These are all good points, however, another very important point is driver quality / vendor support. For non-hardcore gamers, it is not uncommon to run Windows default drivers, which often have very poor OpenGL support and/or performance. I would love to see the Steam hardware survey list vendor provided vs driver support for OpenGL. I think developers may be driven away from using OpenGL at least partially based on worry about driver support. Using Windows this is a non-issue if you stay within DX10 and Windows 7/8. According to Steam Survey, this accounts for 81.61% of users. This drops down to 56.2% for DX11. In short, until vendor OpenGL driver support is a given, many developers will stick with Windows and Direct3D. Another note, this one on cross platform compatibility - the limitations of OpenGL ES2.0 are problematic for anything beyond rudimentary shaders. The primary limitation right now in my mind is a shortage of uniform vectors, and the wide variance in size for different android hardware. For instance, a smooth skinning (matrix pallet) shader for skeleton-based deformation will be limited to 5 or 6 joints per mesh on most android/OpenGL ES devices, whereas most x86/OpenGL systems allow for hundreds of joints. Similar limitations apply to pixel shaders as well - post processing such as blur, bloom, dof, and SSAO are not feasible on current generations of android devices for production use. Of course android device GPUs are getting much more powerful with each iteration, and eventually will provide a good hardware base for advanced graphics engines. For now, though, the idea of porting a full OpenGL graphics engine with advanced shaders to OpenGL ES2.0 is pretty much a re-write of the engine. This, combined with limited CPU and memory performance, is the primary reason we don't see AAA titles showing up on Android devices yet. A lot is coming down the pipe in terms of hardware advances, though - I'm excited to see OpenGL support grow in parallel.
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Kungpaoshizi 13y ago
OpenGL stems from the same people who brought about Linux. And they're still arguing about OS variants. Meanwhile, Microsoft is a much more fluid experience for the gamers and developers. Also this is the difference between DirectX and OpenGL. Microsoft has revised DirectX numerous times in the amount of time it took your "awesome" community to argue their way up from OpenGL 2.0 to 2.1. (sorry, might be incorrect in that versioning, I categorize OpenGL in the same poo pool as Linux; snobby home-coders that can't agree on anything)

408 points by intull 13y ago

API use was shifted in favor of DirectX by Microsoft's two-pronged DirectX campaign around the launch of XBox 360 and Windows Vista, including the spread of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the future of OpenGL, and wild exaggeration of the merits of DirectX. I thought it was because that, at the time, the OpenGL API was shit [1]. By the time of OpenGL 2.1, OpenGL was running into a problem. It had a lot of legacy cruft. The API wasn't easy to use anymore. There were 5 ways to do things, and no idea which was the fastest. And really, the author of the blog post should have known this when the blog post was written... By David Rosen on January 8th, 2010 OpenGL 2.1 came out in 2006 [2]. [1] http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055/7067 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055/7067 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#OpenGL_2.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#OpenGL_2.1

ekianjo 13y ago
It's also a legacy issue: once developers start using DirectX, it's harder for them to go back, and traditionally PC development has been Windows-only (more or less) for many years. Now that the market is becoming fragmented again between different platforms, there is more incentive to go for a cross-platform API than before - and that's where standards matter.
- MaulingMonkey 13y ago
  Not really 'legacy' per se either... good luck running OpenGL on Microsoft's consoles or as a ModernUI application! DirectX being a broader and, in my opinion, better designed API certainly doesn't hurt it's adoption either.
  - shiven 13y ago
    What about OSX? Does DirectX work (at all/well) on it? Linux? How feasible is it to program with DirectX on any non-MS platform? Edit: I guess the point I'm making is, OpenGL runs on non-MS as well as MS platforms (perfectly/badly is another question), but DirectX is locked to Microsoft only. That is what makes it of little to no value for people like me who need to care about cross-platform products and support.
    - computerslol 13y ago
      A Microsoft OS still runs on over 90% of the desktop market.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - runjake 13y ago
        I wonder what the percentage is when you figure the entire "computer" gaming market (eg. consoles, tablets, and phones). I suspect Microsoft's dominance on gaming is (and will become even more) weaker than we believe. OpenGL seems like a no-brainer for future survival as MSFT platform dominance exhibits entropy.
        runevault 13y ago
        Is PS3/PS4 development OGL or a proprietary API? Because if it is OGL then yes that makes said API far more useful for sheer amount of access to hardware.
        LukeShu 13y ago
        The PS4 uses OpenGL (4.4?). The PS3 used a proprietary API based on OpenGL 1.0.
        runevault 13y ago
        So yeah, OGL grows more useful as the PS4 grows its user base. Thanks for the info
  - shadowmint 13y ago
    Yeah, don't worry about those mobile devices. We've got plenty of directx support for those too. What are they again? Surface? Windows phone? I think I know one guy who has one.
    - sologrrl 13y ago
      I don't know anyone that uses desktop Linux, unless I count my sister who I saw using Red Hat at her CAD/CAM workplace four or five years ago. However I am afraid to to state this on HN, given how sensitive and hostile the crowd here can be about Linux.
    - computerslol 13y ago
      I have one of each.
    - gtirloni 13y ago
      One is usually enough for a guy.
    - MaulingMonkey 13y ago
      This isn't to say you won't possibly need more than just DirectX. But this is to say you quite possibly need at least DirectX.
    - theg2 13y ago
      Not an Apple or Google product? Gotta be awful! Love how people treat competition as something awful when it doesn't follow their own brand loyalty. Edit: It looks like the authors snark isn't as obvious to others as it was to me. I'm all for cross platform development and doing whatever makes sense your company/brand in terms of development, all my side projects use tools that make them as portable as possible.
      - danudey 13y ago
        No one was making a qualitative judgement against Windows Phones, just a quantitative comment about install base.
      - 13y ago
- yuhong 13y ago
  And to continue the story started from the stackexchange post, again the depreciation turned out to be a good decision. Guess what OpenGL ES that is used today on mobile devices and WebGL in browsers basically is?
kbenson 13y ago
That stackexchange post is very, very good. Points just for bring that out.
- guiambros 13y ago
  It was a great read, indeed. And yet, it was locked by SE mods as out of topic. While I love Stack Exchange and I'm thankful for the value it brought in so many ways, this policy of locking reasonable and valid questions is just upsetting.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
noselasd 13y ago
OpenGL was not in any way shit when DirectX started overtaking OpenGL. It became so around the time GPUs started being programmed by shaders - prior to that era OpenGL was quite pleasant compared to DirectX, yet DirectX mostly overtook OpenGL
- Narishma 13y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with your last point. With the exception of Direct3D, pretty much everything from DirectX has been deprecated at one point or another and replaced with external libraries that usually originate from Xbox development.
  - kabdib 13y ago
    DirectInput, for instance. Over-engineered and badly designed, then virtually abandoned (because who ever gets promoted for fixing bugs? You get promoted for features). Definitely not what anyone really wanted from an input API.
fritz_vd 13y ago
thank you.. this is awesome.

treeform 13y ago

It feels like a lot and nothing has changed since that 3.9 year old blog post. On one had webGL, steamOS, Mac games, iOS games, and Android Games. On the other hand gaming PC is still a windows PC. What are your thoughts?

goldenkey 13y ago
DirectX has a way better API which might be why. DirectX has been COM oriented, OOP design, for years. While OpenGL was handle-based, purely procedural.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Yes, many that bash DirectX never experienced how the whole ecosystem works and the existing offers in terms of tooling for performance analysis.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - exDM69 13y ago
    > Yes, many that bash DirectX never experienced how the whole ecosystem works and the existing offers in terms of tooling for performance analysis. Usually people don't "bash" DirectX or D3D. Most OpenGL programmers acknowledge that it is a better API with more corporate backing (ie. budget). But at the same time it is still Windows only, and for a lot of people it simply isn't an option. For OpenGL, the tooling is provided by individual vendors, and yes, it's not as good as d3d. But the situation has improved in the past few years and keeps on improving.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      Which vendors? Besides gDEBugger there isn't any tool that I am aware of, that can match the performance monitoring of DirectX and console specific APIs. Even NVidia only started to invest in OpenGL performance measuring tools, after their Android support started.

b0rsuk 13y ago

By David Rosen on January 8th, 2010

pjmlp 13y ago

Again that post. Spreading the lie that all game consoles support OpenGL. Yes, OpenGL is a great API if one cares about portability and FOSS. Reality, the game industry cares about their IP and getting games released no matter what technology stack is used. Many AAA studios don't even develop for all platforms, rather target a main one, leaving the port to subcontractors. Back in the golden days of the arcades, many subcontractors were not even given source code. There are plenty of subcontractor stories about having to play through games while taking pictures or recording on tape. When you have development processes like this in place, the gaming API doesn't matter that much.

exDM69 13y ago
> Many AAA studios don't even develop for all platforms, rather target a main one, leaving the port to subcontractors. AAAs are one thing and are mostly based on engine technology that has been in development for years. For them D3D vs. OpenGL is a non-issue that was solved a decade ago. Or they stick to being Windows only. And they have the budget to port (or hire a subcontractor to port) one way or another. For indies, on the other hand, the most money these days is (probably, don't have any stats at hand) coming from Android and iOS, which both use OpenGL (ES). Using off the shelf game engines is a very popular option but a lot of developers roll their own tech.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Many studios use game engines that either abstract away the graphics API or at least greatly simplify it. Building your own AAA engine is quite expensive even if you have a lot of resources. OpenGL ES 2+ is more like DX10 and less like Open GL.
  - exDM69 13y ago
    > Many studios use game engines that either abstract away the graphics API or at least greatly simplify it. Not only do they abstract away API details, perhaps even provide an api independence layer but they actually make the 3d magic hapen. OpenGL/D3D have no notion of "3d", there are no models, cameras, scenes, etc. > OpenGL ES 2+ is more like DX10 and less like Open GL. Not really. OpenGL ES is still like OpenGL. It's a subset of full OpenGL and does not fix the inherent design issues with the API. Feature-wise OpenGL ES 2 is like DX9 which is like OpenGL 2.1 sans the legacy crap. OpenGL 3 is comparable to D3D10 and OpenGL 4 to D3D11. OpenGL 2.x was the "big change" from the old fixed function pipeline to a programmable shader based pipeline, but nothing was removed or deprecated in order to provide an incremental porting path. OpenGL 3 actually deprecates some of the old features but does not change the API, only removes the old parts. But the API is still a horrible mess with a global state and weird side effects, even if a lot of stuff was removed. For the programmer, D3D is a lot nicer than OpenGL in many ways and that is unfortunately not going to change for the foreseeable future. OpenGL gets the job done but it's very uncomfortable to use.

kayoone 13y ago

As a sidenote, Wolfire is currently working on http://www.wolfire.com/overgrowth http://www.wolfire.com/overgrowth which is quite impressive in terms of game mechanics. They also post development videos on Youtube regularly which i find highly interesting: http://www.youtube.com/WolfireGames http://www.youtube.com/WolfireGames

frik 13y ago
Yes, but thanks to their HumbleBundle.com success, over the years Overgrowth looks more like a engine tech demo and vaporware.
- Jach 13y ago
  It's wrong to call it vaporware when after you preorder you can download alpha builds as they come and experience everything shown off in the videos... There's also a small modding community.
- Erwin 13y ago
  They seem to be happy to let you pay $30 for the Alpha version though, despite it being in Alpha since at least 2009 (based on the date on the FAQ). I'm surprised PayPal will let you pre-order something that has been more than 4 years in development and has no release date.
  - chii 13y ago
    It's playable, and you can use the in game editor to make your own maps/scenes. Not too different from what minecraft was when it was early alpha.
  - Tmmrn 13y ago
    On the one hand you keep reading "developers need to eat" and on the other hand you keep reading comments like yours. Buying the alpha means paying for continuous development... Also, you get a new download of the current state every time they have some significant changes.

kayoone 13y ago

Isn't this more or less a problem of the past? Today with tools like Unity3d, UDK, CryEngine, Shiva Engine, MonoGame etc, game developers are at a point where they can pretty much stop worrying about the OpenGL/DirectX layer beneath their engines. Those Engines have become so powerful and affordable that it hardly makes any sense to roll your own. In fact, imo you would need a very strong reason to build your own engine these days instead of focusing on your product. Soon all of these will support WebGL/HTML5 as a target and even render most of the (still very basic) WebGL engines obsolete. Now if you were in the business of creating your own tools or engine, you would need to support both of OpenGL and DirectX to be able to support all the major platforms anyway.

exDM69 13y ago
> Isn't this more or less a problem of the past? Yes and no. If you want to be writing a typical 3d game like an FPS, and RTS or 3rd person platformer, you can and probably should use an off the shelf 3d engine and stay away from the lower level APIs, OpenGL and d3d. However, if you want to do something more exotic, say processing your webcam input stream with your GPU, or write a space scale render of the solar system or do anything that diverges from the use cases you typically use 3d engines for, you might still be better off using D3D or OpenGL directly. Then there are aspiring future game engine programmers and hobbyists who want to use OpenGL directly. It's arguably more interesting than paying for a 3d engine but it's more work of course. So most people do not need to touch D3D and OpenGL, in the same way that most people do not need to write C. But some people must and some people want to.
- kayoone 13y ago
  Sure, they are some edge cases where it might make sense, but even then i would analyze requirements very carefully. I have quite a bit of experience with Unity3D and besides being really simple to use you can basically extend it with any C#/C++ library that you see fit. Support for Webcam input streams is there out of the box and id argue theres hardly anything it cant do. Of course, if you want to be (or are) an engine programmer, go for it and get your feet wet using OpenGL/DirectX, but for the broad mass of game developers, these aren't issues anymore. Playing with it directly can be fun yes, but it can also be frustrating if all you want is so much easier with a game engine.

deviltry 13y ago

I rememver Overgrowth, I was looking at the development back when I was still using Linux... Still hasn't released. Nice credibility for OpenGL - use OpenGL for vaporware!

frik 13y ago

This articles is from 2010 and is really dated. Even Microsoft supports WebGL (based OpenGL ES 2) in Internet Explorer 11. Beside that the article doesn't mention that OpenGL 2 came late (and 1.x is way outdated). And to bootstrap OpenGL 2+ on Windows you still need a OpenGL 1.4 context to create an OpenGL 2+ context. So not so trivial at all :/ As the article is pre-smartphone era: the future for OpenGL/WebGL is very good now. You can run WebGL on every device/OS (beside Windows, OpenGL 2/3 but no ES driver).

gtirloni 13y ago
It's funny how many old stuff (that is supposed to rely on current data) is posted on HN. I am still getting used to this. I was reading the article and he mentions WinXP is half of all gamers.. I couldn't believe my eyes. These things should come with a disclaimer here like "really really old stuff, i just want to pick a few points from it which are this and this. ignore the rest".

jasin 13y ago

Portability etc notwithstanding and purely from an API point of view, there's no question that DirectX is superior to OpenGL. There are lots of examples, but the mere fact that you need _another_ 3rd party API such as GLEW even to be able to use OpenGL's latest features in the first place should speak volumes.

vetinari 13y ago
You don't _need_ GLEW, it is just convenience library.
- jasin 13y ago
  Well, of course you don't _need_ it. You can always go and parse the extension string yourself, then call LoadLibrary() and GetProcAddress() to manually setup pointers to the extension functions etc. The point is that you don't have to care about any of that crap when using DirectX. Bear in mind, this is just one example.
  - vetinari 13y ago
    In DX you have to care about version and capability bits (up to DX9) or speed (same caps, some may be implemented in software, DX10+). Same thing in slightly different way.
pof33 13y ago
Pathetic Microsoft shill.

be5invis 13y ago

One of my friend, a game developer, said that, once you get familiar with the DirectX 11, you will not want to use any other APIs. They look outdated. And seriously, the GNMX API (a high level wrapper of GNM) of PS4 has more similarity to DirectX than OpenGL.

girvo 13y ago
Game developer, or engine developer?

spikels 13y ago

And since this article was written Microsoft has pretty much admitted defeat by incorporating WebGL (a simplified version of OpenGL) in IE11.

ygra 13y ago
Has there ever been a competing option of WebDirectX they could have tried to push instead? Or is admitting defeat in this case the same as admitting defeat by implementing Flexbox?
- hansjorg 13y ago
  Silverlight?
kevingadd 13y ago
There's no way they ever would have exposed DirectX to JavaScript. It's not really admitting defeat to implement a web platform feature that customers want when you have no alternative. They used to be pushing Silverlight as a way to do 3D rendering (which made sense, because it had the DirectX bindings from XNA and .NET is a superior platform for rendering code when compared with JavaScript) but now that Silverlight and basically every other native plugin is on the way out, there's no way they can lean on that anymore.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Exposing DirectX to JavaScript would be like allowing the browser to run VBScrpt code. They tried.
  - bitwize 13y ago
    There was a time when Internet Explorer could run VBScript code... you said <script language="VBScript"> ... What I think you mean is letting the browser run scripts in the Windows Scripting Host, which gives you unlimited access to the filesystem, etc.

romanovcode 13y ago

>However, there's one big problem: they don't work on Windows XP! Half of PC gamers still use XP, so using DirectX 10 or 11 is not really a viable option. This problem does not exist anymore.

voltagex_ 13y ago
I know what you mean but http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey still shows 14.63% on XP - not a huge amount but still hanging on.
- shootinputin 13y ago
  Windows XP 32 bit 6.17% -0.26 it says

jheriko 13y ago

this is old, its also wrong in many ways. i keep hearing 'OpenGL' is cross platform. This is a quantifiable lie. I have written cross platform rendering engines and worked with many, I can tell you right now that platform and vendor specific hacks for OpenGL are a necessary evil if you want your stuff to work properly. If you are working in a cross platform environment you abstract away rendering then whether you are using DX or OpenGL (or anything else - RSX, or whatever...) is not really important. The question I always wonder is why OpenGL isn't this... if I can make it so can anyone else, absolutely. Its not hard or especially time consuming and gives you the power of actually being cross platform. This is a constantly improving situation though... for example I no longer need to tell a large number of Intel graphics cards that clockwise is infact counter-clockwise for face winding - because they are obsolete and the drivers have improved. There are still many problems of that nature though... you might not realise that the driver is processing your vertex shader on the CPU for instance which makes for a significantly different performance profile to similar hardware in that class...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

girvo 13y ago

I'm amazed at the comments here on this thread... Personally OpenGL is strictly superior to DirectX, solely due to being cross platform. With the release of the Steam Box and a push from Valve to look at Linux as a first class target for games, hopefully we'll see development proceed to create better tooling to rival that and exceed DX. This is good for all of us consumers, as the lock in inherent to the technology choices made my game devs will be diminished. I can only see that as a good thing. And besides, middleware is getting so good, how many of us really need to hack on an engine anyway. My games logic is done in Lua, not C/OpenGL :)

Narishma 13y ago
I don't know of anyone who does game logic in OpenGL.
- girvo 13y ago
  That was my point, I was being snarky. Man, text totally is the worst for that sort of thing...

remon 13y ago

"..on January 8th, 2010"

ewzimm 13y ago

For a 4-year-old post about the progress of Overgrowth, it doesn't really convince me to use OpenGL, considering that Overgrowth is still in alpha. It's a 4-person team and an ambitious game, so I'm sure it's not related to OpenGL use, but it's still kind of funny.

AshleysBrain 13y ago

Isn't mobile and the web the decider these days? Article is from 2010, but consider if you want to develop 3D on any of these platforms: iOS - OpenGL ES Android - OpenGL ES Mac - OpenGL Linux - OpenGL HTML5 - WebGL (based on OpenGL ES) - even in IE! Emerging platforms like Tizen, Firefox OS - OpenGL ES/WebGL DirectX is just for Windows and Windows Phone. Isn't it getting to the point where the bother of having to write a DirectX port might cause developers to skip the Windows platforms, or stick to OpenGL on Windows desktop? Windows isn't as overwhelmingly important as it used to be, and couldn't the fact that DirectX is different start to work against MS? Imagine if Blackberry came out with their own custom 3D API - wouldn't that only serve to hurt them?

pjmlp 13y ago
Game consoles - proprietary 3D APIs OpenGL != OpenGL ES != WebGL, yes they are all based on the same concepts, but require separate code paths and different shader versions.
- deleted 13y ago
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- CodeWithCoffee 13y ago
  > OpenGL != OpenGL ES != WebGL Whilst technically true, WebGL is designed to have API compatibility with OpenGL ES (2), which in turn is based off of OpenGL (2). OpenGL ES 3 and WebGL 2 are beginning to emerge and are based off of OpenGL 3. In my experience shaders that work with WebGL will also work with OpenGL ES 2 and OpenGL 2.1. Equivalent versions tend to use the same concepts. On the other hand, code written for desktop (v3+) won't work on mobile, because the desktop version is one version ahead of mobile (and I imagind that it will be for several more versions).
- rpedela 13y ago
  On Linux (I assume Mac too but haven't tried), you can force yourself to OpenGL ES. In fact, I would recommend it. The nice thing about OpenGL ES is that there is only one main way to do things so it is a lot harder to use something slow like glBegin().

blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago

Honestly, up until IOS and Android there wasn't a large "cross platform" gaming market. Now there is and OpenGL is starting to gain more use...the good thing there is that there are more people writing, buying, and playing games. (Not that OpenGL is being used.) These vehement kinds of slashdotty style articles about MS's being this controlling conspiracy...you would almost think that...gasp...its a large corporation doing everything it can to make money for its shareholders. I mean, if the roles were somehow different and Apple were the market leader for the most popular gaming platform they would be all sweetness and light and no one would have any reason to complain. (Oh wait...) It turns out that businesses in that position tend to make "lock in" plays. This post kind of glosses over SGI's history with OpenGL as if they were only ever kind and loving shepherds of an open standard that was created to help children. Don't use directx cuz "evil" is stupid. If you were writing an application that needed to be cross platform...like a 3D authoring environment...you would probably want to look at opengl. (instead of writing your own...) If you were targeting the windows ecosystem directx has some platform integration features that are interesting. Tooling and developer experience also matter. This kind of breathless nonsense is boring and silly.

csmuk 13y ago

Even Microsoft ships WebGL with IE11... Perhaps they're getting the point?

mistercow 13y ago
What choice do they have? The don't have the market share anymore to launch a proprietary alternative based on DirectX.
- csmuk 13y ago
  Exactly! It's a good thing.

Tloewald 13y ago

The big problem for OpenGL was (a) Windows platform dominance, particularly in gaming, and (b) weak support for rapidly improving 3D hardware (but that was largely a case of already in progress network effects -- OpenGL drivers suck because very few people care, so even fewer people use OpenGL). OpenGL was kept on life support in the aughts by high-end 3D products which are often cross-platform (e.g. Maya), and Apple (which switched to OpenGL from QuickDraw 3D after the spectacular failure of the latter -- incidentally OpenGL being "open" was SGI's proactive defense against QuickDraw 3D), and then rebuilt the entire Mac UI architecture on top of it. OpenGL ES and iPhone have completely revived OpenGL's fortunes -- there's nothing much to worry about now unless Android and iOS both fail in the marketplace. (It's entertaining that the Stackexchange post linked elsewhere was written more-or-less as a final "this is why OpenGL died" -- it's not dead yet... getting better...)

davexunit 13y ago

You should use OpenGL because DirectX is proprietary and only available on proprietary operating systems. Simple as that.

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago

Microsoft use to be on the OpenGL board (I believe in the 90s?). OpenGL was geared towards scientific development, and we know Bill Gates wanted PC to be gaming platform. OpenGL at the time wasn't good enough, nor were they willing to make the necessary changes to meet Microsoft's goals. DirectX was born out of necessity, not proprietary greed. Edit: Maybe its time to take another look at OpenGL - open is better than closed, especially for the multi-platform aspect. But does it have the same features as DirecX? Tesselation, shader programming, etc.

blaenk 13y ago
It does have tessellation support and a programmable pipeline.
seabrookmx 13y ago
> shader programming Of course it does. Even OpenGL ES 2.0 and WebGL (based on the same API as ES 2.0) do as well. The fixed function pipeline of old has been deprecated in recent versions, so you don't have a choice but to use GLSL.
Tmmrn 13y ago
... http://www.opengl.org/wiki_132/images/RenderingPipeline.png http://www.opengl.org/wiki_132/images/RenderingPipeline.png (blue = programmable)

laveur 13y ago

When was the last time MSFT updated DirectX? I think they killed it off not to long ago with the release of X and its just part of the OS now.

jamra 13y ago

Could anyone recommend a book on programming shaders for OpenGL? I know the shader language is not OpenGL, but I never knew where a good point to start was.

emddudley 13y ago
I think any recent book on OpenGL worth its salt would cover shaders in detail. I've just picked up the OpenGL SuperBible (6th ed.) and it's got several hundred pages dedicated to shaders.

GnarfGnarf 13y ago

Why does Unity use DirectX on Windows, and OpenGL elsewhere? You'd think once they went to the expense of porting to OpenGL, they'd re-use that code on Windows? Or is it because they get better performance with DirectX on Windows?

pjmlp 13y ago
They get better performance and more stable drivers. Many cheap computers have GPUs with shitty or non-existent OpenGL drivers.

dsugarman 13y ago

Please cite that this was from 2010 in the title. [1] There is a reason why openGL is the primary library used in research, it is awesome. [1] - http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidRosen/20100108/86330/Why_You_Should_Use_OpenGL_And_Not_DirectX.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DavidRosen/20100108/86330/Why...

Shish2k 13y ago

A series of relevant tweets from https://twitter.com/wolfire https://twitter.com/wolfire : My old OpenGL vs Direct3D post is #1 on hacker news! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6852961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6852961 Maybe time for a 2013 update -- a lot has changed since then. 1. D3D 11.1+ only supports Windows 8, which only 20% of Steam users have. OpenGL 4.4 works on all versions of Windows. 2. NVIDIA and ATI both now have good profiling and debugging tools for OpenGL that were formerly only available for DirectX 3. OpenGL Core is now lean and mean, making it easier for hardware vendors to create efficient and correct drivers. 4. Valve now strongly supports OpenGL with their own games and with SteamOS -- helps ensure the future of OpenGL itself, and vendor support. 5. Humble Indie Bundle creates an extra commercial incentive for indies to support Mac and Linux, which is much easier if you use OpenGL. 6. All the old points still stand -- OpenGL works on Mac, Windows, Linux, Web, iOS and Android. Direct3D only works on Windows and XBox.

info128 13y ago
These are all good points, however, another very important point is driver quality / vendor support. For non-hardcore gamers, it is not uncommon to run Windows default drivers, which often have very poor OpenGL support and/or performance. I would love to see the Steam hardware survey list vendor provided vs driver support for OpenGL. I think developers may be driven away from using OpenGL at least partially based on worry about driver support. Using Windows this is a non-issue if you stay within DX10 and Windows 7/8. According to Steam Survey, this accounts for 81.61% of users. This drops down to 56.2% for DX11. In short, until vendor OpenGL driver support is a given, many developers will stick with Windows and Direct3D. Another note, this one on cross platform compatibility - the limitations of OpenGL ES2.0 are problematic for anything beyond rudimentary shaders. The primary limitation right now in my mind is a shortage of uniform vectors, and the wide variance in size for different android hardware. For instance, a smooth skinning (matrix pallet) shader for skeleton-based deformation will be limited to 5 or 6 joints per mesh on most android/OpenGL ES devices, whereas most x86/OpenGL systems allow for hundreds of joints. Similar limitations apply to pixel shaders as well - post processing such as blur, bloom, dof, and SSAO are not feasible on current generations of android devices for production use. Of course android device GPUs are getting much more powerful with each iteration, and eventually will provide a good hardware base for advanced graphics engines. For now, though, the idea of porting a full OpenGL graphics engine with advanced shaders to OpenGL ES2.0 is pretty much a re-write of the engine. This, combined with limited CPU and memory performance, is the primary reason we don't see AAA titles showing up on Android devices yet. A lot is coming down the pipe in terms of hardware advances, though - I'm excited to see OpenGL support grow in parallel.

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Kungpaoshizi 13y ago

OpenGL stems from the same people who brought about Linux. And they're still arguing about OS variants. Meanwhile, Microsoft is a much more fluid experience for the gamers and developers. Also this is the difference between DirectX and OpenGL. Microsoft has revised DirectX numerous times in the amount of time it took your "awesome" community to argue their way up from OpenGL 2.0 to 2.1. (sorry, might be incorrect in that versioning, I categorize OpenGL in the same poo pool as Linux; snobby home-coders that can't agree on anything)