Thread: OpenGL for games

>GeForce2 MX, 1290 drivers.

im mean was the Card tweaked you've got to alter the settings for the card using some sort of tweak program.

>Can you tell, or not?

hell yes.

>I'm evidently blind, since I can't tell the difference.

evidently you are... i sure as hell can.

>Are you telling me that on hardware already strapped for chip space, people are going to optimise for two different APIs? <

So what your telling me is that cards don't optimize Dx or GL!!!! omg...

>Especially two as similar as DX8 and GL?

their not similar at all really, their arcitecture is completely different if you knew anything about GL you'd know that already.

>If you have some documentation to this effect, I'll back down quite happily - but until then...<

Ati's new 8500 board has built in chip optimizations for both,

http://www.ati.com/na/pages/technolo...e/radeon_8500/

>Such as? I've yet to see a consumer hardware feature that's not supported by DX. <

i was talking about API features,
Examples?

two sided polygons for starters.
OS independence,
Two sided lighting,
Volume Textures,
Hardware independant Z buffers,
Accumulation Buffer,
Stereo Rendering,
Point and line sizing,
Picking without utilities,
Parametric Curves and Surfaces,

satisfied?

>Nonsense. If you haven't written DirectX and OpenGL, how can you presume to compare?

I've looked deeply into both API's strong and weak points, OpenGL is in my opinion better while GL lacks some things and Dx lacks others, OpenGL in my opinion is better.

You apperantly don't use OpenGL, and I Don't use Dx but i know the differece on sight.

ok maybe you need more clarification,

>
You're basically saying, "If you hyper optimize performance for this specific API, this API works really well"
<

thats not what im saying at all, see below.

>
Further, you say that "how optimized was the card? if its not optimized then everything runs like ****. " This is a strong anti-GL statment, as if the card, and driver support for popular cards won't give good results out of the box, why should people use OpenGL? For those 0.01% of gamers who WILL tweak their video cards for one particular game?
<

Most of the GL enhancing Card features are default off,

i can get 200+ fps from tweaking the card on both sides Dx and GL, with a minimum speed increase of DOUBLE!, thats all im saying some cards do not have default opts on so GL usually gets the butt end in preformance, so therefore ANY UNTWEAKED COMPARISON IS WRONG!

>
So, you can optimize for OpenGL and claim it works great and is the best thing in the world, or you could optimize for DirectX and claim IT works great, and is the best thing in the world. Overall you proved nothing more then the fact that you can optimize a machine for one particular purpose. The results have no validity in the computer world at large.

In fact, an optimized system is a TERRIBLE candidate for comparison, because the results are most certainly NOT typical (unless the optimizer screwed up bigtime).
<

thers one thing you all seem to forget, the MS SOFTWARE GL IS AN INVALID COMPARISON SINCE MS DOESNT UPDATE MAINTAIN OR OPTIMIZE IT IN ANY WAY!! THATS WHY A HARDWARE ACCELERATED TEST IS NEEDED!

and beyond that its almost impossible to find a software comparison of both. but in most cases GL STILL IS FASTER!

I think nexe.gamedev.net sums it up very well

Choosing between Direct3D and OGL is a very simple task. Just choose the one you prefer out of these two:
glDrawElements( GL_TRIANGLES, ..., ..., ...);

or

pDevice->SetVertexShader(...);
pDevice->DrawPrimitiveUP(D3DPT_TRIANGLELIST, ..., ..., ...);


It's that simple. Which one is more your style? If it's the first one, head on over to NeHe.Gamedev.net. If it's the second one, stick around.

*** Important Note ***
An alternative way of doing the above code in OpenGL reads like this:
glBegin(GL_TRIANGLE);
glVertex3f(..., ..., ...);
glVertex3f(..., ..., ...);
glVertex3f(..., ..., ...);
glEnd();

and don't tell me anything about cross platform. Windows runs on 99.9999999% of the computers that will actuly buy they games.

Why does everyone argue about graphics libarys so much? I quicly ran in to problems for input when using opengl. One of my main bugs in godpong was you had to keep pressing the key and moving the joystick. Just from sunlighs tutorial I could see that the joystick would not be a problam.

<OpenGL is graphics only that makes sense,
have you tried GetAsyncKeyState()? <

>OpenGL is a graphics API, therefor, it doesnt affect teh user input at all. <

I am not that stupid, I know that OpenGl is only for graphics. I used SDL, for input and I can tell you that DX is far supperior. BTW SDL is used by loki.