Will DirectX replace OpenGL in game development?

[K.I.L.E.R]

When I mention DX I mean D3D.

Sorry but I've been reading a lot of doom and gloom scenarios that say OpenGL will be replaced by DX.

Can anyone give me some insight about the doom and gloom situations in general?
Where do people get the idea that DX will replace OGL?
How plausible is that idea?
Is this just fear mongering?

How concerned should I be about the future of OGL?
How will it effect my current learning?
Previously I haven't had any trouble going from OGL to D3D, however the majority of my current work is in OGL.

Rewriting large parts of code to take advantage of a not-so-cross-platform API will cause problems.

I'm concerned about this because I have my future vested in OGL cross platform tools and applications.

 

[Fodder]

On the PC it already has, there are very few OGL-only heavyweight developers left. id, BioWare and a handful more. On consoles though, it's another story; I don't see Sony going anywhere near D3D any time soon.

 

[Sonic]

I don't think OpenGL is going away any time soon. It's still the standard for professional applications, and those applications are what's used to model characters in video games.

John Carmack still likes OpenGL from what I can tell. The PS3 may use some for of OpenGL ES. Unreal Tournament and the like still use OpenGL along with DirectX, right?

 

[bloodbob]

Nah unreal doesn't and opengl will most likely die with SGI ( look at the massive cut backs just recently ) when SGI goes so will a bunch of patents most likely to M$.

 

[RejZoR]

Yes it does. Unreal Tournament (UT99) supports D3D,OGL,Glide,S3 Metal and PowerVR (can't remember exact name). Later Unreal Engines support D3D,but can be run under OGL aswell. Just some ini editing and you're ready to go.
I played UT2004 with OGL because of custom OGL SmartShaders,so i'm sure it does support OGL. Can't really say whats better because i'm running Radeon and we all know how good it is with OGL... but it was very playable...

 

[neliz]

With this months catalyst (5.8) the ogl lead by nv will be as good as gone..

 

[nutball]

Nah unreal doesn't and opengl will most likely die with SGI ( look at the massive cut backs just recently ) when SGI goes so will a bunch of patents most likely to M$.

Didn't MS already buy a whole pile of SGIs patents a few years back? Was that not all of them? IIRC there was some sort of ruckus in the finalisation of some bits of OGL 2.0 relating to patents held by MS, dunno if this was related.

 

[a688]

On the PC it already has, there are very few OGL-only heavyweight developers left. id, BioWare and a handful more. On consoles though, it's another story; I don't see Sony going anywhere near D3D any time soon.

Sony already supports D3D. However, it would be quite impossible for them to support it in their console unless they are going to run windows on it.

http://eqlive.station.sony.com/library/faqs/faq_eqlive.jsp#1.11.4
1.11.4 Does EverQuest support OpenGL?
EverQuest uses Glide (the native 3dfx API) and Direct 3D (Microsoft API that most modern 3d cards support). We do not support OpenGL (nothing against it, just with both Glide and D3D, there's no real need).

 

[Albuquerque]

OpenGL has plenty of life left, mostly because DirectX (as someone already pointed out) is directly tied to the Windows platform. You can't install DirectX on any sort of *nix system (heh, yet!) or Mac setup (ha, yet again!)

I'm sure OGL will be around for quite a while, even on the PC platform. In fact, any game designer who wants to cross-ship their product on multiple OS'es simultaneously is locked into using it.

 

[Ragemare]

Maybe if somone wrote a OpenSource implementation of DX

Killing OpenGL off completely could be a disaster for MS if something more potent came to take it's place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but MS currentlyt has a say in decideing the OpenGL specification, which it probably wouldn't have if the OpenSource comunity decided it needed a new standardised 3D graphics library.

Well it would still have a say in the sense it can influence the hardware vendors, but not a direct say like it has now.

Anyway plenty of people outside the gameing industry use OpenGL, possible even more so than people who use DX... OK so I don't really know if thats the case, but there's never a day where a new piece of medical equipment that uses OpenGL isn't annouced.

 

[Richard]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but MS currentlyt has a say in decideing the OpenGL specification, which it probably wouldn't have if the OpenSource comunity decided it needed a new standardised 3D graphics library.

I don't know if this is what you meant but MS left the OGL ARB two years ago IIRC.

 

[KimB]

If anything, DX10 being exclusive to Windows Vista could cause a resurgence in OpenGL, as that will allow game developers to support the new features of video cards released around the timeframe of Vista with a larger userbase (not to mention the OpenGL path for the high-end hardware at that time will just be much more similar to the DX9 path than it would be in a game designed for DX10 and DX9 hardware, making life easier on the developer).

 

[Ailuros]

UE2 has OGL support for compatibility reasons, but it was developed/optimized for D3D.

UE1 was a totally different story and it showed exactly how much of a mess the market was back then.

 

[Albuquerque]

If anything, DX10 being exclusive to Windows Vista could cause a resurgence in OpenGL, as that will allow game developers to support the new features of video cards released around the timeframe of Vista with a larger userbase (not to mention the OpenGL path for the high-end hardware at that time will just be much more similar to the DX9 path than it would be in a game designed for DX10 and DX9 hardware, making life easier on the developer).

Hmm, didn't think of that, but it's a good concept. Especially with a nice shiny new OGL2.0 coming out (I need to go read up and find out how that's going) your idea makes a lot of sense to me. If only we could get so lucky

 

[jb]

Yes it does. Unreal Tournament (UT99) supports D3D,OGL,Glide,S3 Metal and PowerVR (can't remember exact name). Later Unreal Engines support D3D,but can be run under OGL aswell. Just some ini editing and you're ready to go.
I played UT2004 with OGL because of custom OGL SmartShaders,so i'm sure it does support OGL. Can't really say whats better because i'm running Radeon and we all know how good it is with OGL... but it was very playable...

FYI there are a number of features that do not work in the OGL port of UT2k4. A minor one is scripted textures which are used to place player names on the licence plate (or the moving scrore boards in some user made maps, digital ammo counters on some user made weapons, ect) of the Hellbinder for example.

 

[Bob]

Especially with a nice shiny new OGL2.0 coming out

OpenGL 2.0 was released in September 2004. Linky

It's new, but it's not really shiny.

 

[Albuquerque]

OpenGL 2.0 was released in September 2004. Linky

It's new, but it's not really shiny.

D'oh, remove shoe, insert foot into mouth

And it certainly could be shiny, just give it to Crytek

 

[Kanyamagufa]

Not that it's a huge market and all, but Mac users can't touch D3D...

Not to mention that OS X is heavily based upon OpenGL. For our sake alone, however small it is, I don't think OpenGL is going to leave quickly anytime soon.

 

[skirst]

FYI there are a number of features that do not work in the OGL port of UT2k4. A minor one is scripted textures which are used to place player names on the licence plate (or the moving scrore boards in some user made maps, digital ammo counters on some user made weapons, ect) of the Hellbinder for example.

With the arrival of the GL_EXT_framebuffer_object extension, these effects are now possible with OpenGL, and are currently being implemented by Ryan Gordon (http://icculus.org/cgi-bin/finger/finger.pl?user=icculus) for the Linux and MacOS X versions of the game anyway.

 

[BrandonFurtwangler]

You have it backwards

If anything, DX10 being exclusive to Windows Vista could cause a resurgence in OpenGL, as that will allow game developers to support the new features of video cards released around the timeframe of Vista with a larger userbase (not to mention the OpenGL path for the high-end hardware at that time will just be much more similar to the DX9 path than it would be in a game designed for DX10 and DX9 hardware, making life easier on the developer).

I totally disagree. DX9 isn't going to disappear. In fact it will run on Vista and XP. So why would they jump to OGL when they could _continue_ to use DX9 for the interim period?

What _will_ make them jump to DX10 is all the new features it enables. If you look into OGL2.0 you basically see a less elegant version of DX9 (although much better than 1.5). It may be cross-platform, which is great, but I dont think this is top priority for game developers.

[opinion alert]
As I see it, OpenGL's extension mechanism is what killed it for game developers. Its like coding in DOS. You have to 10 different extensions to do any one thing. Sure you can use ARB extension, but half the time they run so much slower that you end up needing to write vender and card specific render paths. With D3D you still have the different feature sets, however you are at least (mostly) spared the vender specific BS.

When it comes down to it, I think OpenGL isn't going anywhere soon, but you cant argue that the API is a relic of the past. Some people find it less daunting to get started with such an api design, but when you try to do more complicated graphics I find it horribly contrary to everything software engineers have learned in the past 15 years.
[/opinion alert]