Blogs Valve looking to OpenGL means Microsoft should be worried

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/03/15/valve-looking-to-opengl/

 

nice little read and very true, this has been a great move by valve and I welcome it and hope this will lead to native steam/source on linux

There is a slight typo in the blog.

Steamplay is the feature which means you won't have to repurchase games.
SteamCloud is the feature which saves game data and configs remotely.
Therefore I think it should read

 

OpenGL has been able to do tessellation for ages, it's not a new thing being added. Other than that good article, I am of the belief that the mac market is just a happy bonus of Valve separating itself from being tied to Microsoft as a technology provider.

 

Well I for one would love to cast aside windows and for OpenGL to really replace DX it needs companies like Valve to jump in even if it is only in the shallow end with armbands on.

Wolfire did a blog post a while back pointing out the great advantages Opengl has over DirectX since they are building Overgrowth to work on Mac Windows and Linux they must know what they are talking about.

I think that PC gamings future could be in OpenGL without windows but we need more companies to give it a go.

 

I'd love to run an incredibly trimmed down linux distro dedicated to gaming.

Are we getting closer to that dream?

 

It's kinda funny to me that this is happening now. I mean, I haven't been more happy with MS. Windows 7 has never caused me a single problem and I'm at the point where software is lagging behind hardware enough that any performance gains I'd get from a linux distro would be negligible.

If this had been 5 years ago I'd have been extremely happy but now... Good for Valve, I guess?

I suppose it's also good for people with lower spec hardware.

 

It's certainly good that OpenGL will be running a widely-used gaming platform. However, I'm interested in seeing what kind of performance hit will be involved.

WoW, one of the few games that runs natively on both Windows and OS X, runs noticeably slower under OS X than Windows/Boot Camp. FPS drops about 20% and there are a few notable drops in image quality - ground vegetation popping up instead of fading for example. How much of this is down to the graphics library or Blizzard's programming is tough to say, but MS can't be too worried when all the graphics hardware/drivers currently available is specifically tuned for DirectX performance, with OpenGL being something of an afterthought.

 

If openGL begins to gain terrain to DirectX, its about time Microsoft check the recent technology behind openGL. If it came just a little close to DirectX, Microsoft should Sue the Suck3r5 like every big corporation this days. Microsoft gets sued all the time for stupid things. If companies like Apple can sue every one because someone drops a Fart that smelled the same, why not Microsoft.

 

graphics drivers for linux are pretty terrible though, but if there is demand like this then i can imagine AMD/Nvidia pulling their collective fingers out.

 

is it true that OpenGL 4.0 isn't supported on those Dx11 Raedon cards?

 

OpenGL 4 isn't supported on any hardware yet, it was only announced on the 12th.

 

nVidia's Fermi apparently will be supporting it.

but then, by the time Fermi is available to buy, 6870 will also be on the shelf.

 

I imagine that many devs will see the move to OpenGL as the next logical step since the PS3 is based on OpenGL, so the move to OpenGL would mean compatability with Windows, Mac, Linux and the PS3, where as DX is only a Windows and XB360 thing And many devs have recently said that the PS3 is soon to become the market leader (out of the consoles), So the move to OpenGL looks like a win win decision for the devs now. And who knows, this might just be the kick up the rear that MS need to start improving the experience for the PC Gamers on the Windows platform, and it might force them to bring Alan Wake to PC in DX11 since most decent games may start using OpenGL and work better on a light weight (Gaming) Linux OS

 

More choice = good news for consumers.

 

You've all got it wrong. Steam on Mac's will get the iTunes effect and become the default location for buying digitally distributed games (as I'm sure it is for many other PC gamers).

 

I did point this out when valve said it was putting there games on the mac. Microsoft need a kick up the ass in fact i would love to stop using it if i could but I'm not getting a mac would love more games on Linux OS

 

Good on Valve for pushing for OpenGL, however I see no real benefit to this. If it is only Source games that get the Open GL treatment, then Im still going to need windows for all my other games.

 

The fact that steam uses real currency puts it miles ahead of the buggy GFWL and its toy money. I hope they do become market dominant because of this, bollocks to dvds

 

Last time I checked, Steam wasn't a game engine. Don't you mean Source?

Encouraging article though!

 

Few people realize apparently that OpenGL is already the main graphics API by a few metric light years, as it is used everywhere where DirectX doesn't go: all gameconsoles, handhelds, smartphones and much more.

OpenGL 4 will run on all videocards we already know to be DX11-compatible. OpenGL 3.3 will be the version supported by cards prior to these.

My company's in-house game engine also uses OpenGL. We decided early in the development process to use this API because it's the most open, non-proprietary (ever read the DX SDK EULA?) and runs virtually everywhere. It's good to see that this API is getting more love from large studios like Valve.