Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

[Reasonable]

WilliamWatts said:

Reasonable said:

slowmo said:
People who never gamed prior to directx will probably never understand why the death of OpenGL as a solution developers used is such a tragedy. Directx was mainly used imo to kill off OpenGL developments which could be easily ported across to Apple PC's.

I get fed up of reading a lot of hate towards Microsoft monopolies but this is one of the few instances where they genuinely killed off opposition. When it comes to internet browsers the consumer still has a choice, this is different as its a clear cut case of choice being removed from the consumers hand due to developments happening behind the scenes that the consumer cannot effect.

Spot on assessment.  I also don't like the 'evil empire' bashing either, but it's good to be able to acknowledge genuine cases of business manouvers that aren't necessarily for consumer benefit.

I would suggest to you both that had Direct X not come along some other standard may very well have killed OpenGL. Whether that may have been Glide or some Nvidia specific technology it doesn't matter. The present Direct X is not the worst that could have happened and maybe not the best that could have happened. Its better that we have 3 vendors working together on a standard which is Direct 3d. When you get an IHV specific standard its even worse as you face a monopoloy on both hardware and software.

See:

• PhysX multicore support on CPUs. (Well you won't actually and thats a point).

 

That's true and of course fine, so long as any competiting standard was open and superior (which it would have needed to be really).  The issue with DirectX is that MS used their position to replace a (at the time) much better standard with a much weaker one - i.e. they didn't replace the standard by being better or open or winning developers through feature sets, but by leveraging their market position to 'kill off' a superior offering for the consumer at that time for their own advantage.