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DirectX9 - For More Than Just Gamers?

Posted by Hemos on from the interesting-concepts dept.

Xev writes "HEXUS.net are showing a review of a new product called 3DEdit. This uses the DirectX 9 3D rendering engine; 3D transitions; DirectX 9 Shader-based filters, in order to give you a powerful home DV editing suite. This proves a lot more value to me as a Video editor than a card which just lets me play the latest games. Perhaps there is more use for these cards even at a consumer level?"

7 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. CoreImage by cjwl · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out Apple's upcoming CoreImage system if you're interested in uses of a video card for things other than video games:

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/coreimage.html/

  2. OpenGL by Glock27 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    OpenGL stands for "Open Graphics Library". Microsoft did Direct3D as a way to lock 3D content into the Microsoft platform. Only id Software's stance on OpenGL for gaming saved the day. At the time, even Microsoft admitted that OpenGL was more appropriate for "professional" 3D apps like CAD. Now I'm sure they'd like to lure developers into using Direct3D for professional apps, just as this developer has done.

    Developers should use OpenGL in preference to Direct3D if they want cross-platform compatibility, or simply to use a better API. One way to do this that provides a lot of flexibility is to choose a high-level scene graph library that uses OpenGL or Direct3D at a low level.

    OpenGL apps run on Windows, MacOS and Linux. OpenGL has always been "For More Than Just Gamers".

    --
    Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
    Score: -1 100% Flamebait
    1. Re:OpenGL by robocrop · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Filtering through the "open source" - and therefore anything with the word "open" in it - fanatacism:

      Microsoft did Direct3D as a way to lock 3D content into the Microsoft platform. Only id Software's stance on OpenGL for gaming saved the day.

      First, while I certainly won't defend MS's business practices, it's more than a bit short-sighted to say MS only created D3D to "lock" developers onto Windows. MS wanted to grow Windows as a gaming platform (beyond crap like WinG) so they made their own accelerated API. One could certainly argue that the existence of D3D has pushed OpenGL to stay modern and competitive, so has been twofold beneficial.

      Second, where does this nonsense about id saving OpenGL come from? OpenGL has always had plenty of users - as you mention it is consistently used in CAD tools. There is no valid reason, other than fanboyism, to believe that OpenGL would have died if Carmack hadn't used it in his games. And there are other people who have used OpenGL to make their games work on multiple platforms (which, by the way, is usually a very hard sell to your publisher).

      Developers should use OpenGL in preference to Direct3D if they want cross-platform compatibility, or simply to use a better API

      What a smooth, effortless transition from fact to propaganda.

      As a person who has written numerous game engines, I can attest to the fact that OpenGL is - for me - not a better API. It is convoluted and over-complicated by the very fact that it is an "open" standard, decided upon by a committee of people who wouldn't know good design if it bit them in the rear.

      Just the fact that most of the features easily found in D3D cannot be accessed in OpenGL, years after their invention, without the use of custom extensions is enough to throw me off the API.

      If you want to use OpenGL that's your right. But it is not an objectively better API any more than Mac is objectively better than PC, Linux objectively better than Windows, or any of the other /. propaganda that we consistently read.

  3. Well, maybe not today, but... by Faust7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it just me, or has almost every second story today had some kind of spurious leading comment tagged on to the end?

    "Perhaps this is the end of Microsoft?"
    "Perhaps this is Apple's rebirth?"
    "Perhaps Sun is growing up?"
    "Perhaps Firefox really is taking over?"
    "Perhaps Linux really is taking over?"
    "Perhaps games are sacrificing gameplay for graphics?"
    "Perhaps RIAA/MPAA execs really do eat babies?"
    "Perhaps AMD's stuff is better than Intel's?"
    "Perhaps Bush really is an autistic monkey?"

    --
    The coolest voice ever.
  4. consumer level?! by Anita+Coney · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Did the poster even read the review? The machine 3D Edit was tested on had dual Xeon CPUs running at 3.06GHz with 1MByte L3 cache, water cooling, 2 gigs of RAM, 15,000rpm SCSI hard drives, and a Radeon X800 XT.

    Exactly how many CONSUMERS have THAT system?!

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
    1. Re:consumer level?! by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

      I used to.

      Then I found out it still wouldn't run Longhorn, so I sold it.

      All I got left is this damned t-shirt.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
  5. Video Shader by sklib · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A friend of mine who used to work at ATI made a video shader demo that shows some neat video effects you can do in just a pixel shader -- i.e. render 1 rectangle that fills the screen with the video as your texture, and do all the "fun" stuff in a pixel shader. The ATI developer page that links to the binary is here.

    If you look at the requirements for that demo, it wants a radeon 9500, which means that cards have bene powerful enough to do these things for years. I wouldn't be surprized if apple's video editing tools used the video card to composite scenes off-screen. Probably the same thing for newer versions of Premiere.

    --
    -S