I hear many arguments about the death of opengl and the supremecy of DirectX and I keep thinking of the reasons I began programming in OpenGL and not in directX. Its all about the learning curve, or at least it was for me, a guy who at the time knew nothing outside of theory and C++ syntax. I had two choices DirectX (maybe v3 or 4 at the time) and OpenGL&GLUT. I tried DirectX first because back then OpenGL was still usually mentioned as a industrial graphics API not flashy game stuff. After a few large headaches I finally got a program to compile that filled a window with random pixels. Now you might think sure this is simple but it took me quite some time because I had to learn the cryptic DirectX syntax and a lot of windows specific crap as well. Enter OpenGL&GLUT: With its efforts to be completely portable OpenGL already had a sibling API that handled the windowing environments for you. So with maybe a scratch of my head and a file that was an impressively little amount of code I had a 3d shaded box spinning in space. Reality: Sure when I make something Im really expecting to take off I wont use GLUT because I'd like full control over what Im doing. Then again learning one set of funny API calls is a lot easier than 2. Yeah sure maybe DX will make leaps and bounds over OpenGL and you'll beable to make hardware accelerated voxel landscapes with synthesized textures and fractal trees popping up everywhere, but your going to have to lock yourself in a dark cubby hole and work at it for a long time. Meanwhile all the newbies to the field who are worried more about how to implement new technology and not how to walk on eggshells just to get a nice 3d image are going to learn on OpenGL... because its easier to start on. If it remains as training wheels to the big bad harley some of you think will be DirectX then so be it, it hasnt died. Personally with the potential for microsoft hitting the rocks and linux in all its Open Source glory taking a larger piece of the market Im going to want to develop with an API that will port without pagan rituals:). -bart Wow! that lasted longer than I'd hoped
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hehe and I guess I should have formatted that better ;)
-bart
I hear many arguments about the death of opengl and the supremecy of DirectX and I keep thinking of the reasons I began programming in OpenGL and not in directX. Its all about the learning curve, or at least it was for me, a guy who at the time knew nothing outside of theory and C++ syntax. I had two choices DirectX (maybe v3 or 4 at the time) and OpenGL&GLUT. I tried DirectX first because back then OpenGL was still usually mentioned as a industrial graphics API not flashy game stuff. After a few large headaches I finally got a program to compile that filled a window with random pixels. Now you might think sure this is simple but it took me quite some time because I had to learn the cryptic DirectX syntax and a lot of windows specific crap as well. Enter OpenGL&GLUT: With its efforts to be completely portable OpenGL already had a sibling API that handled the windowing environments for you. So with maybe a scratch of my head and a file that was an impressively little amount of code I had a 3d shaded box spinning in space. Reality: Sure when I make something Im really expecting to take off I wont use GLUT because I'd like full control over what Im doing. Then again learning one set of funny API calls is a lot easier than 2. Yeah sure maybe DX will make leaps and bounds over OpenGL and you'll beable to make hardware accelerated voxel landscapes with synthesized textures and fractal trees popping up everywhere, but your going to have to lock yourself in a dark cubby hole and work at it for a long time. Meanwhile all the newbies to the field who are worried more about how to implement new technology and not how to walk on eggshells just to get a nice 3d image are going to learn on OpenGL... because its easier to start on. If it remains as training wheels to the big bad harley some of you think will be DirectX then so be it, it hasnt died. Personally with the potential for microsoft hitting the rocks and linux in all its Open Source glory taking a larger piece of the market Im going to want to develop with an API that will port without pagan rituals :). -bart Wow! that lasted longer than I'd hoped