-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi,
Juhana Sadeharju wrote: > Somebody should tell ATI that DirectX is not available in Linux. > (Though, I have not asked my Microsoft dealer about it.) > There is no OpenGL vs. DirectX competition in Linux. Juhana, you are naive. What is the market share of Linux in games which ATI is targeting? Where is Linux on game consoles (another ATI market)? > In Windows, why they choose DirectX over OpenGL? I remember Carmack > flamed DirectX at some point. Now he is using DirectX. > If DirectX is truelly better, then in Linux, we should have equivalent > system. Perhaps OpenGL could be evolved more toward DirectX, or > an exact clone of DirectX API could be written over OpenGL. That would > make life in Linux simpler both to the game developers and the driver > authors. Nonsense - that would be chasing wind because Microsoft is changing the API all the time. Wine project is doing exactly this and they are finally able to run some DirectX (or rather Direct3D) games. However, it took them more than decade, threats of patent lawsuits from Microsoft and it is still not good enough for use and probably never will be, because they are chasing a moving target they cannot control. > OSG, Delta3D, Crystal Space etc. compiles in multiple systems. Why > commercial game engines do not? What are the parts of the game or > engine which does not compile in Linux without major modifications? Why they should? The purpose of a game engine is to run the game and sell it for 6-9months after release. It has to run only on Windows, sometimes Mac (extremely rare). The effort is reused max. twice for a sequel next year with a bit of new geometry and animations or licensed to others to make a knock-off game. Then a new engine is made for the next hw. generation and the old code is scrapped. Why would you make something like this portable and had to deal with the tons of problems this brings when all that you need is support for a single platform? It doesn't make sense economically to make the code portable unless you plan to sell on Linux (which is not a market for games, really). How many people would play Quake 4 or Oblivion on IRIX, for example? Compare that with platforms like OSG which are here to stay for quite a few years and cannot change completely every time Microsoft decides to pull a fast one and change the APIs. Flightsim company selling multi-million dollar systems wouldn't be happy to have to change their software every 2 years, because it costs lot of money and you need to support it for decades - it is not a throw-away product as a game which you cannot find on the shelf anymore 6 months later. Thus they have only one choice - make the code portable and use standards such as OpenGL so that you can survive the hardware and software changes without too much hassle. This explains also choice of Direct3D over OpenGL - the latest features of the hardware are exposed in Direct3D with the proprietary drivers, not in OpenGL extensions which take years to get approved and implemented. However, once it is there, it will stay. > OSG is available, but what scenegraph elements it does not have > compared to commercial games/engines? Why OSG is not that good that > game developers must have it? Except that OSG is not a game engine. That is not to say that you cannot make a game with it, however you need a lot more than OSG to make a game. Delta3D is trying to be a game engine - look for yourself how much extra work you need to put on top of a scene graph (OSG) to make a game engine. And it is still rather simple (no offense meant to Delta3D guys), some commercial engines do much more. Not to mention the add-on things you get with commercial engines - such as an integrated content production pipeline which is much more important than a scene graph for game development - you need to create the geometry, models, animations and make the tools work together and with your engine. This is hard to get and OSG doesn't really have that (and has no real need for it, since its purpose is different). So, please, learn something about the topic before trying to tell others what they should do, OK? Jan - -- Jan Ciger GPG public key: http://www.keyserver.net/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mandriva - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEx7vGn11XseNj94gRAk1sAJ0V02HmWtTpmqg1sHtMWQbXfQ0nLQCfQlJh djvy+aMvRMDVYJS8XbZp3Hs= =3q6Q -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://openscenegraph.net/mailman/listinfo/osg-users http://www.openscenegraph.org/
