Will the Lack of DX10 on XP Spur OpenGL Dev?

Sparr0 asks: "Microsoft has announcement that DirectX 10 will not be released for Windows XP (which means no Shader Model 4.0 and no Geometry Shaders). I have since been waiting for news of game developers switching to OpenGL, in order to get the best graphics on the best hardware on the most popular gaming OS, however there is nary a whisper of such. Will such a shift occur, even if only in small amounts? When? Why not? It is probably safe to say that Unreal Tournament 3 (AKA UT2007) will have OpenGL as an option in Windows, but that is both unsurprising and also a long way off. Ditto for Quake Wars, and most other games that are planning a native Linux clients. Where are all of the other big names with Windows-only offerings? Why haven't we heard from Valve, Blizzard, Sony, or EA, to name a few?"

Comments

Nope.

[rblancarte]

I think that a lot of what is going to happen out there is going to be like John Carmack said. I think that overall, you are going to see developers stick with DirectX 9 for the time being. I think this is especially true for Windows only games.

The fact is that if you are developing Windows games, why would you support two APIs when you could support a single one and D9 users would just have to deal with not having the latest bells and whistles? And this doesn't even take into account that D3d is now a more advanced API than OpenGL (which has been mentioned already).

RonB

well

[mastershake_phd]

If game developers started moving towards OpenGL Microsoft might release DX10 for XP. They will do anything to prevent something else from gaining a foothold.

Re:How many times does it need to be said...

[Curien]

None of the parent comments said DX was better than OpenGL. They said it was /broader/. OpenGL is a 3D programming framework. DirectX is a collection of frameworks: DirectDraw for 2D, Direct3D for 3D, DirectInput for user input, DirectPlay for networking, etc.

Comparing OpenGL and DirectX is like comparing Abiword (just a word processor) and OpenOffice (a word processor, a spreadsheet, a vector graphics editor, a presentation designer, etc).

Comparing OpenGL to Direct3D is an apples-to-apples comparison. That's usually what people mean when they talk about comparing DX and GL (since it's the only comparison that makes sense). But that's intellectual laziness.