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Port DirectX Games to the Mac
tassii writes "MacCentral reports that Coderus' MacDX provides PC game developers with a way of moving that DirectX code to the Mac without having to rewrite it from scratch. Coderus claims that most code which uses DirectX can simply be recompiled and linked to the MacDX libraries. Maybe I can finally play the full Command and Conquer series."
This is pure genius folks... it's like using Microsoft's own stuff against them.
I know at least ten Mac users who have said that they keep a Winblows box around to "play games."
VirtualPC is handy, but it just plain sucks when it comes to doing high-end graphics (or, better said, just plain doesn't do high-end graphics).
Everyone is saying its endorsing a Microsoft "standard," but if you think about it it could take people off the Windows desktop, which is really our goal anyway.
So Microsoft gets to license a high-speed graphics library. So it sorta endorses the XBox. Who cares... they don't have monopolies in these areas.
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
while this seems like it has the potential to slow adoption of opengl, i doubt that all the big-name mac porting companies will suddenly go out of business. there are often multiple versions of games, and it is quite conceivable that these repackaged 'deluxe' editions will be full opengl ports as opposed to just recompiling directx code. this just means we'll see more simultaneous releases, and also that many directx developers will get a taste of opengl... they'll have to keep a mac around to test it on you know ;)
i think it will work more for opengls benefit. it in effect extends mac-pc compatibility in a very striking way.
Why is adapting a Windows standard a "great win for linux?"
Leading is not done by following.
You're right. But standing still is even worse than following (as MacOS proved for years and years). It seems clear to me that linux is not leading in many respects - gaming APIs being one, market position being another. Even if they had the best damn gaming APIs in the world, unless those APIs were ported to Windows, it would still be a losing proposition.
Providing software compatability is a great win for linux. OpenOffice is a great example of that. SAMBA is another.