Any great recent, new or upcoming games done with OpenGL?

I wonder, are the latest best (visually) games written in DirectX or OpenGL? I’m thinking it’s DirectX due to the pixel shading capabilities being standard?
Thanks,
Luke

1:1 unentschieden. most “high end” games have support for both, some only OpenGL (id software). apart from that, there are no games of the visual quality you mentioned released yet, we are looking for doom3 and half life 2.

Are Doom3 and Half-Life2 both using OpenGL only? I mean just the graphics subsystem of the game engine.
Luke

Originally posted by BigShooter:
I wonder, are the latest best (visually) games written in DirectX or OpenGL? I’m thinking it’s DirectX due to the pixel shading capabilities being standard?
Thanks,
Luke

You seem to be under the impression that shading capabilities being standard in DX makes them more usable, so to speak. That’s not true. In DX, if the driver does not have the proper CAPS, meaning that the hardware has no shading capabilities, you simply can’t use shaders. Using the standard software path DX provides is not an option : you dont want your app running at 2 fps. That’s the same in OpenGL : if shading extensions are not exposed, then the hardware does not support them, and you must deal with it. So for the moment, from a game developer point of view, shaders are bonus eye-candy for people that can buy rather expensive graphics cards (GFFX 5200 is cheap, but don’t expect decent performance when it comes to shaders). There must be a simpler path anyway to support as many platforms as possible.

The reason why more games are written with a D3D engine is that there are far less driver problems (this means less upset customers that dont understand why their game won’t run properly etc…). If it wasn’t for Carmack’s engines, there would probably be no OpenGL support at all for consumer-level cards.

Originally posted by BigShooter:
Are Doom3 and Half-Life2 both using OpenGL only? I mean just the graphics subsystem of the game engine.
Luke

If I’m not mistaken, Doom3 is OpenGL only, and HL2 is DX only.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the pattern of your questioning seems to be asking if OpenGL is a viable long-term solution for graphics programming. In other words, you seem to be hesitant to choose it for your applications. If that’s the case, you needn’t worry. It’s been around since 1992 and isn’t going anywhere soon. If I was worried about technologies becoming obsolete, I wouldn’t be using a Borland compiler/platform and I would probably have jumped to trendier languages like C# or Java.

Relax. Start programming. :slight_smile:

The only advantage of d3d over gl is that features under d3d use the same api syntax or mechanism while each vendor implements their own layer under gl thru extensions. The arb layer is comparable to d3d one where syntax/method is same so it works on all cards supporting the arb extension. The arb fragment/vertex shaders are comparable to d3d ver.2 shaders. D3d ver.3 shaders run in software because no hw exists yet that runs them. Currently, CG is hlsl under gl and d3d has its own hlsl. Soon we’ll have gl hlsl.

It has been my experience that gl proved superior to d3d which I used for couple of years before switching to gl recently. Gl is designed by and for gfx specialists in all aspects of gfx dev while d3d is suitable only to 3d engines while being overcomplicated and poorly designed api.

Since d3d 8.1 it has been more like gl and offered specific hw layers. Compare ps1.3 vs. 1.4 or ps2 to ps2+. I expect to see more extensions in d3d to mirror gl as hw vendors find unique ways to differ from each other.

Neverwinter Night uses OpenGL only, althoug requires DirectX 8.1 for some reason (sound and input possibly). And looks nice, IMHO (as I have never been the fortunate owner of a fancy video card, I dont have a point for comparison).