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I followed links and came up with the game his main company is making.

http://www.d6.com/games/pic1.jpg

We have seen better graphics on PS1. And surely this does not need much in AI.

Sure, he is working for the Spore project but is that all he is credible for?

Is this the same Chris Hecker that did all the (really good) articles on rigid body dynamics?

http://www.d6.com/users/checker/

his homepage is both highly graphical and innovative.. slashdot effect, plz. ;)

As I said, I don't pretend to understand the nitty gritty, but if he says its bad, and knowing what I've seen from big publishers, I don't see it coming to a good conclusion.

I'm not sure how approachable he is, and he's currently working on Spore, but you could try getting in contact with him if you're interested in more details on why he feels this way:
http://www.d6.com/users/checker/
He's left an e-mail address on that page.

Why did that mean replacing OpenGL, which at the time game developers like Carmack were perfectly happy with. In fact Carmack and others roasted the first versions of Direct3D, and petitioned Microsoft to release the OpenGL MCD.

GameDev magazine reviewed the two APIs in the early days and concluded Microsoft should just discontinue Direct3D altogether. OpenGL was clearly and unambiguously the better technology and it's widely regarded that it wasn't until DirectX 8 that it caught up. Yes, after Microsoft squashed them out of the market it stagnated: what a surprise. Just like Netscape Navigator stagnated after Microsoft killed the revenue stream from it.

One could certainly argue that the existence of D3D has pushed OpenGL to stay modern and competitive, so has been twofold beneficial.

Microsoft dropped OpenGL support entirely as soon as Direct3D started development. It didn't ship with Windows 95 at all originally. They went out of their way to kill OpenGL, so quite how that was "beneficial" to it by providing competition I do not know. Competition would have been if both OpenGL and Direct3D were fully supported on Windows, but they were not. It was never a fair fight, so to reach this conclusion is ridiculous.

Here

http://www.d6.com/users/checker/dynamics.htm

provides an excellent, and free alternative to purchasing a weighty tome on the subject. Chris covers the details of rigid body mechanics in a thorough, but light manner.

I went to a physics lecture at GDC, the most memorable part of which was Chris saying:

"Here's how it's going to go... you're going to write your first rigid body dynamics simulator. You're going to simulate a cube dropping onto a plane. You'll run the program, the cube will drop, hit the plane... and disappear."

So, so true.

You're a twit, and still a worm compared to the guys who signed this.

My graphics background is stale and academic, so I'm not too familiar with the differences between the new cards or the current state of OpenGL vs. Direct3d. If you may humble yourself I have a question.

Riddle me this: Why would anyone write a game dependant on the features of a particular card? Even if Direct3d can emulate them in software, woudln't that kill the performance of the game?

I suspect the popularity of Direct3d has little to do with advanced features and everything to do with the fact that it is a de facto Microsoft standard. Why bother learning OpenGL when you're going to be stuck using Direct3d anyway. It will only raise your support costs to use a non-native API that is decidely hostile to Microsoft's agenda.

Hugo Elias
Chris Hecker
Jeff Lander

Henry

Heh. The article makes a reference to Chris Hecker (of definition six), mentioning that he delivered his talk at "a mile a minute". I was there, and Chris did indeed talk very quickly. I thought this was because some scheduling mishap forced him to squeeze his 30-minute talk into the 19 minutes left in a session. Later, at a different talk, Chris asked a poor Japanese researcher some question, again delivered at a rate that would make a machinegun envious. The researcher was not alone in having problems getting what was said, so soneone in the audience suggested that Chris repeat his question, only slower. To which Chris replied "Um, I'm not sure I know how to do that"! ;^) Then, he actually did repeat the question slower, the researcher answered, and all was well...

Every site you visit these days wants to be the only site you visit. It's not good enough to be a news site - you've got to try to include all the other news sites on your site. I guess this is the road that ad-supported sites will lead us down.

I think what's next (at least what I'd like to see) is that the people that write the news start getting more attention than the news sites. I want to read articles by
Chris Hecker, not articles by ZDNet or any other publication.

The role the publishers play is the role that the record labels play - they screen all stuff they get and decide what is worth passing on. MP3 is proving we don't need them for music, but what about news?

- Steve