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An Open Source Direct3D 8.0 Wrapper for Open GL

Posted by timothy on from the rosetta-stone dept.

Jason writes: "RealTech-VR, creators of the V3X 3D engine, also developed a Direct3D-to-OpenGL wrapper and they have now open sourced their work. They are seeking for more hackers to help porting the wrapper to Linux and MacOS. A lot of the functionality of Direct3D is already ported but it still needs quite some work. Get the scoop at OSNews."

14 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Nice... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    While this may validate the DirectX API as a standard (like it wasn't already) it may be a useful tool for gaming companies to do an easier port to Linux and OSX...This is good, really good.

    1. Re:Nice... by Com2Kid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sorry man, I hate to admit it (and trust me, I REALLY hate to admit it) but DirectX _HAS_ become a worthwhile standard.

      It just. . . . rocks.

      For the end user at least.

      It is uber-sweet to have everything working together.

      The ZSNES team went over to DirectX just because it made so much of their life easier. The controllers for starters. . . .

      A game that does a -good- job implementing DirectX control does not care how many buttons your joystick has, or how many joysticks you are using at once to control things.

      I have seen games where I can switch over dynamically from one controller to another with no problems. Sheeps is nice in this regard.

      But that is not what DirectX is all about.

      It is about having a -standardized- set of APIs that people can latch on to.

      Linux currently has the problem that there are a gazzilion different ways to access damn nearly everything. Sound cards, monitors, and so forth. Sure on the system level they (tend) to have the same way of doing things, but the game programmers cannot just say "heya, latch on to monitor 1 if that is all that is available, but if the person has two monitors latch on to monitor one for the primary view and pop up a dialog box asking the player if they want to have monitor two used for their rearview mirror."

      Nor is there just -one- way for a game to ask

      "Heya, I notice you have two separate sound cards installed, which one would you like to use for playing this game?"

      Of course there ARE game programing APIs to be had, and in fact there are plenty of them.

      Which makes it an absolute bitch for game developers to make requests for new features.

      Nvidia and ATI were recently able to strong arm Microsoft into including each companies choosen features into DirectX8. (ah, there are also now four pixel shaders versions, ugh. ATI's 1.4 card came out before Nvidia's faster 1.3 card, ::groans:: )

      still though, all in all having one central target to direct feature requests to is nice. This means that over time ALL of the necessary features will hopefully be added.

      But if you have multitudes of API standards, you can either get one that just fits you right with no extra baggage (yah for you) or more likely you will find that some of them have some of the features that you want but none of them have all of the features that you want. (yes sure you can add those features on, open source and all, but shit, then your company is learning a new API, adding to that API, and programming a game for that API, ouch.)

      DirectX streamlines stuff. Or at least the complaint and request part of 'stuff'.

      It may not be profound, and hell it may be full of bugs (heh, Nvidia cards have had some rather. . . odd. . . issues with DirectX from time to time. :) ) and misusing it may be far to easy for the game developers to do (THANKFULLY /most/ of them have learned that disabling alt-tab will just piss off most of your customers, and that it is also a big Plus is a person can alt-tab in and out of the application/game. I said most of them. . . . few damn stragglers left, grrr.)

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  2. Count the milliseconds . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    . . . until Microshaft sends out the C&D letters and unleashes the hounds. Mirror the source far and wide, before it's too late.

    ~~~

  3. Direct3D and the Mac by feldsteins · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have always viewed Direct3D as a Really Bad Idea for the Macintosh platform. I mean, that's all we need is to hitch our 3D waggon to Microsoft. We'd always be a version behind, some features would never be implimented, etc. And then when all game manufacturers were using D3D, whoops! Microsoft isn't supporting D3D on the Mac anymore.

    Even some game developers I have spoken to seemed pretty positive about the idea. "if only we could do D3D," they said. I think otherwise for the reasons stated above.

    And what does this new "wrapper" mean to us? I hope it doesn't mean that Game developers or porting companies don't bother with the OpenGL conversion (when necessary). For if this turns out to be the case I fear the sceneario above may come to pass in the long run. Bottom line is, this scheme seems to still leave 3D on the Macintosh platform vulnerable to the whims of MS.

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  4. A good idea? by tempest303 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is this really such a hot idea? Compatability is cool, but wouldn't developers' time be better spent improving or coding for OpenGL?

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    1. Re:A good idea? by Mr.+Sharumpe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Is this really such a hot idea? Compatability is cool, but wouldn't developers' time be better spent improving or coding for OpenGL?

      It doesn't really matter - games are already coded with DirectX, and OpenGL already exists. If it is not the best thing (or, rather, the MS thing) the majority will code to DirectX. If you want their games, you have to use the API they use. I don't they will switch to OpenGL even if there are some improvements, because DirectX will always be tied in to Windows more closely than any third-party API.

      Mr. Sharumpe

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      -- The above comments are just my opinion. If you are going to flame me, save your time. I am fireproof.
  5. SDL/OpenGL vs DirectX OR the end of open standards by XRayX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not sure if this is a good thing. Of course it might be great to have something like this integrated to Wine to play DirectX Games under Linux, but if the other wrappers (DirectSound/Input/Play etc.) are implemented and run something stable, me as a game developer would think twice about porting this to truly open standards like OpenGL and SDL ("Why don't use the DirectX wrapper?").
    So if you see things on the long run, this might be more a damage than a boost to native Linux/OpenSource game-development.

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  6. Make it a non issue by DeadBugs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    STOP buying D3D games
    KEEP buying OpenGL games

    --
    http://www.kubuntu.org/
    1. Re:Make it a non issue by Cryptnotic · · Score: 3, Insightful
      That's not really practical for the large majority of game buyers. It would be like telling Americans to stop speaking English. And since Microsoft has gotten DirectX into game consoles (Dreamcast, X-Box), developers have a strong incentive to develop using only DirectX (Easy ports of DirectX games).


      Cryptnotic

      --
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  7. Re:Just what we DON'T need, MS API's in Linux by Ryan+Amos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What sort of crack are you smoking? Extra compatability is always a good thing. Get the notion that Microsoft has nothing to offer out of your fucking head. At some point, Linux has to grow up beyond the "fight-the-power" angst-filled culture that is quickly alienating it from the corporate market (wonder why you don't see quite so many people pushing Linux anymore? It has a bad rep in corporate America.) If you're in favor of a less functional operating system just because "Microsoft is evil! Fight the man!" you need to grab a bottle of Clue (tm) and take twice daily. Sure, I don't approve of everything Microsoft does, but you don't see me running around like a spoiled 6 year old who is mad because a girl wants to play with his friends.

    Karma to burn, baby.

  8. Re:Interview with RealTech-VR by sydb · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Moderators are becoming increasingly brain dead. Yeah, and I'm using my +1 bonus to make this point.

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  9. Re:bullstuff! by ethereal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If Microsoft had put the effort into the open standard, then they wouldn't be Microsoft, now would they? The whole point of having your own proprietary API is developer lock-in. The sad thing is that developers seem to fall for it pretty frequently.

    --

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  10. Re:Not much there by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 4, Insightful
    They are about where we were 18-20 months ago, and this is certainly not keeping me up at nights.
    True enough -- but there was a time when Linux wasn't keeping the SCO people up at nights either. Fear commoditization.
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  11. Re:SDL integration by CoughDropAddict · · Score: 3, Insightful

    SDL provides kind of a minimal interface, which makes it really easy to pick up and learn. If you want to expose / accelerate all the features that DirectX does, you'd need a significant rewrite or extension of the SDL API.

    SDL has had the ability to create OpenGL contexts for a long time. And we're talking about Direct3D, not DirectX, so the DirectDraw example doesn't apply.