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An Open Source Direct3D 8.0 Wrapper for Open GL
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."
Actually, OSNews has an interview with the guy behind the wrapper, and they even have some screenshots! I hope this wrapper comes to Linux soon!
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.
Not sure if other parts of DirectX work under Linux/MacOS, but this is certainly a big step for them. If they can get some DirectSound wrapper up and running, Linux/MacOS users would almost be home free to play Windows games. Only a few more things would have to be done.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I'm not very much into Wine Development, but it should be possible to integrate parts of this into Wine. If it's possible, then Linux DirectX Gaming Heaven isn't too far away, even without WineX...
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I'm a game developer working on the Nel platform. I've only dealt with app level code so far, but from my few perusals of the lower levels of the library and my browsings of simple directx code, it seems as if the complexity would make for pretty slow and buggy engines.
Extra layers obviously have that property in general, but I see it as the wrong place to create that cross compatability. The nevrax team has said in the past that they have designed the system to be able to replace the OpenGL bindings with DirectX or gamecube api (what is gc api like?)
I hope that more developers will build games based on Opensource engines as our company is (in-orbit.net)- it has saved us a lot of money and allowed us to focus on gameplay and uniqueness.
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.
... one step closer to no dual boot for Counter-Strike and Starcraft.
If it's under the GPL, commercial game vendors could still buy a non-GPL license from the authors. No problems there.
This seems like good news for those of still stuck with 3dfx brand chipsets..
~~~
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.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Doesn't Wine already have a DirectX native library that can be used without Wine?
is a subset of WINE.
After all, The Sims uses DirectX and works over WINE. (I'm sorry, I can't find a link.)
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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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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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%.
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then I am all for it. So in that sense, it is a good idea. Too bad they're gonna get their pants sued off by M$, though.
DirectX support in Wine is pretty bad, and could definitely use something like this. Of course, OpenGL support in Wine has it's own problems, but this can only be a good thing for porting to non-Windows platforms.
I don't know if it's a good thing for Wine or not, though, because I couldn't find any details of the license. Wine is released under an artistic style license, so if this thing is GPL (or similar) it couldn't get merged directly into Wine.
However, they seem like nice enough people, so hopefully the Wine folks will check into it... Otherwise, we'll end up with a forked, GPL-compatible version of Wine for gaming, which wouldn't be so bad, but would be less than ideal.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Or, this gets people playing games on Linux instead of dual booting... these gamers demand better performance and the game companies realize they need to lose the wrapper to improve performance.
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
...to just walk around Redmond with a big "Sue Me" sign on their backs?
. . . this came too late for Loki.
Picking a file at random (dsetup.h) shows
*
* Copyright (C) 1995-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
*
* File: dsetup.h
* Content: DirectXSetup, error codes and flags
so, whatever license the DirectX SDK comes under I guess.
STOP buying D3D games
KEEP buying OpenGL games
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... but isn't playing catch-up the wrong game to play?
I understand how difficult going up against Microsoft is, but it seems to me like we need to get to the point where it is changing minds of developers, rather than simply adapting to whatever Microsoft puts out. By making wrappers and such for Microsoft APIs, it'll only encourage developers to become more dependent on Microsoft's technology, because they won't see a need to develop for anything else.
As a programmer myself, it's always easier to use what you already know, than to pick up something new. I love learning new things, but most corporate environments are on a tight schedule as it is. There's no time for learning something new, so we rely on what we already know.
Wouldn't it be possible to write a code converter of some sort? To help translate Direct3D calls to OpenGL? It wouldn't really need to be a complete conversion, just enough to make it easier for developers to natively support OpenGL...
good point. It overall reminds of the .NET/Mono situation: It is good to have supported as much as possible under Linux, because that will make the people use it or develop for it (hopefully).
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will it help people port to other platforms? doubtful, as they're probably using other ms stuff if they're using DirectX.
will it help people use more advanced features on other platforms? no, since they're just using underlying opengl (and extensions) anyway, which they could do in the first place.
is it more performant? no way - it's another layer of indirection, so it's at least an additional pointer dereference, and extra stuff on the stack.
so i'm left thinking this is a solution in search of a problem. if you want portability, you write to opengl. if you want extensions, you use the _portable_ extension mechanism that opengl already provides. check out nvidia's directx vs opengl extension comparison some time - guess which one has better & more support? hint, it doesn't start with direct..
so, again, why would any sane developer write to this?
(and yes, i read the faq.)
In the newer versions Microsoft implemented OpenGL as a wrapper around DirectX.
While these guys did the opposite - implemented DirectX as a wrapper on OpenGL.
This is possibly the most important thing that alternative OSes needed for a long, long time, in order to provide games developers tools to allow them to easilly port their work to non-MS platforms.
Frankly I don't care if the future is OpenGL or if it DirectX. All I care for is that some day, everyone will be able to develop applications using a set of unified standards (ANSI, DirectX here) and have code-source compatibility between platforms.
In that case, a simple recompilation to the target platforms means a wider audience, more sales and more happy gamers. Kudos to the team bringing us DirectX on Linux!!!
Umm, it is not just a reversal to map from one API to another. APIs don't map to each other cleanly. Writing a mapping from DX -> GL is much harder than writing one from GL -> DX because DX incorporates a lot more features, plus it is object based, which makes it harder to map to a C API.
I doubt this project is going to succeed, and, if it does, I doubt even more that it will be able to keep up.
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Scary, isn't it?
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Now we can use a $5,000 OpenGL card to play any DirectX games
OpenGL is what we call source-portable...anything that's legal openGL will work any openGL environment. So what's platform-specific in this code?
OpenGL does not handle windowing, that is, actually creating a surface on which to draw. OpenGL also does not handle input (DirectInput), audio (DirectSound/DirectMusic), or video (DirectShow). GLUT handles windowing and video to an extent, but AFAIK, standard GLUT can't go full-screen, read joysticks, or read more than one keyboard key at a time.
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This is just how Microsoft can screw up Linux. Sure, it sounds like a good thing but MS controls the API's, the MS API's and following them will only mean eventual control. That goes for the .NET stuff that the Gnome people are doing. DUMB, VERY DUMB.
IMHO, the only way Microsoft could screw with Linux is to have developers develope WIN32 APIs and have them run on Linux and this is just helping them do this. Only if Microsoft loses control of the desktop and with it the dominant application API's can or should this kind of thing be looked at as an advantage.
YOU WILL BE ASSIMULATED. really.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Give it up. This has been tried and has failed multiple times. idSoftware and Loki and a few others failed miserably at selling linux games for two reasons: linux users are singularly unwilling to pay for any software or they were/are unwilling to wait 2-3 months for the linux port to make its appearance on the store shelves. Thus, they buy the windoze version and don't buy the linux version when it comes out. It is over. All you get now are idsoftware releases of linux binaries that require the windoze version be purchased to supply the guts of the game. The binary is free in and of itself and isn't officially supported. It is also only done out of the goodness of their hearts.
There is no market in linux for games as has been demonstrated again and again. I say this as someone who DID buy Loki games and would have been happy to buy idSoftware games for linux had I ever actually seen them.
WineX is the only good way to play (windoze) games via linux. I encourage you to check out Transgaming and their WineX. If you take a look at the list of games that work, it is actually quite long (Deus Ex!). They are specifically targeting getting games to work instead of simply trying to get most other windoze apps to work. Their winex version wont run all the productivity/non-game windoze apps that regular wine or codeweavers wine will but it is VERY good at games, directx or no.
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If it is GPLed or any similarly viral license, the game industry won't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
This could be super useful for the mainline version of WINE ... Direct3D support can be in the main tree now.
If nothing else, this could pressure TransGaming into putting their Direct3D code into the main WINE tree.
Either way, WINE gets Direct3D support. Check off one more box on the list of things needed for full Windows compatibility. (And then buy native Linux apps anyway because it's a good idea.)
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For once, I'm glad that it is; that should be compatible with Wine. :)
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After 7 YEARS (or is it 8, or only 6?) D3D is finally at the performance level of OpenGL(arguably not, seeing as how Q3A STILL outperforms games with similar graphics today).
When D3D was first created by MS, it was an extremely unstable, lousy performing, moving target! And don't even think about upgrading D3D, your current set of games probably won't work! And on top of everything else already wrong with it, it is completely non-portable! Why the fuck did anyone adopt it in the first place?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
This is not some kind of holy grail that everyone is looking for so stop it right now. OpenGL, which is a far better API IMO (and John Carmack thinks so too!) is and has always been the defacto standard portable API to code against. I will admit that recently with DX8, things got more in line with OpenGL and the D3D API is better than it was, but it's still COM based and completely not portable (among other problems). This product is just a wrapper to make COM look like C++ objects and underneath, make OpenGL calls.
So what does this give us? It does NOT give us a WINE implementation of being able to run DirectX apps. Yes, you could integrate the code into WINE but it's meant to wrap functions at the source level, not the executable level. It does give us a wrapper that DirectX code can, for the most part, compile against and product a working Linux/BeOS/Mac exectuable. So for the game developers it might mean their DirectX code will compile on other platforms, but any good game company would have abstracted out their graphics code so it would be API independant. That's what most of them do already and some do offer OpenGL/DirectX selection for rendering. Why they don't produce Linux versions of their apps if they can simply call OpenGL instead isn't clear, but that's their decision.
So are developers going to take DirectX code and compile against this to produce Linux OpenGL executables? I doubt it. Anyone who has coded their graphics sub-system directly against DirectX has probably coded other parts directly against the Windows API and if they haven't ported it to Linux already, they probably won't. Those that already have a clear decoupling of the graphics and the API don't need to and again, if they haven't ported they still won't for whatever reason (most likely support/business cases/etc)
On the flipside, I do applaud what these guys did as it is a big undertaking to wrap a system as big and complex as Direct3D so congrats and perhaps for the garage developer, it might be useful but to those people I say just code in OpenGL in the first place.
liB
Listen kids this is an early alpha of a D3D wrapper for WinGL, with minor ports of MacGL and others. This isn't DirectX, which handles the input, sound, and even ( directplay is horrible ) networking.
Things to note:
1. D3D is a huge moving target itself
2. This project doesn't support full D3D ( ATI/NV )
3. D3D isn't a 'standard', it's rewritten every release
Keeping these things in mind you won't get your windows games on linux, you won't get a wrapper for D3D for all GL cards, and you won't even get a finished release of this. I don't mean to sound negative, but by the time they have all the NV/ATI extentions supported DX 9.0 and maybe even OpenGL 2.0 will be out with an all new shader systems.
Too bad vertex and pixel shaders won't be used much until another few generations. You have to wait for the target (mainstream) consumers to get at least something like a GF3 or similar first generation consumer card shader support. However, I will say that doesn't mean you won't have some games and applications just requiring you to get a card with support or offer it as a runtime enabled option.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
While it sounds all nice and all, there is very very little that is actually supported in this library. Most of the Direct3D functions are simply stubs, and this library would be absolutely incapable of running anything more complex than the rotating-cube demo they have a screenshot for. They are about where we were 18-20 months ago, and this is certainly not keeping me up at nights.
-Gav
--
Gavriel State
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If I'm a gamer and I can get a Linux level of stability without sacrificing the latest graphics goodies, I'm going to switch to Linux real quick. No more crashes... :)
Every Linux fanactic claims that Linux is faster and more stable than Windows. Here's a chance to prove it. Get the Linux implementation to be better than the Windows "reference" implementation, and Microsoft will lose control of the standards. Why use buggy MS DirectX 17 when you can use stable Linux DirectX 10.2, get practically the same features, better performance, and not have to worry about MS changing the standard half-way through your code?
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
MS won't really have the power to enforce changes to DirectX 9 that would make it incompatible, because the devs will ignore them
So who WILL add new features to expose the functionality of the next generation of video cards? Or will our APIs be so calcified that no hardware manufacturer can reasonably add anything new?
New revisions of libraries like DirectX are neccessary, so long as there are fundamental changes in what various pieces of hardware are doing.
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Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
In that hypothetical situation (let me stress hypothetical, because the other people who replied to me seemed to miss that part), you'd probably see one of two things:
1) Microsoft gives up and decides to go cross platform, at which point they continue maintaining DirectX. This still causes problems for free/open software types, because they'd still have to play catch up, but at least it gives people a choice of OS.
2) Devs realize that there are plenty of people who aren't on Windows so they start using an already established cross platform kid (like SDL), or they just do what Id does and roll their own.
Again, it's not that I actually think this is going to happen tomorrow, or at all. All I'm really saying is that a DirectX wrapper is a good thing.
My other
So when are they going to release a Windows version of this Direct3D to OpenGL Wrapper?
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Give me a break! This is NOT a troll. I am dead-ass serious. It is also a FACT, inescapable, that NO linux game company (an now porting company) has suceeded. It is disheartening but it is VERY true nontheless.
You can beg, call, petition all you want for companies to write native linux games but it wont work and cannot work (for the near future certainly). There is NO money in it. Ask Loki and John Carmack, fer Cthulhu's sake! You MIGHT get lucky with a couple vendors if you ask nicely for free, unsupported linux binaries for some games ala idSoftware, but anything else? Yeah right, been there, tried that, failed IN EVERY CASE.
Troll my ass, just the ugly facts (AND I WANT/BOUGHT LINUX GAMES IDIOT MODERATOR!).
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This is nice but wouldn't the other way around be better? OpenGL is simpler to learn and use, so for me an OpenGL interface on top of DirectX is a much more valuable tool. Are there any of these around (open sourced of course)?
Anything that will bring games to Linux with 100% compiled and running native code is a good thing (tm). I'm not a WINE hater, but emulators (regardless of what they claim to be) just let us say, "Look, we can run your apps almost as well as you, but with 10 times the headaches!" Natively Compiled Code == Good Thing (tm)
The nice thing about DX8 is that it's used by the XBox (Not that I'm a fan of the console). This should make building wrapper libraries easier, because it will mean a stable M$ API (for once). Unlike say, WINE, who's slogan should be, "Chasing Windmills for Over 8 Years"
There hasn't been a Linux game company. There have only been Linux game porters. If you already have a Windows machine to run your games, why on earth would you buy Linux ports after you already bought the windows versions?
If there was a true Linux gaming company, I think we'd see different results. We'll see what happens when TuxRacer comes out.
Engineering and the Ultimate
This is possibly the most important thing that alternative OSes needed for a long, long time, in order to provide games developers tools to allow them to easilly port their work to non-MS platforms.
Frankly I don't care if the future is OpenGL or if it DirectX. All I care for is that some day, everyone will be able to develop applications using a set of unified standards (ANSI, DirectX here) and have code-source compatibility between platforms.
In that case, a simple recompilation to the target platforms means a wider audience, more sales and more happy gamers. Kudos to the team bringing us DirectX on Linux!!!
Ive always been curious were all the die-hard DOS fans went to when Windows took over the PC. Now I know! Luckily anti-GUI believers are a minority even in Linux so that good quility X-apps have come into existence.
GUIs make life easier. New functionality can be aquired quicker than having to learn 20+ command line arguments for each new piece of software.
Dont get me wrong, I still have to go time and again to a terminal window to do something in Linux. But if this manual work could be made less frequent with better software Im all for it.
If you are thinking about helping with this open source Direct3D port, maybe you might want to check out SDL. It already works cross platform and could use your skills. (www.libsdl.org).
GLUT *can* handle fullscreen, in GAMEMODE.
All the libraries I could find last time I tried developing in GLUT gave me the error: Game mode not implemented.
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Heh...TuxRacer?! Yes, lets have tuxracer vs Unreal II, Call of Cthulhu, Doom III (ok, Doom III being an idSoftware child will end up with an unsupprted linux binary for download), WarCraft III, and the like.
TuxRacer may be cute but it is simply not comparable to the likes of games coming or available for doze. I understand that a subpop actually likes senseless arcade games ala centipede, etc, but come on. I can only hope that TuxRacer acts as merely a springboard for real cool, technically complex games like those mentioned above.
I would argue that id was not just a porting operation when they dipped into the linux game market. They were developing both versions, but the linux version, by necessity, having a lower priority due to the market size, took a few months longer. This was precisely the reason it (linux games) came stillborn! Linux users were NOT willing to wait a measly 2 months for a native version. They just HAD to have it NOW and, of course, once you have the game for doze, why the hell would you pay again to get the native linux version? Linux gamers are too impatient and/or unwilling to pay for games. I love linux and the whole opensource thing but it is NOT the answer to everything and you MUST be willing to pay for good games if you want them to continue coming. Too often the overall linux crowd seems to get indignant that they can't just download a cool game for free (as if the Constitution or Bill of Rights - or equivalent - assures this should be so).
IF linux can gain on the desktop to an appreciable extent (and it must be able to AT LEAST match the Apple market share) THEN commercial games will start to trickle in. Look at Apple! They do only have a small piece of the desktop pie and naturally, games are fewer. You expect equal to windoze treatment for linux even though it's desktop share is a fraction of Apple's? Pure wishful thinking...and not logical or reasonable.
Gain more of a hold on the desktop and ask companies to provide linux binaries ala idSoftware. If they try to release linux boxed games, they will fail financially (see idSoftware and ask Carmack). It, of course, would be GREAT to get boxed games with Mac, Doze, and Linux binaries in the same package, on the same CD but even that is asking a lot given the desktop linux penetration to date and the examples of Loki, id, and a couple other noble attempts. I cannot hold out hope for a simplistic arcade game (TuxRacer) to somehow be the savior of linux gaming.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.