[badsectoracula]

Same here, but replace D3D9 with OpenGL 2.x or "compatibility profile" as kids call it these days. Basically the entire OpenGL instead of the crippled "core profile" that was originally made to give a chance to troubled implementors (coughATIcough) make something that works (and failed, while we still ended up with the schism).

Fortunately this is still supported in its entirety by all sane desktop implementations and at least Nvidia has said that they will always continue supporting it. The only sad marks are Apple and Mesa, but Apple seems to have abandoned the OpenGL ship and Mesa (or a fork) will hopefully implement it at some point. And in the meanwhile there is Regal, although i'm not sure how complete that is.

[microcolonel]

I find that OpenGL ES 3.0 hits the GL 2.x sweet spot for me. Main reason I prefer it over desktop 3.0 is that it doesn't require the use of vbos, which always seem to complicate simple programs (even though I keep being told that I can just set one up and bind it, then forget about it).

I especially like that it's hands-off wrt a lot of things like matrix manipulation and geometry optimization. It gives you an opportunity to think about these things clearly and get an optimal solution without having to port all of your matrix code out of somebody else's library.

[robbies]

Sure, ATI/AMD (and Windows Intel) lagged behind NV in the full OpenGL implementation. But the "compatability" profile is full of a lot of cruft that had nothing to do with modern GPUs, and whose primary value was to passing workstation test suites, not actual modern GPU programming.

I know we have the "but mah immediate mode" crowd, but those folks have to just get off it. Write your own immediate mode recorder if you're so desperate. I'm also looking at you, matrix stack abusers. Your programs are bad, and you should feel bad.

[badsectoracula]

> I know we have the "but mah immediate mode" crowd

I'm in the "but mah immediate mode" crowd, so thanks for the condescending tone. I like immediate mode and matrix stacks and all the nice stuff compatibility mode provides because they are convenient even if they aren't fast. Quite often what you want is convenience, not performance and adding a usually badly documented 3rd party library that might be dropped next year (or whatever) or break its API is not a desirable solution. Especially when the entire point is moot since OpenGL 1.x/2.x and 3.x/4.x compatibility isn't going anywhere any time the next couple of decades - at least.

Besides the parent post is about what someone's favorite API was so i also added what my favorite API is. D3D9 isn't any more deserving to be someone's favorite API than OpenGL.

[robbies]

I would actually argue that it is _bad_ for graphics. The GPU abstraction that OpenGL represents is now 30+ years old, and not at all representative of how modern GPUs (desktop or mobile) work. I'd even argue that OGL obfuscate the GPU machinery to all the budding graphics programmers who use OGL. OGL was never meant to be a graphics toolkit/middleware, but that's what it's become (at least the compat profile).

As far as the value to you, to be perfectly frank, you would not have compatibility profile if it wasn't for workstation ISVs demanding OpenGL 1.1 still be supported for their legacy applications (and shelling out the big bucks to maintain that support). There isn't a singly IHV who is keeping these legacy features on for any hobbyist or learning programmer. Not one. The IHVs know it's bad, but there's a lot of money in keeping it around.

I don't even know if there's value in mentioning this, but I used to be an OpenGL driver engineer, and then when I worked on it, I realized "Hey, wtf, this has nothing to do with how the GPU works!" I'm still happy/proud about the work I did, but I don't think it advanced the graphics state-of-the-art (for the most part, there are some cool things that showed up first in OpenGL). And then as far as the cruft I mentioned...it's just a psychotic maintenance nightmare.

[badsectoracula]

That is all nice but i don't see what is the point of trying to convince me that i shouldn't like something i like :-P. Regardless of how good OpenGL is in representing how GPUs work or why it is still around, it doesn't change the fact that it is still around and i like using it.

[vedranm]

If you are talking about OpenGL compat profile, Mesa will not go beyond 3.0. You might or might not be able to convince the project to change that with patches, I am not sure what's the attitude on that.

If you are talking about D3D9, for Gallium driver (relevant ones are r600, radeonsi, nouveau), there is Gallium Nine: https://wiki.ixit.cz/d3d9

[badsectoracula]

Yeah i am considering at some point to try and see what would take to add support for the compatibility profile. I do not see a reason to not have it considering that the functionality is mostly there (and AFAIK there is even an environment variable that sort-of allows the creation of compatibility profiles, it just doesn't fully work). If nothing else, not having it makes the Mesa implementation inferior to the proprietary ones.