Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

Re:Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX by kayoone on Thursday December 05, 2013 @03:12AM (#6853198)

Sure, they are some edge cases where it might make sense, but even then i would analyze requirements very carefully. I have quite a bit of experience with Unity3D and besides being really simple to use you can basically extend it with any C#/C++ library that you see fit. Support for Webcam input streams is there out of the box and id argue theres hardly anything it cant do.

Of course, if you want to be (or are) an engine programmer, go for it and get your feet wet using OpenGL/DirectX, but for the broad mass of game developers, these aren't issues anymore.

Playing with it directly can be fun yes, but it can also be frustrating if all you want is so much easier with a game engine.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX by exDM69 on Thursday December 05, 2013 @04:55AM (#6853503)

> Sure, they are some edge cases where it might make sense, but even then i would analyze requirements very carefully. I have quite a bit of experience with Unity3D and besides being really simple to use you can basically extend it with any C#/C++ library that you see fit.

Sure, Unity3d is very flexible and has given us some outstanding games. Like Kerbal Space Program, for example. KSP has quite a bit of modifications to make Unity3d work for them, they have had to do some black magic to make Unity3d work in space scale scenes on both, the physics and graphics departments.

When looking at dev talks given by the KSP team, it begs the question whether or not they would have been better off not using Unity at all and doing a specialized engine from scratch. There's no real answer to this question and Unity probably made their time to market shorter so they could actually ship and sell the game to keep the development alive. And then they went on later to rewrite a lot of the stuff they did early on.

But from a purely software engineering standpoint, they might have been better off not using an off the shelf 3d engine, because there are no space scale 3d engines available.

Again, for most people it makes sense to pick up an engine and go with it but there are use cases where it might pay off to invest the time and effort to build your own tech from scratch.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX by girvo on Thursday December 05, 2013 @05:04AM (#6853545)

Hindsight on projects is 20/20, and you can't discount the productivity boost that using something that let's you focus on the game straight away gives you.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX by speeder on Thursday December 05, 2013 @05:41AM (#6853687)

I know KSP lead designer, they use Unity because of him, he is not a programmer, and knew only how to code more or less with Unity, that he learned on university ( I was student with him ), now they have professional coders, but kept Unity for legacy reasons ( that is: they already started on it, so keep it...)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX by marvin on Thursday December 05, 2013 @03:53AM (#6853306)

Not sure I would call it an edge case. It's really a use case. These days, there are many developers who use the GPU for other things than plain vanilla 3D graphics. If there was ever such a thing.

I'm doing a combination of scientific and practical computing, and I'm currently in the middle of the choice of whether to use DirectX or OpenGL. Portability counts, but so does simplicity. It's a very relevant question.

[ Parent | on HN ]