Do you have ANY clue who you replied to?
John Carmack nows more about graphics and rendering then the all the other posters combined.
I'll give you a clue....guess who won "Best of Show" at E3.
Sure Microsoft have made mistakes in the past and will in the future. What do you do? Do you not use their API and spend more money developing?
Look at it from an economic stand point. It is most economical to develope a game using DX right now in most cases. Just because it sucked in the past you don't not use the very usuable product now.
Microsoft is here to stay. Not all that they touch is evil. Dot Net stuff isn't solely Ms either. It infact is an OPEN STANDARD that any vendor can adopt. The WINS extension to it is the windows front end which will not be readily portable to other devices. Dot Net has some good and bad points but your statement "except without cross-platform portability" is dead wrong
If I write a application in Dot-Net and don't use the Windows extension then I can take that Dot-Net program (binary form) to ANY machine that has a JIT Dot-Net Compiler (which is an open standard) and the first time I run that program it will compile what it needs for that machine....once....then it is in native binary form. Think of Dot-Net as a Java program that compiles only what it needs when it needs it the FIRST time. Every time after that it uses the natively compiled code. Sure its slower the first time you run it or the first time you use a particular segment of code but it is completely portable to any device that has a JIT. Any device can have a JIT writen for it as long as they can impliment the basic Dot-Net features.
So I write a calculator program and I can take that program run it underwindows. I can then take that exact file and run it under Linux on a Sun box then take that same file and run it on a DEC Unix box then decide send it to my new wiz bang mobile phone that has a JIT for it before sending over to my Apple Mac to look at it there.
1 file....any number of operating systems...and you know what....the JIT can be different for different complatible CPUs. There maybe a JIT writen for AMD or INTEL depending on the host platform gaing performance benifits for the native CPU instead of compling to 586 code. Now the only other draw back to this is that the file grows with each operating system you use it on. But with careful planning that isn't that big of an issue.
I'm not a microsoft lover but I'm not also stupid enough to force one of my customers to us an alternate OS if its going to cost them more to use it for ZERO benifit to them. Oracle...nice database but for many of my customers they can't afford $15,000 or more to purchase it then pay a higher priced DBA to manage it when they can get away with SQL Sever for one tenth the cost and I can train one of their staff to manage it in a few days.
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Do you have ANY clue who you replied to? John Carmack nows more about graphics and rendering then the all the other posters combined. I'll give you a clue....guess who won "Best of Show" at E3.
You haven't seen the Daffy Duck episod where B.Bunny messes with him real time? Sheesh!
Sure Microsoft have made mistakes in the past and will in the future. What do you do? Do you not use their API and spend more money developing? Look at it from an economic stand point. It is most economical to develope a game using DX right now in most cases. Just because it sucked in the past you don't not use the very usuable product now. Microsoft is here to stay. Not all that they touch is evil. Dot Net stuff isn't solely Ms either. It infact is an OPEN STANDARD that any vendor can adopt. The WINS extension to it is the windows front end which will not be readily portable to other devices. Dot Net has some good and bad points but your statement "except without cross-platform portability" is dead wrong If I write a application in Dot-Net and don't use the Windows extension then I can take that Dot-Net program (binary form) to ANY machine that has a JIT Dot-Net Compiler (which is an open standard) and the first time I run that program it will compile what it needs for that machine....once....then it is in native binary form. Think of Dot-Net as a Java program that compiles only what it needs when it needs it the FIRST time. Every time after that it uses the natively compiled code. Sure its slower the first time you run it or the first time you use a particular segment of code but it is completely portable to any device that has a JIT. Any device can have a JIT writen for it as long as they can impliment the basic Dot-Net features. So I write a calculator program and I can take that program run it underwindows. I can then take that exact file and run it under Linux on a Sun box then take that same file and run it on a DEC Unix box then decide send it to my new wiz bang mobile phone that has a JIT for it before sending over to my Apple Mac to look at it there. 1 file....any number of operating systems...and you know what....the JIT can be different for different complatible CPUs. There maybe a JIT writen for AMD or INTEL depending on the host platform gaing performance benifits for the native CPU instead of compling to 586 code. Now the only other draw back to this is that the file grows with each operating system you use it on. But with careful planning that isn't that big of an issue. I'm not a microsoft lover but I'm not also stupid enough to force one of my customers to us an alternate OS if its going to cost them more to use it for ZERO benifit to them. Oracle...nice database but for many of my customers they can't afford $15,000 or more to purchase it then pay a higher priced DBA to manage it when they can get away with SQL Sever for one tenth the cost and I can train one of their staff to manage it in a few days.