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Valve Open Sources Their DirectX To OpenGL Layer

Posted by Unknown on from the please-port-mame-hlsl-shader-to-sdlmame-kthx dept.

jones_supa writes "A bit surprisingly, Valve Software has uploaded their Direct3D to OpenGL translation layer onto GitHub as open source. It is provided as-is and with no support, under the MIT license allowing you to do pretty much anything with it. Taken directly from the DOTA2 source tree, the translation layer supports limited subset of D3D 9.0c, bytecode-level HLSL to GLSL translator, and some SM3 support. It will require some tinkering to get it to compile, and there is some hardcoded Source-specific stuff included. The project might bring some value to developers who are planning to port their product from Windows to Linux."

2 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. On the road to replacing DirectX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With a big company (in terms of money) like Valve pushing OpenGL there is a real chance DirectX will face serious and permanent competition. We will finally have a serious alternative to the suffocating model of forcing a new operating system down peoples throat through software. It worked great with the browser, now lets hope Valve can make it happen for games.

  2. Re:Winelib by LoRdTAW · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hold on, The subset of DX9.0c is probably the Xbox360 native API: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenGL_and_Direct3D#Gaming

    The original Xbox supported Direct3D 8.1 as its native API while the Xbox 360 supports a modified version of Direct3D 9.0c as its native API.

    This could be useful for studios looking to port Xbox360 titles to the Steam Box platform. It makes sense as there are a lot of titles that could see a sort of resurrection on Steam and bring in some more money. It is also possibly the same D3D API subset used for Windows Phone 8.