News has leaked that Microsoft has enabled support for OpenGL to work with the Vista compositing desktop, as of the most recent preview build. Previously Microsoft's plan had been to force OpenGL to be translated to Direct3D, reducing performance by 50% and locking the OpenGL version to 1.4 only.
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Member since:2005-07-06
It's probably a case of accuracy vs. speed. The push with Direct3D seems to be towards high speed, low accuracy, but done in such a way that visually emulates high-accuracy.
Industry OpenGL apps don't have to look supa-pretty with nice reflective/warping water, but have to be 100% accurate in what they do.
Member since:2006-03-20
I assume that Direct3D has implemented mostly those calls that are useful to games, but has not implemented everything that is useful for his industrial applications.
3D-Studio MAX seems to work just fine with Direct3D, so I don't see why "industrial" applications wouldn't.
Also, I don't see how the two different APIs influence the accuracy, since these days the graphics card does the majority of the work.
Edited 2006-03-20 22:08
Member since:2006-01-19
RE[5]: why would we ....
Member since:2006-03-01
The API's affect the result even though the card does the work. The API's have different ways of telling the card how do it's job. The card takes very low-level instructions, whereas using an API such as OpenGL or Direct3D, it is rather high level. Much is done by the API.
Member since:
2006-03-20
I was talking to a 3D programmer who works on some in-house 3D application in the Oil Industry, and he was telling me that while Direct3D is great API for games, it is not as useful for industrial applications software that he works on. For instance there is something like 250 calls in OpenGL, which he uses, but only about a 100 or so are useful to games. I assume that Direct3D has implemented mostly those calls that are useful to games, but has not implemented everything that is useful for his industrial applications.