Submitted by “Last Wednesday, a company called Falling Leaf Systems announced the availability of an alpha of something called the Alky Project. The Alky Project has a lofty goal: to liberate DirectX 10 gaming from the confines of Vista and bring it first to Windows XP, and then to Linux and OS X. The project plans to do this by building a converter that can take in a DX10 game executable and spit out a modified version that can be run on a (non-Vista) target OS. The target OS must be x86-based, which rules out the PPC version of OS X, since the converter doesn’t do any binary translation.”
By the time this is out of alpha and is stable, won’t Vista have long replaced XP as the standard?
I know people (right here in the office) that still use NT 4.0 because it works better than XP for them.
’nuff said.
The WINE project has already laid the groundwork for this, and I believe they have a SOC project for it; and considering how far WINE has gotten in porting APIs so far, I’m guessing that this might go down as vaporware aside from running a few demos. Hopefully I’m wrong, but that’s my gut.
Will WINE allow me to run DX10 on XP?
Did you read the part where it says is not only for Linux?
So at least read the topic before posting such uninformed comments.
WINE runs on Windows. In fact, WINE developers often use it under Windows for debugging.
Didn’t know this? Doesn’t matter. Google is a friend. And next time, to say it in your words, at least inform yourself before posting such uninformed comments.
I dont know what to think of this project. It really sounds too simple to actually be true.
DX has many components and a very large API (far from simple). How can a DX Windows game be recompiled for Linux or OS X when those platforms have no DX support?
If it tries to convert DX calls to OpenGL, wouldn’t it essentially be doing what Wine and Cedega do?
As for the pray demo: Everyone is saying its an OpenGL game that has nothing to do with DirectX.
There’s already DX9 support in WINE, this project’s aim is just to convert DX10 binaries so they’ll run on DX9.
Windows xp isn’t likely to become obsolete anytime soon, and it is still by far the best platform for (most) modern games! This should help the Wine project as well, which is sorely needed us linux users.
Edited 2007-04-25 23:04
“
”
I think you’re over emphasising the difference in game running speeds across the two platforms. All of the benchmarks i’ve seen have shown the difference in rendering speed between XP and Vista not to be that significant.
Anyhow, this is all besides the point as very few games which don’t support OpenGL as well as DirectX
Edited 2007-04-26 09:11
I’m not sure how viable this would be, as Vista will be standard by the time that this is even in beta. Also, for Linux there is already Wine and Cedega, which are trying to accomplish this goal. Finally, With parallels or bootcamp on Mac, you can simply run Vista in a VM when you want to play a game. I can’t really see a big need for this.
Although, if they make some really good progress on this, then kudos to them! It would be nice because I can’t see myself switching to vista any time soon, and dx10 will most likely become widely used in the near future.
good luck trying to play an game in paralells Desktop.
First of all, DirectX support is crap in paralells
Second, the speed is not that good for games
Third, Paralells is not using the “real” graphics card for their VM:s, they are “emulating” an 16 Mb card that works with all kind of OS:es.
Software should use OpenGL, not DirectX.
should, yes, should.
But lots and lots of game developers are quite content to hit the 90% market and ignore the rest. And when users are asked why they don’t dump Windows and use Linux, a fair percentage say that they don’t want to give up at least one game that they love.
So if it works,and if they successfully extend it beyond Windows, this will be great.
Software should use OpenGL, not DirectX.
Unfortunately, OpenGL will continue to lose ground unless it is backed by an organization that takes an active interest in advancing it. I had high hopes when Khronos took over the ARB, but that has proved fruitless so far. The only advancements we’ve seen in OpenGL are in the form of vendor specific extensions from NVIDIA and ATI. This means writing separate graphics code for each vendor if you want to take advantage of the new features. Not to mention that fact that ATI OpenGL drivers are inconsistent and some of them are outright broken.
From a game developer’s point of view, we choose DirectX (Direct3D in this context) because it is a consistent and well-supported API. We tend to avoid OpenGL like a plague because it has no direction, no strong leadership, and support is inconsistent across hardware, and the amount of effort involved in working around the issues simply isn’t worth it to reach another ~6% of the market, the great majority of which don’t tend to play games anyway (or if they do, they have a Windows setup for that purpose).
This is just one of those cases where the proprietary solution is technically superior to the open one.
I don’t think that OpenGL and DirectX are on the same level. OpenGL is graphics only. DirectX deals with graphics, sound, and other things. DirectX could be compared to SDL.
It is too bad that vendors don’t use SDL more, since it is dual licensed.
I don’t think that OpenGL and DirectX are on the same level. OpenGL is graphics only. DirectX deals with graphics, sound, and other things.
DirectX actually includes Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectInput, and DirectPlay.
DirectShow used to be part of DirectX, but has been moved to the Platform SDK.
For all intents and purposes, when talking about DirectX, we are usually referring indirectly to just Direct3D (which is roughly equivalent to OpenGL). The other components of DirectX are either deprecated (DirectPlay), too trivial to worry about (DirectInput), or usually unused in favor of other options (DirectSound, DirectMusic).
It is too bad that vendors don’t use SDL more, since it is dual licensed.
SDL doesn’t really make the OpenGL option more attractive. It is great for learning and demos, but it is not really a viable tool for professional game development.
“SDL doesn’t really make the OpenGL option more attractive. It is great for learning and demos, but it is not really a viable tool for professional game development.”
Unless you’re not making a 3D game, I guess.
Unless you’re not making a 3D game, I guess.
That is true.
And I just wanted to add that I don’t think OpenGL is useless for games, but I am currently working on game technology that uses the latest features of high end 3D hardware. Direct3D is miles ahead of OpenGL in that area.
All of my comments have been made in that context.
“Unfortunately, OpenGL will continue to lose ground unless it is backed by an organization that takes an active interest in advancing it.”
As Linux gains marketshare, so will OpenGL. MS made a big mistake making DX10 Vista only.
“We tend to avoid OpenGL like a plague because it has no direction, no strong leadership, and support is inconsistent across hardware, and the amount of effort involved in working around the issues simply isn’t worth it to reach another ~6% of the market”
Games like Doom3 use OpenGL and work great. Using OpenGL will also make the software available to millions of Mac and Linux users.
“This is just one of those cases where the proprietary solution is technically superior to the open one.”
I think OpenGL and OpenAL are the superior choices.
As Linux gains marketshare, so will OpenGL. MS made a big mistake making DX10 Vista only.
When Linux starts making a blip in the gaming market, my studio (as well as others) will start taking it seriously as a target platform. We have nothing against it– the demand for games just isn’t there yet.
Games like Doom3 use OpenGL and work great.
id was the last professional game studio to use OpenGL exclusively. And even John Carmack has moved on to Direct3D as the primary technology for his next engine. This leaves OpenGL (if it is even implemented at all) as a second place API.
I think OpenGL and OpenAL are the superior choices.
That’s fair, and we do use OpenAL for our audio framework because it is simply better than DirectSound. I still disagree with regard to OpenGL, because I’ve had the experience of using it over the last decade or so, and I’ve (sadly) watched it fall to pieces in the last few years.
Its really too bad that more game development companies don’t use OpenGL. I’ve seen the trend with myself and all my friends that we grew up and played games on windows, but as we’ve gotten older and gotten jobs we’ve all switched to linux and/or macs out of necessity and so computer gaming has become closed to us because we’re no longer satisfied with a toy OS.
Not that we still don’t play games, we just all seem to play on consoles now. I just have to shake my head and wonder, if OpenGL is good enough for console developers, why isn’t it good enough for computer game developers?
I also have to wonder what percentage of Windows users ever play more than solitaire, and of those, how many actually pay for the games. I know at least have every linux-native game I’m aware of, and the only computer game I’ve played at all recently is World of Warcraft. It just makes me think, if say 20% of Windows users actually play games and pay for them, then the ~10% of people who use other OSes doesn’t look too bad.
Its really too bad that more game development companies don’t use OpenGL. […]
I agree. I don’t speak for others in my industry, but I don’t have any inherent bias against OpenGL. Like I said, we happily use OpenAL for our sound system. If there were an open and cross platform graphics framework that was well supported and provided a consistent API, I (as well as many others I’m sure) would jump at the chance to provide games for Linux and Mac users. But as it is, we’ve weighed the benefits of Direct3D against the cross-platform nature of OpenGL and, unfortunately, Direct3D has come out on top because it provides much better results with much less effort.
I just have to shake my head and wonder, if OpenGL is good enough for console developers, why isn’t it good enough for computer game developers?
No console supports OpenGL natively. The Playstation 3 provides the OpenGL ES API. In my opinion, OpenGL ES is actually a step in the right direction as takes care of half of the issues I have with OpenGL. Namely, it removes a lot of the cruft and provides a more consistent interface. Additionally, since the PS3 is a single hardware target, it removes the other half of the issues I have– you don’t have to write separate renderers for different hardware. With those two things in mind, it’s not quite fair to compare development with OpenGL on the PC to development with OpenGL ES on the PS3.
It just makes me think, if say 20% of Windows users actually play games and pay for them, then the ~10% of people who use other OSes doesn’t look too bad.
Even with those figures (which I assume are quite high for the next-gen type content that we produce), and assuming that only 10% of the alternative OS market plays games and pays for them, then you are looking at 1% of the market for alternative OS gamers. Implementing OpenGL into a game engine doesn’t require just slapping together a class around an abstract interface anymore. The use of programmable graphics hardware means that it also requires porting and debugging thousands of shader programs. This ends up being quite a large time investment for 1% of the market.
And there you have it folks. Simply put, at this point DirectX is a BETTER API and toolchain than OpenGL, and DirecX 10 is probably the best graphics API I have ever seen.
It wasn’t always like this, John Carmack may praise Microsoft’s APIs now…
[http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070115233110.html]
“I especially like the work I’m doing on the [Xbox] 360, and it’s probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I’ve worked with,” he said.
…but he didn’t before…
[http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/showtopic14422.htm]
Direct-3D IM is a horribly broken API. It inflicts great pain and suffering on the programmers using it, without returning any significant advantages. I don’t think there is ANY market segment that D3D is appropriate for, OpenGL seems to work just fine for everything from quake to softimage. There is no good technical reason for the existence of D3D.
This is another case where the open source community had plenty of time to establish a new API or enforce and old one, but for some reason this didn’t happen.
Why?
John Carmack was actually the most influential (pretty much the only actually) major industry supporter of opengl and linux for gaming. This changed with Doom3, after having a hellish time doing what he wanted with OGL, they released D3 simultaneously on linux, and it flopped horribly, as linux users don’t seem to like to buy things.
How do you know that the consoles use OpenGL?? I’m pretty curious. I’m not saying that it’s untrue, but I’m trying to find a reference to it. Everything I see online seems to indicate that the PS3 might be using the very latest version of OpenGL with some extensions. But it seems, as well, that Sony used a proprietary API with the earlier PlayStations (which makes sense because of how radically different their architecture was at the time). In any case, consoles do not have the problem of ARB extensions because there is only one API in a console or two if you want to have a multi-platform game.
As far as I can tell, there was _never_ any strong OpenGL gaming community because gaming graphics accelerators grew up around Direct3D (and 3dfx’s Glide). Maybe the world would have been better if Glide had won out, but Direct3D was developed by Microsoft in concert with game developers and graphics manufacturers. As Alex St. John put it, “We asked them what kind of crack they’d like to get hooked on, then we made it and sold it to them.” The fact is, as far as I can tell, the current gaming GPUs are Direct3D accelerators more than anything else.
The Playstation 3 uses Open Standards and a GNU toolchain for the SDK.
Read more here,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_3#Game_development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_3
The PS2, PS3, Wii and Gamecube use OpenGL (or a subset or derivative thereof) simply because there is nothing else for them to use. They can’t use DirectX because thats Microsoft’s, and there is no way that Microsoft will license DirectX to their competitors console when its the main selling point of the Xbox line.
Also, Glide was yet another subset of OpenGL.
The PS2 did NOT seem to use OpenGL, according to what I found on Google. And it makes sense in light of Jon Stokes’ excellent Ars Article on the internal architecture of the PS3. To get good performance out of that tight coupling between the vector unit and the graphics unit, you need custom assembly and a very specific streaming algorithm. Maybe you can map this to OpenGL, but I read somewhere that they had some proprietary API for it.
I can’t see a place which says that GC/Wii use OpenGL. Maybe a game developer might say something.
Thanks for the info on Glide. It seems to be a subset of Open GL tailored specifically to 3dfx’s cards and their particular hardware architecture. Now I see why it didn’t succeed: other vendors didn’t want to implement it because they’d have to copy too many details from the Voodoo. If everyone used Glide, it would have been a 3dfx monopoly in the graphics market.
Good too, because DirectSound is no longer HW accelerated under Vista, which has an entirely NEW audio API.
I do understand editors would concentrate on the biggest market, and have nothing against it since they’re not yet convinced publishing games for Linux won’t make them loose money.
I do buy/play games, but I never buy any games that only work in Windows. The assumption that publishing games for Windows only because Linux user would keep Windows if they want the game is less and less true – as users get happy with Linux, they resent having to reboot in Windows just for a game (same go for Mac users with BootCamp). When you’re use to a decent OS, having to maintain/use Windows is painfull (and time consuming, whereas players would rather spend their time playing
).
Actually, I got to buy less mainstream games and get used to playing a few “great” games that happen to be under Linux. I play far more Go (a board game) now, not because it’s cheaper, but because it runs flawlessly under my OS of choice.
So the attitude of mainstream editors is only advantageous short-term – they might one day realize they’re losing a growing share of their loyal supporters (the one that buy games). I’m just sick of supporting an industry so it can keep putting my nose in the mud (to stay polite) that is a Windows installation.
Note : I agree some people like Windows – I just don’t and haven’t met anyone that does – the Windows users I met in real-life just keep having one problem after another.
In the past few years I have bought many outlet Windows games hoping they would at a certain point in time run under WINE. Sadly I haven’t got many of them to work but I am looking forward to running them in the next versions of virtualisation products that support 3D.
A few years ago I made dual-boot installations for gaming (Windows) and real work (Linux). The Windows installations kept dying so I won’t even bother with physical Windows installations anymore.
The aforementioned will be the only ways I will ever play them again because like you I am not willing to give up the stability and security of my current software system to play some Windows-only game. The games would otherwise still be sitting on my shelf for many years.
Fortunately there are very powerful consoles nowadays that can function as both game stations and computers so Windows gaming becomes less and less relevant.
Every graphics card you can buy today supports OpenGL!?
Graphics software used by professional companies like Pixar uses OpenGL?
Since Macs are widely spread in the scientific research section, and they also have a need to visualize 3D data, and OSX doesn’t support DirectX they surely use OpenGL?
And what about the game consoles? They don’t all run an MS operating system, so they don’t all use DirectX?
And then there are 3D capable mobile devices, like mobile phones. Which once again do not all use MS operating systems and therefore do not all support DirectX.
DirectX => Microsoft => IBM compatible PC
Everything (and there is a lot of it
besides IBM PCs with an MS operating system uses OpenGL or something proprietary.
The base features of the OpenGL standards are supported by graphics hardware if it says it supports that standard, so most consumer graphics cards today have at least support for OpenGL 1.2 and the nVidia ones even for 1.4.
DirectX is used by almost all game developers because it is “The Default” and “It Just Works”, not to forget “It’s Good Enough” and “Everyone Uses It”.
So, there you have it
Direct X hits 90-95 percent of the market, as well the developer tools and documentation are very good. Direct X also works very well, especially 8 and 9. Don’t know how 10 is going to work out. OpenGL is also less supported by Nvidia and ATI, as each implements it slightly differently. MS has the clout to force the VC companies to a far greater degree of compliance. The most imprtant thing is that MS is not support OpenGL in hardware in Vista, which means to use OpenGl, developers have to take the differences between the two into account.
OpenGL is still supported in Vista through the same mechanism that it was supported in XP: the graphics drivers come with an OpenGL implementation. The XP implementation turns off Aero since Direct3D and old OpenGL can’t coexist. The Vista OpenGL implementations communicate with the DWM to allow both to run concurrently when in Windowed mode. In full-screen none of this really matters.
“The most imprtant thing is that MS is not support OpenGL in hardware in Vista, which means to use OpenGl, developers have to take the differences between the two into account.”
Developers should not let MS tell them how to write their software. OpenGL allows the software to be used by millions of Mac and Linux users, making it the best choice. DirectX = Vendor lock-in.
10% of the market makes it a small, niche choice. I would like it myself, but market realities are such that it is much lucrative to use DirectX, as it is easier and the market is far far larger
This seems quite dead, but maybe it could help a bit…
http://www.realtech-vr.com/directx/index.html
But it seems this is one more attempt at something already tried which won’t be going anywhere.
Talk is cheap. Prove it beyond a few demos or limited game set and then maybe I’ll believe it. I’ll put my faith firmly in the Cedega corner than this.
This reminds me of the days when people promised emulators for complex encrypted systems (CPS2, model 2, etc), released a very small example of the code running, but then never eventuated to anything more.
Good luck, but hey I’m very skeptical.
cps2 games has been running with xor packs for a long time in mame and will not be needed soon: http://mamelife.blogspot.com
working model 2 emulator is found here: http://nebula.emulatronia.com/
Yeah I am well aware of that. It was spoken about / hyped by nobodies for years before anything real materialized.
This sounds like a perfect attack vector for MS’s “Linux violates patents” baloney.
So Linux violates patents, but the same software on XP and OSX does not ?
As does OSX on Xerox patents. It’s a vicious circle.
So Linux violates patents, but the same software on XP and OSX does not ?
That depends whether the software and patents in question are owned by MS. If they are, then no, they do not violate patents on any system. But if non-MS software uses MS patents, then it doesn’t matter WHAT system they are on.
I am sure that, IF Linux violates MS patents, then some software on OS X would violate them too. But of course you don’t hear about that from MS, since (whatever MS and their agents provocateurs may tell you) OS X is not a competitive threat to them as long as Apple refuse to licence OS X to Dell, et al.
“I am sure that, IF Linux violates MS patents, then some software on OS X would violate them too.”
Neither OSX nor Linux will we violating any patents here, no matter what. The only one that could be violating patents is the company making the product, Falling Leaf Systems. It has nothing to do with Linux or OSX.
You’re either trolling and saying you’re not or just not thinking. For one thing, this is being ported to XP first, and then Linux AND OS X later. Second, this isn’t going to be part of Linux, but will instead be separate and will be distributed seperately as well.
So…it modifies the executable of the game?
wouldn’t that be against the licence?
Good point. This might provide an excellent test vehicle to see if those licenses will stand up to legal scrutiny.
If Dell tried to license their hardware such that the buyer couldn’t open it up and put in a new graphics or modem card, the license would be thoroughly hated, rejected, and surely defeated in court. A software license that says you can’t replace/extend the graphics driver in the executable shouldn’t fair any better.
Edited 2007-04-26 00:17
“wouldn’t that be against the licence?”
No. Making tools that modify binary code isn’t a copyright violation and you modifying binary code for your own use isn’t a copyright violation. It doesn’t matter what the EULA/License says since it cant exempt your basic rights.
Curious.. what right is that? Do you mean, the right to reverse engineer? Does the law extend that far?
Fair use, among others. Just like how you can buy a car from Ford and modify and take it apart a much as you like.
Or buy a book from from Borders and make notes in it or even tear pages out if you want.
Hmm, good point actually.
I agree, but those ‘basic rights’ are worthless unless people are willing to actively defended them, and most people lack the awareness, drive, and/or resources to do so. And there is still some question as to what those basic rights are. For example, if you don’t ‘own’ the code, do you have a right to modify it? And how do your rights change when software has no warranty of any kind (which technically means the company selling it is saying the software is not fit for ANY purpose)?
Software is still very much in a shadow zone as to what it actually is. Is it a product, service, or creative work. The laws that cover these domains are specifically designed to make sure that these categories remain discrete (for example, that a ‘product’ is never legally treated as a ‘creative work’). Currently, corporations can pick and choose the laws from each category that best favor their interests.
This is incredibly dangerous.
And most of them have decided to use patent law as the hammer in which to nail all IP issues. Remember when Lexmark tried to use the DCMA to stop third-party cartridges from being sold? They lost. Nowever, Epson is attempting the same thing using patent law, and so far they’re winning. Patent law can be used to prevent you from using any two technologies in combination, and as long as it stands as it does today, not even the GPLv3 will help us.
I doubt the game developers care all that much if it means more people are buying the game. Not to say it wouldn’t violate the license, but I doubt the game companies would even bat an eye over this.
The guy is charging $50 to see a demo. It would be impressive, but the programming effort to make this work would be tremendous. And the performance of the solution would not be so… tremendous. DX10 is about fundamental changes in the drivers of 3D accelerators in addition to the hardware that runs them. Only a couple cards out there even run it at this stage (and not clear it’s beneficial to buy them for the next year or so).
Save your money and drooling for something more worthy, like WINE support for DX8 or DX9, which will run the games that people are playing now. Heck, if support can get extended to the Mac, then game producers may not have a strong incentive to move to DX10 exclusively because there will be a significant paying public running their games who will never get DX10.
And if they get the first 5000 people to pay, that is 250000 $, what a good money making skill!
Not open source: http://www.fallingleafsystems.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=28
And not even free for people to use (see Term and Conditions): http://www.fallingleafsystems.com/sapling/
Until more profs, this encourage people to make this kind of scams.
* krom is thinking one right now
…the “CherryOS” PowerPC emulator which was also closed source, too good to be true, etc?
Hint: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
–bornagainpenguin
Good call. Now that I think about it though, it actually reminds me more of this little gem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_David
I don’t know why I enjoy these kinds of claims, but I do. Makes me all giggly…
FOSS needs an OpenX gaming API. If Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Sun, Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and X.Org came together they could create something like this. This would benefit all of them by allowing them to share resources to defeat a common enemy while allowing for more portability and quicker and easier programing for all platforms concerned. OpenGL doesn’t have the necessary direction any more but it does provide an excellent base. Providing common APIs for graphics, sound, input devices, and networking for games in an open and generally compatible environment would greatly assist the porting of games away from Windows and would ease game development cost for those developing for Nintendo and Sony. Isn’t this kind of API abstraction what KDE is doing now?
FOSS needs an OpenX gaming API.
+1
Many in the FOSS community want us to provide support for their platforms while failing to realize that it is their job to entice us, game developers, to produce titles for their platforms.
There are two ways to do this:
1) Increase market share to the point where we view your platform as a serious target and expend the extra effort necessary to support it.
2) Provide us great tools that allow us to produce cross platform games (including Windows support that is equal to or better than DirectX).
Both are difficult propositions: the former is an uphill battle and the latter is a particular sore spot for FOSS developers.
Number 2 certainly is possible though. Some great software has come out of the FOSS community, so I imagine that if several of the groups you mentioned could pull together, these tools could be produced.
“Number 2 certainly is possible though. Some great software has come out of the FOSS community, so I imagine that if several of the groups you mentioned could pull together, these tools could be produced.”
Sounds to me like the best way to go about this would be to put more effort into SDL since it’s already here and it is cross-platform.
+1 to your comments too
Both points are valid – n°1 is going nicely though
For n°2 there’s not only SDL, but also winelib (esp. for DirectX)
However, as long as the solution isn’t BETTER than DirectX, I don’t think game devs will bother. And that sound really hard since it would mean providing better dev tools for Windows than Microsoft provides (and they’re the kings of undocumented function/API changes when they want to protect their market share.
So the only option might be 1 (tools already exist for 2, they just aren’t better than DirectX enough).
However, the problem isn’t actually your view (as a dev) than the point of view of editors). Some companies already convert existing games for mac/linux and have a business out of it, so it wouldn’t cost you anything. As it is, the problem is usually not the cost of conversions (sbdy else does it for you), but the reluctance of big studios to allow ports.
As for DRM, editors are making the mistake to think free software users are “pirates”. Sadly, they don’t realize Windows model encourages piracy, and bad habits (you already pirate the OS) have already rotten the ecosystem. They don’t realise users that chose free software do it because they *respect* copyright, and the proportion of them willing to pay for a good game for their OS is far bigger than in Windows.
So if you esteem 20% of Windows users pay for their games (my estimate is more 0.1%), in Linux you might get 80% – especially if you take in account the fact the market isn’t saturated + users desiring to support your efforts.
The hassle-free experience of being able to play your game in the OS you choose is a killer argument too – why would I reboot in Windows to play a game, if it means I can’t check my emails, listen to my music (want me to use that yucky winamp when I have amarok?), edit my documents, do my work, surf the net? It’s even worse with multiplayer games – you also have to maintain an antivirus + a decent firewall. I’d rather play a not-as-good game, or just not play at all, than lose everything I have – each time I have to use a windows machine, I feel like my arms are cutt and I just have my tongue to type on the keyboard. What, no virtual desktops? Having to surf for ages on the net just to install an application? In 2007?
That is what SDL exactly is, it works very well and is great! Just check it out, http://www.libsdl.org/
Helping them and putting more effort into this project is going to be great indeed!
It seems that they intend to change the copyrighted game executables.
Unless and until this project is supported by microsoft I would say this is useless project. Come-On you can’t have directx 10 on systems where microsoft doesnt want it. DirectX10 is all about next generation graphics and plenty of new APIS, and if you are not doing the complete, fast and reliable its not worth a single penny.
Wine is great, but see how much they have implemented. Its tough. Game developers should rather user DX 9 or open gl if they want their stuff to run on XP. and OpenGL if they want to run it on Linux.
Enduser side, if you are a gammer (die hard gammer,thats why you want dx 10 and spent money on a high priced dx 10 card) you would rather buy a new vista capable PC and enjoy DX 10 at fullest
While it’s nice to see the effort, more and more games are moving to distribution platforms like Steam, and you can’t use modified executables.
Another yet dead born project …
This project is most definitely a scam. How would he handle things like geometry shaders, etc.? There is NO WAY this would work. You can’t ’emulate’ shaders, you’d end up taking a nose dive performance wise. I’m talking about from 50-60 fps to 0.01 fps here. Once the ’emulation’ has to leave the graphics card, performance drops to nothing.
There’s a widely believed myth in the gfx industry that Direct3D is in some way “superior” to OpenGL. The truth is they both support what the hw allows them to support.
Difference is that eg: if you make a game for DirectX 10 you simply cut off anyone with cards not supporting Dx10. Even if those cards have the required HW functionality you use (no one uses EVERYTHING).
With OpenGL you have to go through the extensions and test them and if they are supported you just go on. This means that eg: if I have a geForce 4, and I use GLSL, it’ll work with openGL, but if I use Dx9 I won’t be able to use GeForce 4.
Ofcourse, ATI with it’s crappy drivers and sub-par openGL implementation doesn’t help. This and some not-so-well-tought-out extensions created the myth of Direct3D superiority, which is just that… a myth.
I agree tho that a single strong authority is missing in the OpenGL world to shup up the would be go-my-way initiatives and provide a better united standard.
But OpenGL can do what Direct3D can do as far as I know, and usually with more cards (but requires more work in detecting the extensions).
I’m sure there was a time when OpenGL out-performed DirectX. It certainly did on the benchmarks I performed a few years back, but as to whethe this was a universal trend I can’t entirely remember.
OpenGL is faster in certain areas and D3D in others, but the difference was mostly minor. However OpenGL has perfect image quality, as far as I know D3D cannot do that, but it might be a thing of past atm. My point was however to debunk some of the myths flying around which are completely wrong, not introduce new ones.
This whole thing is _clearly_ vaporware :O It might be possible to make Vista games run on XP by creating some wrappers for Vista-specific system calls, but making a DX10 game work on Linux just by modifying the binary executable file? Err..they’d have to emulate whole Windows..I don’t know _any_ single game that manages to use only directx calls and not a single call to anything Windows specific. So basically, it seems to me that they’d just do the same what Wine does, but wrap it around the executable. If they don’t use Wine, then they’ll take years and years to get to even where Wine is standing now.
They claim what within a few months they will progress from tech demos to complete games.
It is clearly unrealistic.
2 chaosvoyager:
Direct-3D IM is a horribly broken API.
It was, but now things are opposite.
And DX10 is a big step in usability and performance.