EVE General Discussion

Those are definitively better platforms than windowscrap, thing is that they're as good as Microsoft thinking how to do adult stuff with their customers money.

Normally I understand you very well, but this time I honestly don't know what you're trying to say.

They don't give a crap about their customers satisfaction or they wouldn't be throwing their crap windows versions, they do because at first the genius idea was to deliver machines with easy to use software platforms witch was a good idea, and people got used to that platform that actually was a vry good one.
Now that everyone is more or less junky of their crap we have the eternal changing crap platforms getting worst one after the other and seems people like that crap so much they became blind.

Is it clear now?

So many fell for this, it's really mindboggeling

Deffo 10/10!

i know - it was a joke and i laughed. but i always try to be non-partisan when talking about microsoft and our comeptitor's products.

this is untrue

TL:DR OpenGL blows in its current state, but we're stuck with it on non-Microsoft platforms.

I'm a graphics developer that works with cross platform applications using Direct3D 9/10/11 and OpenGL. Direct3D 9 and OpenGL, in its current form, are obsolete dinosaurs that need to be taken to a nearly silty lake and buried so that future generations can pity us.

OpenGL is just an abstraction layer on top of your video hardware, so is Direct3D. They let you talk to your video card in a human understandable language. They both do essentially the same thing with different flavours from a developer's stand point. With a well written application both graphic APIs will deliver exactly the same performance under ideal circumstances. Unfortunately those circumstances do not exist in the real world with most video hardware developers becoming increasingly lax with their OpenGL driver support, because...

OpenGL is crap if you're a developer. From a user's standpoint you won't notice any real difference between OpenGL and Direct3D aside from some placebo effects.

Its a terribly outdated API built to interface with video hardware that was developed in the late 80s and early 90s. Because of the need to maintain backwards compatibility with some extremely expensive and influential application (Everything Autodesk made for example), the API has never been updated in any substantial way. The newest versions support most of the features of modern day video hardware but do it using the same outdated and painful programming models we've been suffering since the late 90s. OpenGL in its current form does not conform to the way modern video cards actually work. Everything you do with it is a cludgy hack.

This isn't helped by the Khronos Group, the governing body that is suppose to maintain the OpenGL standard. Every time they've had the chance to scrap the API and start fresh with modern models they've waffled. The one attempt they did try was hamstrung by some inane attempt to maintain backwards compatibility with dinosaur applications, yet again.

All of these arguments apply to Direct3D 9 as well, aside from the Khronos Group incompetence. The difference is that Microsoft has no problem saying, "You want to keep using 9 and using Windows XP? No problem, go ahead, but we're not maintaining that crap anymore." And out rolls Direct3D 10 and 11, which is just an extension of 10.

Direct3D 10/11 conforms to the way that modern video hardware works and does it using a clean straight forward API. On top of separating the video rendering responsibilities from the video display responsibilities using DXGI, which was an awesome move. Using Direct3D 10/11 compared to Direct3D 9 or OpenGL is like drinking spring water compared to donkey urine.

I would love it if an influential game developer like Valve could take the Khronos Group by its balls and force them to do something about the current state of OpenGL. Open software standards are important and should be vigorously supported. I love working with Direct3D 10/11 and would rather drink drain cleaner than go back to OpenGL and Direct3D 9 but closed standards like Microsoft's are not beneficial to the software industry.

I could get started on Linux compared to Windows but that will just open up a huge flood gate of debating that will probably cripple CCP's forums software. I will say that 2014 can't come soon enough. Microsoft will finally put a bullet in Windows XP's head and maybe we can finally start marching into the future. Windows 8 is not that future. Its not crap but its going to be this generation's Windows Vista or Windows 95. Massive bounding leaps that are completely half-assed. I'll wait until all their new tech has matured a bit in Windows 9.

This isn't true. Wine & Cedega use a combination of reverse engineering and reengineering to develop libraries that are compatible with Windows. Both of these methods and the act of reimplementing Windows functionality on a different platform is legal in most developed nations. This is helped by a very large body of open source developers that greatly enjoy exactly this sort of activity.

OpenGL itself is not an application. Its a standard. An open standard at that. Anyone is allowed to produce video hardware and drivers for that hardware for any platform they wish and if they implement the OpenGL standard they're allowed to say their hardware/drivers are OpenGL compatible. Microsoft does not own any rights to OpenGL, there is no Microsoft code anywhere in OpenGL because OpenGL isn't a piece of software. Microsoft willingly pulled out of the Architecture Review Board (ARB, the predecessor to the Khronos Group), many years ago and has had nothing to do with OpenGL since. Even using OpenGL on a Windows system is a pain in the butt because Microsoft has never updated their own implementation of the software driver. If you want to use all those swanky OpenGl 3.x features you'll have to go through the extension system to call your video card driver's functions directly.

... I love ranting about rendering APIs.

linux running on large computing clusters and lamp stacks running on $500 rackmount boxes is clearly indicative of 2015 being the definite year of the linux desktop

I like Origin better than steam, shoot me, but sometimes steam is a buggy piece of ****.