DirectX 8.0 has a lot of nice new stuff and the most important thing of all is the documentation has been improved, and more importantly, the API has been cleaned up a LOT. The API has been revamped in so many areas -- Read the slides from Microsofts recent Meltdown conference.
Since you (the starter of this thread) have the DirectX 8.0 beta, your best bet is to use that. Its been improved a LOT from version 7, and what people in these forums say isn''t going to be able to justify that due to the fact 8.0 is not public.
Do NOT discuss specific features of DirectX 8.0 on these boards unless the information has already been published by Microsoft. Doing so is breaking the NDA, violators will be charged to the maximum extent. ;-)
If you guys are going to diss DirectX, get the facts straight first. Do some solid research. This even goes for version 7.0.
Saying "OpenGL rules, Direct3D sucks!" is just as bad as all this other crap I see on these board about C and C++ -- Everything has its purpose. Both API''s have there cons and pros. If you know much about software development, you should know that stuff moves quite fast in the computer industry.
If Direct3D was a peice of crap in 1996, and OpenGL was all that, that doesn''t mean squat now. AMD had its problems with performance compared to Intel in 1994 or something like that... I guess I should go around posting reviews about AMD being horrible. Oh, and the Athlon is the worst processor ever, or atleast... thats what their old processors were compared to Intel! Point is, now they are equal competition. (Lets not get into a discussion about Intel/AMD though)
The only thing keeping OpenGL alive is being supported on multiple platforms. DirectX has various advantages (Read the OpenGL mailing list and you''ll hear about some of them). One of the limitations is the ability to handler large ammounts of textures. -- OpenGL lags behind, whereas Direct3D is quite a bit speedier. This was one of the determining factors with Unreal II and the choice of Direct3D as the official API to use with Unreal II.
I doubt Id Software is going to move to Direct3D anytime soon, but one major turnoff with Direct3D in that case is its not supported on Linux. If you want portability, go with OpenGL. If you want the latest technologies and the best performance, go with Direct3D.
Before you state "DirectX 8.0 sucks", judge both API''s equally. You''ll soon realize DirectX and OpenGL really aren''t that far apart. DirectX 8.0 has lots of new features, and most importantly -- It''s much cleaner than before and more straight-forward.
All of this reminds me of a message I read several days ago on a mailing list.. Someone actually posted quotes of what John Carmack said in 1996 discussing why he chose not to use Direct3D. I don''t care what John Carmack, SGI, or whoever else for that matter, said nearly five years ago.
Have an nice day, and happy coding! :-)
-Dan Smith
dans@3dgamedev.com
