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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."

3 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. SDL integration by moebius_4d · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It would be useful to (re)build this on SDL so that they don't have to re-invent the wheel for audio, 2D, etc. (all the non D3D parts). Already SDL allows (hell, requires) you to call OGL directly when you need 3d accel. So by implementing their calls as an SDL layer they would lose nothing and gain a very nice cross-platform layer.

  2. Allways nice.... by Otis_INF · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's allways nice to see a v0.0.2 version of a project that tries to port COM to Unix.

    Because _THERE_ is the real challenge. Not the polypusher-code to transfer d3d calls to opengl calls. Besides the lefthand-righthand difference between OGL and D3D ofcourse.

    D3D is COM based, OpenGL is plain C. Of course, COM is just a pile of C interfaces, but still, coding D3D is using binary objects with methods and properties. OpenGL is just a global canvas with global functions. I sincerely doubt this will ever succeed for 100%.

    --
    Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
  3. Re:SDL/OpenGL vs DirectX OR the end of open standa by Nerds · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I could get DirectX games to play on a linux machine I guarantee there are at least 15 people I could have running Debian by the end of the week. It's a good thing.

    Let's just be crazy and say this happens and everyone starts throwing their Windows CDs in the trash. One of two things might happen:

    1. Developers say "Let's just keep writing for DirectX, the wrappers work." So what? A Microsoft technology sticks around, but if so many people are leaving Windows, MS won't really have the power to enforce changes to DirectX 9 that would make it incompatible, because the devs will ignore them.

    2. Developers decide that since everyone has a linux box anyway, why not write in OpenGL since it would probably be more efficient?

    Either way, who cares? A working DirectX wrapper would win users over, and that's a good thing.

    --
    My other .sig is 'The Art of Computer Programming'