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The End Of DirectX As We Know It
socram writes "Speaking with ATI and NVIDIA at ECTS allowed us to confirm that after DX9.0, DirectX Graphics is no more. In name only. Microsoft's next set of core presentation and 3D APIs are now under the umbrella of Windows Graphics Foundation and Avalon. Microsoft will still rely on DirectX in name for the rest of the core components, but the graphics API is now under a new name. Look out for WGF 1.0 compatibility on the back of that next generation graphics card's box. Some WGF 1.0 Info!" Update: 09/06 22:27 GMT by T : David Ross of hexus.net points out that this text comes straight from hexus, and should have been credited as such.
I think there are plenty of titles that use opengl
Doom 3's probably the biggest - and even if you hate the game, its very existence means that graphics card manufacturers can't even think about dropping OpenGL support, at least not without alienating a good number of potential purchasers.
Thanks, John Carmack, for keeping OpenGL alive!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
What are you talking about? OS X has native support for OpenGL capability. It just so happens that some desktop graphics functions such as windows are offloaded to the GPU. OpenGL is the equivalent of DirectX. In fact, now that the ARB finally made a decision on shading languages, OpenGL's OGSL is superior to what Microsoft has to offer.
It's just that Microsoft is finally catching up with Apple in [b]using[/b] GPU functions to control more than just games.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
What about the parts of DirectX that are not about 3D? The article is only about the Direct3D part of DirectX.
I'm using DirectShow a lot myself actually. Are changes expected there too?
(Score:5, Not Funny)
On most games today it says "runs on either Nvidia card xxx or ATI card yyy".
Well, on most of the requirements I've seen recently, it'll list something like "Graphics card: 100% DirectX 8 compatible, 64MB RAM". Just because in today's hardware market that translates to "a recent card from NVidia or ATI" doesn't make that MS's fault.
So my non-nvidia card won't help me even though DirectX 9.0c claims to be running fine
Chances are, DX 9 *is* running fine, but your card lacks support for certain features used by the game. Now, the game devs could fall back to software, or even just disable those features; not doing so is not the fault of DX or MS.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
On a different note, the really amazing thing about Avalon, and you gotta commend Moft for this, is that they're actually moving the graphics driver to User-mode.
Do you have a source for this? My impression of Avalon is that it's a library and version of Explorer.exe that sits on top of DirectX - of course the video card driver would still be ring 0, and the GDI+++ library (the new Avalon graphics library) would be user mode, just as GDI or GDI+ are today. Avalon represents a new interface application and set of tools for third party applications to use, but it isn't a tremendous plumbing change.
Funny thing about Microsoft software - invariably it hits the market as is dramatically less of a schism than people imagined it to be.
The only people who would be affected is OpenGL elitists
No, the only people who would be affected would be everyone who wants to play Doom 3 on their video card. That's a significant number of people.
Remember that Microsoft created PC gaming as we know it.
What the heck are you smoking? Microsoft was a pioneer in writing flight sims. But that's about it. You must be too young to remember what PC gaming was like before Microsoft ruled the universe.
There is nothing wrong with DirectX, except that such a brilliant idea came out of Microsoft.
There are plenty of things wrong with DirectX. One is that it is a proprietary standard created by MS to stop OpenGL. And unexpectedly, DirectX is locked-in to the Windows platform, unlike OpenGL.
It is not a 'brilliant idea' by any stretch of the imagination. It's was a mind-numbingly obvious idea. When DirectX was developed, essentially all PC apps had moved off DOS to Windows, except games. Obviously, Microsoft needed to get game developers to start using Windows. DirectX was an obvious solution. But they could, had they been less 'evil', just as well integrated OpenGL support into Windows instead.
Which I suspect is the real reason that certain people are as pro-OpenGL as they are. It's just more anti-Microsoft sentiment.
No, it's because OpenGL is a non-proprietary, cross-platform standard. DirectX is a proprietary API locked to the Windows platform.
That said, I'll concede that DirectX is better than OpenGL. It must be better than OpenGL to ensure its survival, because no developer wants to lock himself to a single vendor and platform if there is an equally good option.