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General discussionWhy everyone keep using DirectX?(261 posts)(261 posts)
(261 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 05, 2015
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Ganni1987: If I remember correctly developers find it easier to develop on D3D than OpenGL, exactly how I don't know but there was some article I read a few months ago.

With Vulkan around the corner OpenGL might come back into the game and devs would have a solid cross platform API to build on, although not going to be easy with DX12 in competition.
Here is one post on the historic reasons that caused DX to become very dominant: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055

TL;DR: OpenGL didn't evolve fast enough, and was plagued by various participants who didn't allow to redesign the API from the ground up (like ones from the CAD industry).

That indeed changed completely with Vulkan and not an issue anymore. Vulkan will actually easily attract developers if cross platform development will be required. The main issue will remain the disproportionate Windows market share. I.e. the hard part will be switching developers from DX to Vulkan on Windows. That will happen with time because competition is increasing and Windows will lose its dominant position in gaming.

Also, it's easy to imagine that there will be quite straightforward Vulkan → DX12 and DX12 → Vulkan translation layers (like ANGLE and TOGL ideas). Because DX12 was basically copied from Mantle by MS. That would make porting games much easier than porting from DX to OpenGL now and would also allow using Vulkan on Xbox where MS will try to sabotage access to open APIs.

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montcer9012: Besides, games look nicer with DirectX than with OpenGL, well, at least the ones I compare.
That's nonsense. How games look has nothing to do with the API, but with how it's used.
Post edited July 05, 2015 by shmerl
Posted July 05, 2015
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Ganni1987: If I remember correctly developers find it easier to develop on D3D than OpenGL, exactly how I don't know but there was some article I read a few months ago.

With Vulkan around the corner OpenGL might come back into the game and devs would have a solid cross platform API to build on, although not going to be easy with DX12 in competition.
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shmerl: Here is one post on the historic reasons that caused DX to become very dominant: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055

TL;DR: OpenGL didn't evolve fast enough, and was plagued by various participants who didn't allow to redesign the API from the ground up.

That indeed changed completely with Vulkan and not an issue anymore. Vulkan will actually easily attract developers if cross platform development will be required. The main issue will remain the disproportionate Windows market share. I.e. the hard part will be switching developers from DX to Vulkan on Windows. That will happen with time.

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montcer9012: Besides, games look nicer with DirectX than with OpenGL, well, at least the ones I compare.
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shmerl: That's nonsense. How games look has nothing to do with the API, but with how it's used.
Video game developers will not switch from DirectX to OpenGL and Vulkan anytime soon. Not even with time. By 2016 or 2017 I read that there will be over 200+ PC versions of video games that will have DirectX 12 support, probably not true, but lots of video game engines are going to support DirectX 12 or are supporting DirectX 12 already and this year a few PC versions of video games will be released for sale that will have DirectX 12 support.

Need For Speed and Star Wars Battlefront running on Frostbite 3 all have DirectX 12 support. In 2016 Mass Effect Andromeda, Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, and Battlefield 5 (According to a Electronic Arts (EA) conference call Battlefield 5 is supposed to be released for sale in 2016.), A new version of the Gamebryo engine which The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Nettlemers) and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion were developed on will be supporting DirectX 12, REDengine 3 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt might get DirectX 12, VALVe has DirectX 12 on their road map for Source 2, CryEngine, Unity 5, and Unreal Engine 4 already also support DirectX 12.
Posted July 05, 2015
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Johnathanamz: Video game developers will not switch from DirectX to OpenGL and Vulkan anytime soon.
Cut the nonsense right there. Vulkan will be used right after the release, because all major engines are already targeting cross platform releases. All the engines you mentioned (Unity, Cry and the rest) are going to start using it as soon as the API will stabilize. I doubt you even follow engine developments since Cry announced Linux support not long ago. It's a no brainier that they'll add Vulklan to the engine.

REDengine is being ported to Linux now as well. I doubt they'll use Vulkan yet, because the API isn't stable and CDPR aren't part of the Khronos working group. But it's again a no brainer that they'll switch to in the future. They plan to create high end games and using the latest and greatest is expected.
Post edited July 05, 2015 by shmerl
Posted July 05, 2015
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shmerl: That's nonsense. How games look has nothing to do with the API, but with how it's used.
Therefore, bad use on the API, bad result. DirectX seems to be more friendly with devs while OpenGL not.
Posted July 05, 2015
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shmerl: That's nonsense. How games look has nothing to do with the API, but with how it's used.
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montcer9012: Therefore, bad use on the API, bad result. DirectX seems to be more friendly with devs while OpenGL not.
Correct. If developers use APIs badly it's developers' problem. That said, OpenGL had less tools available, that's why now there is a big effort to provide stuff like graphics debuggers and so on (see Glave: http://lunarg.com/Vulkan/ ).
Post edited July 05, 2015 by shmerl
Posted July 05, 2015
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Johnathanamz: Video game developers will not switch from DirectX to OpenGL and Vulkan anytime soon.
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shmerl: Cut the nonsense right there. Vulkan will be used right after the release, because all major engines are already targeting cross platform releases. All the engines you mentioned (Unity, Cry and the rest) are going to start using it as soon as the API will stabilize. I doubt you even follow engine developments since Cry announced Linux support not long ago. It's a no brainier that they'll add Vulklan to the engine.

REDengine is being ported to Linux now as well. I doubt they'll use Vulkan yet, because the API isn't stable and CDPR aren't part of the Khronos working group. But it's again a no brainer that they'll switch to in the future. They plan to create high end games and using the latest and greatest is expected.
It's not nonsense. Both DirectX, OpenGL, and Vulkan will coexist together for competition. End of story.
Posted July 05, 2015
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Johnathanamz: It's not nonsense. Both DirectX, OpenGL, and Vulkan will coexist together for competition. End of story.
It's nonsense that developers won't use Vulkan like you said. They will. DX will coexist for a while, but it will go the way of the dodo eventually, like ActiveX did. That's exactly what competition will do - open standards will become widely used and MS will willingly run to support them, like they did in the browsers.
Post edited July 05, 2015 by shmerl
Posted July 05, 2015
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Johnathanamz: It's not nonsense. Both DirectX, OpenGL, and Vulkan will coexist together for competition. End of story.
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shmerl: It's nonsense that developers won't use Vulkan like you said. They will.
Video game developers will use Vulkan, just not as much as you think they will.

DirectX will never go the way of the dodo.
Post edited July 05, 2015 by Johnathanamz
Posted July 05, 2015
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hedwards: I'm not convinced. DirectX is Windows only or now Windows and XBox only, the only reason that MS created it was to make it more challenging for developers to also support Apple computers.
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JDelekto: Your argument certainly isn't convincing me. You make it sound like 'Windows' is some piece of crappy software that people actually have a choice to move away from... and you're right. There are great Linux distributions out there which have a nice user interface, but they can't play all the games we have.

Linux always felt "unpolished" or not quite ready for prime time, but I can understand why --it was later to the game and a game changer; however, it wasn't geared towards games either.

The Apple Mac always had one disadvantage. They fed students a steady diet of their Apple IIe computers in the hopes that they'll gather more market share --however, some got tired of eating their crap and moved on to machines that were more mainstream in the industry. As a result, Apple products are now sold to people that tend to be more snobbish and have more expendable cash than your average layman.

Microsoft doesn't always do bad things, in fact they do good things like clockwork. Every version of any OS they create is predictably good or bad. DOS 2, sucked, DOS 3, better, DOS 4 ate hard drives, DOS 5, much better. You can follow the same pattern for releases of windows too. I settled on Windows 7. However, the underpinning OS on Windows 8 is great, I just didn't like the user interface that some tofu eating squat thought everyone would love.

Windows is *not* crappy software for those using desktop software (Linux still rules for server-side stuff).
Right, because you're not without bias there. I've been using computers for nearly 30 years ago. I remember what Apple was like before Apple OS, I remember DOS and I've used just about every major revision of both in the mean time. You're fooling yourself if you think that there was ever a time when MS was pushing the superior product.

As far as Linux goes, it's a hell of a lot more polished than Windows is. At least with Linux there's a solution to damn near every problem you might have. With Windows I often times find that there is no solution. I'm doing something that MS wasn't intending for me to do, so it's not possible. I remember having to manually edit the registry to fix the resolution because of corruption issues.

I'm not a particular fanboy, but you do have to admit that Windows is lacking in most departments. The only reason why they're everywhere is that they abused the hell out of their monopoly during the '90s and have convinced people that only Windows can do what they want. And apart from using a few Windows only products, that's never been true. There's nothing that people can do with Windows that can't be done with the competition. In many cases it requires more work to get things working on Windows than it does on OSX or Linux.
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hedwards: But, the main reason that people use DirectX is that MS pushed it hard and used the size of their company to damage OpenGL.
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montcer9012: ...
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hedwards: ... the only reason that MS created it was to make it more challenging for developers to also support Apple computers.
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montcer9012: LOL, Do you hate Microsoft, don't you?
I hate all companies that sell crappy, over-priced software.
Post edited July 05, 2015 by hedwards
Posted July 05, 2015
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Johnathanamz: DirectX will never go the way of the dodo.
Keep dreaming. Lock-in only survives when there is no competition. MS know that better than you apparently that's why they support open standards in cases when their efforts to usurp the industry failed.
Post edited July 05, 2015 by shmerl
Posted July 05, 2015
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hedwards: I hate all companies that sell crappy, over-priced software.
Then we better don't mention Ubisoft hahahaha.
Posted July 05, 2015
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hedwards: Right, because you're not without bias there. I've been using computers for nearly 30 years ago. I remember what Apple was like before Apple OS, I remember DOS and I've used just about every major revision of both in the mean time. You're fooling yourself if you think that there was ever a time when MS was pushing the superior product.

As far as Linux goes, it's a hell of a lot more polished than Windows is. At least with Linux there's a solution to damn near every problem you might have. With Windows I often times find that there is no solution. I'm doing something that MS wasn't intending for me to do, so it's not possible. I remember having to manually edit the registry to fix the resolution because of corruption issues.

I'm not a particular fanboy, but you do have to admit that Windows is lacking in most departments. The only reason why they're everywhere is that they abused the hell out of their monopoly during the '90s and have convinced people that only Windows can do what they want. And apart from using a few Windows only products, that's never been true. There's nothing that people can do with Windows that can't be done with the competition. In many cases it requires more work to get things working on Windows than it does on OSX or Linux.
Was just springing up in my mind:

You guys remember Netscape?

What did MS do to get rid of this threat? (by the way the court deal has just recently being settled) Yes they abused their power forcing Netscape out of the market.

DOS the same thing#

W95 same practice there.

More recently they had to pay a record fine! Why, yep another abuse of power, guess why: Yep again forcing users to use IE.

DirectX: Same thing, abuse of power. You can find enough articles all over the world where people and companies did report that they were forced to use ONLY directX, otherwise more costs, not longer supported and so on. They even had contracts with devs forbidding them to use anything but directX.

Just do a little bit read-up.


And why?

Simple, directx means Windows, means more money, means binding of people to a certain product....And don´t forget their overpriced patches, so called NEW Windows versions....

Imagine you buy a car and after 4 years the producer would tell you, sorry you have to buy a new, not longer supported!
Posted July 05, 2015
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Goodaltgamer: You guys remember Netscape?

What did MS do to get rid of this threat? (by the way the court deal has just recently being settled) Yes they abused their power forcing Netscape out of the market.
Except MS lost that one. Netscape became Mozilla and IE became the laughing stock which it remains until now. MS tries now to rebrand it just to get rid of the eternal bad reputation attached to IE. And after losing browser wars MS now run to implement open standards in the browser, from WebGL to WebRTC. It's Apple today who abuse their monopoly because on iOS no other browsers are allowed.

Same will happen with DX. As soon as competition will start giving MS a kick, they will run and allow Vulkan on Xbox.
Post edited July 05, 2015 by shmerl
Posted July 06, 2015
That's what I was thinking about. Another abuse of power from an enormous company. But with the new hype over OpenGL, DirectX will soon not be used anymore by the devs I think
Posted July 06, 2015
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amadren: That's what I was thinking about. Another abuse of power from an enormous company. But with the new hype over OpenGL, DirectX will soon not be used anymore by the devs I think
Not soon, at least not until Windows / Xbox market share will diminish significantly. It can happen, but it will take time. Linux usage is growing, if slowly. And release of Steam Machines will boost it. And let's not forget that on mobile DX is non existent, and there Vulkan will be used practically everywhere pretty soon indeed.
Post edited July 06, 2015 by shmerl
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWhy everyone keep using DirectX?(261 posts)(261 posts)
(261 posts)