Celestia Forums

Almost all games are made in Direct X and unfourtanetelly,simulators are not nearly as popular as games.Well,the problem is that Microsoft wants to end support to Open GL,very soon.What are we going to do?Is it easy to adapt Celestia to DX10/11?

This is already being done (at least on my machine) since my HP box doesn't conform strictly to the OpenGL specifications anyway. Most of the time, even if something doesn't look right in one of the OpenGL render paths, you can still get fantastic views of the Universe via one of the other rendering modes if you have to. Multi-texture seems to be a good alternative if needed. Remember to simply run through the render paths with CTRL-V in order to see what works best on your machine. One of these paths will always work with pleasing results.

danielj wrote:Almost all games are made in Direct X and unfourtanetelly,simulators are not nearly as popular as games.Well,the problem is that Microsoft wants to end support to Open GL,very soon.What are we going to do?Is it easy to adapt Celestia to DX10/11?

There is no basis for your alarmism. Where did you hear about Microsoft removing support for OpenGL? There was some talk a few years ago that Microsoft would not have proper support for OpenGL in Vista, but the company wisely changed course in response to an outcry from users and developers. If Microsoft did at some point remove OpenGL support--and I haven't heard anything of this sort--then we could create some sort of 3D API abstraction layer for Celestia that would use Direct3D on Windows and OpenGL everywhere else. It would take time, but it's not that big of a change.

--Chris

Am I wrong in my understanding of this - that in the near future, OpenGL will exceed the capabilities and breadth of functionality of DirectX?

Microsoft per-say is not the ones who in the end decide how we get our OpenGL. We get that support from ATI or nVidia. As I have stated for years, Microsoft has already pulled the more advanced features sets of OpenGL from any video drivers it hosts on its sites through Windows update program. Microsoft gets approved drivers from ATI, nVidia, Intel, and ect and then goes through the driver packages and pulls all OpenGL code they can from the drivers. They claim its to keep the file download size down but in reality it is part of there ongoing battle to kill OpenGL off. This is the main reason that if you download any video drivers from the Windows Update system OpenGL never works right. And as far as all games being written going over to DX10 that simply is not true. ID studios still uses OpenGL for all there titles. As a matter of fact if it were not for ID pushing OpenGL to the limits it has we would probably being all using a DX9 or 10 versions of Celestia. So don't freak out and think
OpenGL is going anywhere, it wasa here from the beginning and has a long way to go. Its not going anywhere.

Don. Edwards

as don said it ain't going anywhere .Even if MS would like to see it go by-by.
with there ms drivers the average person trying to play a OpenGL game is going to say " this thing looks and plays like shit" and because
of that say " opengl sucks"
now the same game played with the REAL nvidia driver works great .
But it can be "fun" trying to convince people of this because they are brain-washed MS drones that think MS is GREAT and can do no wrong. .

john Van Vliet wrote:as don said it ain't going anywhere .Even if MS would like to see it go by-by.

And they are still doing their best to try to insure this by continuing to offer me optional Microsoft drivers (dated October 2007)
to replace the brand new drivers I got from Nvidia. Just fair warning to others in the same boat here. Do NOT update from MS
optional updates after you have updated directly from Nvidia.

that is why my copy of xp is set to only notify me and NOT to auto install . i got SICK AND TIRED of starting a GL game or Celestia and not having it work.Then finding MS replaced my working driver with there disabled one .

If you are using Vista, you can choose to hide those updated drivers you wish not to see and or download. Under XP you just have to watch real close and make sure you don't get downgraded.

Don. Edwards