I agree that it's not the best way to go about doing things; however, if you
look at the advancements that the new DirectX drivers and Shader Model 4.0
are making, then you might change your mind (at least a little). That
article I posted the link for describes the advances that Microsoft is
making with DirectX 10, and I'm kind of excited to see how they perform.
Keep in mind, that it's been the card manufacturers and the ARB that have
been providing the support for OpenGL. Microsoft hasn't given any support
for it since 1.1, and they're doing the same thing for Vista, except they've
said that they won't give anything above 1.5. It's up to the card
manufacturers to support any subsequent version, which is what's been
happening for years anyway.
Microsoft isn't trying to kill it, otherwise, they wouldn't be providing a
second desktop that doesn't use the new DirectX drivers setup. If they
REALLY wanted to kill OpenGL, all they had to do was remove that second
desktop, and decent OpenGL implementations would be gone from Windows. But,
if they did that, they would lose thousands of users; perhaps hundreds of
thousands. So, that would be a very bad marketing decision for them.
From: Ken Johnson <johnsk16@xxxxxxxxx> Reply-To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [gameprogrammer] Re: OpenGL reality check. Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 23:02:52 -0700
> Nothing's forcing you to use that desktop. There's another desktop that > doesn't use DirectX. I don't recall ever saying it's a good thing.
You are right, you didn't say that, I just assumed from previous posts(my response with respects to your newest post below) that you supported this change.
>Microsoft isn't trying to kill OpenGL. They just aren't supporting it using
>the new desktop. The new desktop shell is using DirectX 10 to take advantage
>of the hardware. The old desktop is still available, which, as Microsoft had
>stated, will have support for up to GL 1.5. Beyond 1.5, Microsoft is leaving
>the support up to the individual card manufacturers, which is what's
>currently happening anyway.
How is that not trying to kill it? Who wants to use the old desktop when there is a newer flashier version? End users don't want the old, they want the new, and the new doesn't support up to date OpenGL.
>But, people are panicking because Vista's default desktop is using DirectX
>10, and will convert OpenGL calls to DirectX calls. These people are causing
>mass hysteria with no good reason to. They just refuse to find out accurate
>information.
No good reason? As I said above, end users want the new stuff, if OpenGL isn't supported to its newest versions, is slower, etc, who would say to users, "Um, you gotta turn off the newest stuff, enable the old desktop, just to play our game and have good performance."
I see Microsoft doing what they do best, pushing their own standards on the rest of the world, all packaged up in their OS. And you know what? Yes, this is the best thing to do if your Microsoft. It is also very bad for competition.
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