Application Programming Interface: Difference between revisions

[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL] is Direct3D's primary competitor, and in many ways the tool of choice for cross-platform gaming (though, in truth, it is the only tool for cross-platform game development). OpenGL is a graphics API, so it only technically competes against Direct3D, the 3D portion of DirectX; most Windows games that use OpenGL use the non-graphics part of [[Direct X]] for other tasks, while other operating systems use different APIs for other tasks (for example, OpenAL for audio acceleration). Many individuals feel it's much easier to program in than DirectX. The open standard certainly made it more expandable, and many OpenGL games such as [[City of Heroes]] are made up of more extensions than original standard code.

While OpenGL can work with a variety of operating systems, it does have some downsides. Since DirectX is nowadays the API of choice for games created for Windows, many graphics cards have horrible OpenGL support. Earlier ATI and Intel embedded graphics chips in particular might run a DirectX game well, but crawl when using OpenGL. After AMD got ATI, though, [http://fireuser.com/blog/amd_updates_entire_firepro_line_to_evergreen_gpus/ having fresh cards work with] any fresh software eventually ceased to be a problem.

The latest version of OpenGL is 4.14. For older hardware (hardware limited to DirectX 10), there is version 3.3. For REALLY old hardware that is (huge fake GASP) 3+ years old, there is OpenGL 2, which roughly corresponds with DirectX 9.