>Anyone who develops native support for the best card will get my
>money,
for my Riva 128 will get MY money, and a Stealth II owner will say
that whoever supports the v2x00 will get HIS money, etc. This isn't
in the long term best interests of anyone. There is a very good
interview with Brian Hook and John Carmack in the latest boot magazine
in which DirectX v. OpenGL v Native is discussed at length. They make
a pretty compelling argument for OpenGL. If in fact OpenGL is
superior to DirectX and support can be done for the leading chip
manufacturers, then that's the way to go. At a certain point, the
companies will begin optimizing their chipsets and drivers for that
standard API rather than a proprietary API, and the goals of a common
API and best-possible hardware performance will begin to converge.
I do agree that Direct3D is sort of the least common denominator
approach and am not thrilled with that, but I'd rather that than a
fragmented market in which developers either have to develop natively
to several different board manufacturers or risk cutting out large
numbers of customers from their games. Look at where Sierra got by
betting on Rendition. When they did so it looked like a good idea:
Rendition had the best price/performance ratio and the 3DFX was still
a high-end, expensive chip. Then prices fell and memory got cheaper,
and the 3DFX suddenly became a mainstream video board instead of a
niche board, and Rendition was suddenly behind. All those people who
wanted 3DFX NASCAR 2 were left out in the cold on that one, and yet it
doesn't help Sierra either because many 3DFX owners will pass on
NASCAR 2 simply because it doesn't use their board. No one wins.
I respect it when a guy like Carmack who knows the business and knows
the APIs says that a common API is the way to go -- he just thinks
that it SHOULD be OpenGL and NOT DirectX.
Randy