Graphix API's survey...

Preacher

Preacher

Swabbie
Banned
Hello, y'all. I gots a question for ya, actually a sort of survey/poll:

Of the major graphix API's the past few years, which do you think yields the best bounty of gaming goodness (on WC games, at least):

-Direct X?...
-OpenGL?...
-Glide?...
-Other?...

Personally, I've used WCP w/ Glide (yeah, I know--you can only run Glide if you have a Voodoo card in yer system--but I DO have one!), and I find it to be superior to DirectX. I'd be interested to hear what the rest of y'all think. Feedback?...
 
D3D was new back then and the drivers were weak. They're a lot better now and universally supported thanks to MS bullying tactics but I do prefer OpenGL. I never had a Glide card but I understand it was great.
 
It's a bit hard to compare Glide to D3D because Glide is outdated now. Back then it was definitely superior. The simple reason was that it was meant for a single type of card. That meant that the programmer using Glide can make assumptions about what the card can do and optimise the game for that.
In contrast, D3D is universal, so it your code must check if the card your game is running on can actually do the thing you're trying to do. That's makes it harder to optimise your code.
Some programmers just leave features out if not all cards can do them, like fog and lense flare in WCP. D3D can do them, but you'd have to check if and how to do it with the card in the system.
 
Originally posted by Preacher
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Of the major graphix API's the past few years, which do you think yields the best bounty of gaming goodness (on WC games, at least):
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Click to expand...

WCP looks best in glide, that's for sure. But for other games D3D seems to be the mode of choice.
 
It basically depends on what the game was designed for. WCP was designed for D3D but later they decided to add D3D support. The same is true for Need for Speed 3 & 4 (there it's not so much appearance but speed that's the difference).
Later games was often the other way around since popularity of D3D and non-3DFX cards grew.
 
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