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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

And yet it still got its ass kicked by Direct3D because Microsoft made better stuff. Better API, better tooling, better debuggability.

Honestly, it would've been better to leave OpenGL to the legacy CAD vendors and standardize on Direct3D roundabout 1997 or so.

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Ye good ol' Microsoft stiffled OpenGL on Windows, hence open letter https://www.chrishecker.com/OpenGL/Press_Release not to mention insidious thing they did on Fahrenheit (next gen OpenGL+Direct3D, one to rule them all) when they were supposed to be working on it together with SGI. Microsoft did a well job after with it, but they were and are a shit company that made sus maneuvers to make success; Not all of them technical.

Well, except for only working on xbox and windows, which pretty much destroys it as a viable direct target for modern games or apps.

> Honestly, it would've been better to leave OpenGL to the legacy CAD vendors and standardize on Direct3D roundabout 1997 or so.

If you remember what Microsoft was like in those days, the chances of D3D being standardized in a viable way on any platform but windows were about the same chances as an ice cube in hell stands.

Nintendo and Sony 3D APIs are also exlusive to their consoles, people keep forgeting about them.

> a viable direct target for modern games

Aside from PlayStation exclusives, nearly every AAA game in the past 20+ years has targeted Direct3D and HLSL first. Any other backend is a port.

The XBox versions of DirectX aren't exactly compatible (in some pretty significant ways, IIRC)

Technically, also Linux (and probably other Vulkan platforms) with dxvk.

I had no idea this was a thing! Cheers.

There's also VKD3D for dx12!

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