What are the advantages of using DX9 over OpenGL for nglide?

[AnarchoCapitalist]

Just wondering.

[ochentay4]

Depends on the game, can I ask why do you ask? or what games are we talking about?

[AnarchoCapitalist]

Depends on the game, can I ask why do you ask? or what games are we talking about?

For nglide. Sorry about the confusion.

[Zeus]

DX has a lot better documentation, has a lot better tools and due to the fact that almost all Windows games use DirectX nowadays (Carmack is probably the last person who supports OpenGL), GPU drivers for DX are better maintained.

I can't talk about technical and performance differences since I don't have 1:1 nGlide's OpenGL implementation.

[Bladeforce]

OpenGL is much easier to cross compile against different platforms.
GL API's have to go through much more rigorous testing
Main advatnage is it is MUCH easier to port opengl to other platforms than it is to port directx to others due to it being a proprietary format (Microsoft)

[Zeus]

All true. Nobody is denying that. Both APIs have different advantages/disadvantages. He just asked for DX advantages, so I covered only this area.

[AnarchoCapitalist]

I have another question for Zeus on this topic...

Have you absolutely ruled out going to OpenGL for nglide at any point in the future? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't OpenGL more like DX9 (compared to DX11) in forcing driver settings (like AA)?

For all I know going to OpenGL could break things, but I was thinking that doing so could solve two issues:

Direct Depth Access (so rotated/sparse grid AA would work with games that use DDBA) and more depth buffer precision (the original Unreal/UT99 look best with either the w-buffer or a 32 bit fixed point z-buffer although 24 bit z buffer is enough for most games since a lot of glide games used a 16 bit z-buffer) are two things that can't be done in DX9.

The issue I'd see with going to DX11 is that the driver couldn't force AA and mipmapping as easily (if at all, I don't know) although I'm sure the DDA and depth buffer precision issues could easily be solved in DX11.

I do appreciate the wrapper though and all of zeus's efforts... I would give nglide a 90-95% mainly because there aren't really any serious rendering errors, all the wraps look pretty clean (I think the overall rendering error compared to running on a Voodoo2 is rather low all things considered) as well as the >90% compatibility with trilinear and SGSSAA and the 100% quality support.

[Zeus]

There are no plans for adding other target APIs. Maintaining two or more APIs simultaneously would end in quality/compatibility disaster.