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Doom Creator Says Direct3D Is Now Better Than OpenGL
arcticstoat writes "First-person shooter godfather and OpenGL stickler John Carmack has revealed that he now prefers Direct3D to OpenGL, saying that 'inertia' is the main reason why id Software has stuck by the cross-platform 3D graphics API for years. In a recent interview, the co-founder of id Software said, 'I actually think that Direct3D is a rather better API today.' He added, 'Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns. Direct3D handles multi-threading better, and newer versions manage state better.'"
It's been true for almost 10 years. In fact Microsoft's support for DirectX has always been better than what OpenGL had. Microsoft made it easy to use with all their programming tools and languages and had a great documentation. The API was always cleaner too. There were tons of books written for DirectX. This is the area Microsoft handles extremely well - their Visual Studio development environment is the best IDE on the market and they create great tools for developers. Their mobile development tools kick Apple's and Google's (C#, Visual Studio and Silverlight against Java...).
It would be nice to see open source community wake up and start developing a competitor, as just now Microsoft is the driving force that innovates new technologies for PC and Xbox360 graphics and gaming. But for once it looks like the fact they're the only one doing so isn't slowing them down - they do a good job.
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