On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:26:24 +0000, Doug Mentohl wrote:
> "once DirectX came onto the scene, the world was stunned with superior
> development options in contrast to the current console gaming systems
> of that era"
>
> They may have been stunned but not for the reasons given. You see a 3d
> rendering system called OpenGL already existed. DirectX was a
> duplication of the open standard OpenGL. Founding member MS quit the
> consortium once its own closed DirectX was usable. So much for sharing
> it about and every one geting rich.
OpenGL, at the time, was not a gaming platform. Most implementations were
not speed optimized for real-time graphics. OpenGL was used primarily on
workstations for CAD and 3D Modeling, which allowed for complex objects to
be created, but did not focus on "blazing" performance.
This is one of the reasons DirectX was so popular. It had a traditional
modeling mode called "Retained" mode, but this was too slow for most game
developers. Read Carmack's comments if you like.
OpenGL was, unfortunately, ruled by the OpenGL ARB, and this group was very
slow to implement new features, which caused many vendors to implement
incompatible extensions.
> Yet more of the mythology that before MS computing didn't exist as we
> know it.
Actually, that statement is factual. That doesn't necessarily mean that
Microsoft was responsible, but before 1975 when Microsoft was founded,
computing did NOT exist as we know it.
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