[shmerl]

Performance is orthogonal issue to portability. You can make it portable, and perform well too (using something like Vulkan and proper engine design).

Linux gaming market is growing. Not sure about other commercial software in this context, but I'd guess it can indirectly be affected too, since bigger gaming market makes Linux desktop usage grow in general.

[klodolph]

So, "Here, use a different API with worse developer support, and in return you get access to a market that's ~1-2% the size of the Windows gaming market?"

I mean, I'm all for OpenGL. I use OpenGL. Hell, I develop OpenGL games on Linux and then port them to Windows afterwards (released ~10 made that way so far). But the choice to use it depends on what market you're going after.

[Qwertious]

Vulkan has better performance than DX11, and it has literally twice the audience of DX12 - DX12 only supports Windows 10, so any W7/W8/etc users are SOL unless you use DX11 or Vulkan.

[pjmlp]

That is not what the lists of released AAA titles show.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_Vulkan_supp...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_12_...

[shmerl]

This is irrelevant. With all major engines gaining Vulkan support this list will baloon fast.

[pjmlp]

A good gaming engine supports multiple graphics APIs, making specific ones irrelevant.

[shmerl]

My point was, adoption in engines is relatively slow, but once it happens, things become easier. So current usage lists aren't a reflection of general progress. Unity for example gained Vulkan support in the latest version which came out recently, and Unreal is still not there (but already close). Same goes for Lumberyard.

Of course the tax on development imposed by lock-in freaks translates into that slowness. I.e. as you said, need for engines to support many balkanized APIs means slower releases to the market.

[shmerl]

Isn't it what MS is saying for DX12? Except Vulkan is not locked into MS only stuff.

[klodolph]

The cost of porting between DX12 and Vulkan is not so high, not anything like the cost of porting between OpenGL and DX11.

[cwyers]

In the abstract, performance may be unrelated to portability. But if tooling, drivers and expertise are all focused on DirectX, and if getting OpenGL to do everything DirectX can do requires using vendor-specific additions to the spec that are non-portable, then in practice, it may be harder to make OpenGL performant across multiple vendor's GPUs.