Scriptionary Blog

Here’s another amusing blog post about why one should use OpenGL instead of DirectX (not even Direct3D). Anyone who has been following my posts on OpenGL knows that ever since the release of 3.0, I have not been able to bring myself to support any of Khronos’ efforts.

Now that the 3.2 specification is out, the API seems to be headed in the right direction but I fear that it’s just too little too late. Whereas OpenGL 3.2 seems to have targeted D3D 10 feverishly, Microsoft was already working on a new iteration of Direct3D in the background. Direct3D 11 once again leaves OpenGL to play catch-up, which they will, but likely too late.

OpenGL has one thing going for it that Direct3D doesn’t: cross-platform compatibility. If you really have to develop for multiple platforms, use OpenGL. If you just develop for Windows/360, use Direct3D. It almost seems as if we’re at that great “games versus industrial application” API divide again. Any momentum that OpenGL might have gained with 2.1, it has lost with its release of 3.0.

Here’s a great article by Tom’s Hardware explaining the issues better than I ever could.

Oh and a happy new year, by the way…

Apparently, the DirectX team has had a blog since late April of this year it’s just not very popular I guess.

They’ve posted a shipload of information over the last couple of months, so if you’re like me and had no idea this existed, you’ll have quite some reading to catch up to. It’s mostly about Windows 7 and the new graphics APIs (Direct2D, DirectWrite, etc.) but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Yeah, I don’t have the DX11 logo yet…Today the August 2009 DirectX SDK was released on MSDN, strangely enough the August SDK was released in September.

This release contains the first official release of Direct3D 11 (RTM), which was previously only a technical preview. According to the release notes, this version of Direct3D 11 will only work on the RTM version of Windows 7, not on the RC and Beta versions. So I guess only vendors and MSDN subscribers will be able to develop software until Windows 7 hits the retail market.

There’s also the issue of pure Direct3D 11 hardware not being sold yet but that should be right around the corner if the SDK is here.

I don’t often recommend books, especially when it comes to DirectX/Direct3D. There are many monstrosities out there that should never have seen the light of day.

Once per week or so I browse a local Barnes and Noble hoping to catch a book I haven’t seen before. It rarely happens since their inventory is very stagnant, but still. A month or two ago I accidentally browsed the Graphics/Web section and found “Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 10″ by Frank D. Luna.

The title, publisher (Wordware) and cover were kind of off-putting so I almost didn’t buy it. But I’m glad I did since, in my case, it has become my number one DX10 reference. It’s compact, concise, always around my desk and well written so give it a shot if you have 30 bucks or so to spare.

Today Intel released it’s new issue of “Intel Visual Adrenaline” featuring a three page interview with Tom Forsyth about Intel’s upcoming Larrabee GPU, which is x86 based and fully programmable.

Click here to read the PDF, scroll down to page eight (8)

Larrabee will support a rasterization pipeline as well as raytracing but Forsyth mentions raytracing to be more of a technical feature than a mainstream implementation. Regardless of this, for graphics programmers this should be good as there will finally be a piece of hardware that actually supports realtime raytracing.

Direct3D as well as OpenGL will be supported in addition to the much anticipated programmable route, either through C++ or pure assembly, which should open up the card for people interested in parallel computing.

Sadly there’s no definitive answer from Forsyth on how many cores Larrabee will actually contain. I guess we’ll have to wait for that a bit longer.

PS, if anyone is at GDC listening to Abrash and Forsyth tomorrow, let me know what you got from it.

OK, so only one day after I publicly whined “where is the DX SDK?” Microsoft has released the March 2009 version. Go figure. Get it here at DirectX 2009 SDK @ MS Download.

Also, there seems to be some interesting stuff bundled with this version of the SDK, here’s my take on the important stuff:

• Technical Previews
  • Direct2D
  • DirectWrite
  • DXGI 1.1
• PIX works on the Windows 7 beta
• Several updated samples

Check out the details at the link posted above. Also, it doesn’t look like the online MSDN library docs have been updated yet but usually that happens pretty quickly.

I wonder what kind of development is going on at Microsoft as there hasn’t been an update for the DirectX SDK since November of 2008. This is quite out-of-sync with their regular release schedule of a new SDK every 3 months.

My guess would be that with the release date of Windows 7 inching closer, the development for DirectX 11 has to be completed soon. Of course this is 100% speculation.

If anyone has a clue, let me know.

Just released, get it while it’s hot.

It doesn’t look like there are any DirectX 11 previews in there. Is it my imagination or were those supposed to be in it? Thanks Aras for the confirmation that the DirectX 11 preview are actually in there.

EDIT2: The new DirectX redistributable was released today.