| Kyros said: Unless OpenGL get their asses into gear I doubt it. Direct3D showed that in a really fast moving world working by consensus has some disadvantages. Besides Microsoft still has a big tooling advantage. |
I agree. OpenGL 3 has vanished off the face of the Earth, apparently. However, OpenGL 2 with extensions can provide all the useful functionality of Direct3D 10. Programming OpenGL was more difficult but gave better performance if the work was put in; that problem has largelt gone away with the number of middleware libraries that abstract much of the work if you want to increase ease of use vs. performance.
"The PS2 software was not developed with DirectX, and that was the "lions share" of the software for most of this decade; and that machine was not replaced by the PC nor the 360."
Yes, but the most graphically intensive games were usually PC exclusives. This is no longer the case. It is the cutting edge graphics games that influence engine development and therefore direct the market. Now consoles are part of that leading edge unlike when the PS2 was dominant.
"OpenGL is a much better platform."
I agree, but as the market was previously locked into DirectX, it will be a hard transition before the benefits are realised. The graphics driver people (the ones who make it really work) know, however - both ATi and Nvidia translate DirectX into OpenGL for the actual execution.
"Well if you think about it, one of the primary functions of the xbox and the xbox360 is to maintain the primacy of Direct3D. Games and other DirectX apps have been the primary hurdles to mass OS X and Linux adoption."
Absolutely. It's why Microsoft has lost billions of dollars creating Xbox in the first place. All of their technologies are to preserve the lucrative Windows and Office monopolies - Silverlight over cross-platform Flash adoption, .NET over cross-platform Java adoption, Windows Live over Google's cross-platform software, Xbox over Sony's living room domination, Zune over cross-platform iPod, Windows Mobile over mobile Linux, Office 2008 for Mac over iWork, SQL Server over cross-platform MySQL, Home Server over custom Linux NAS devices, Media Centre over cross-platformMythTV, IE over cross-platform Netscape ... none of these are lucrative by themselves,but they perpetuate the Windows lock-in.
