[icambron]

I don't know anything about graphics programming, but I couldn't make any sense of this:

> While the current GL spec is at feature parity with DX11 (even slightly ahead), the lowest common denominator implementation is not, and this is the thing that I as a developer care about.

Isn't DX restricted to Windows, meaning its lowest common denominator implementation is nothing at all?

[MBCook]

What I believe he means is that if you have an OpenGL driver that implements the ENTIRE specification (correctly and in a performant manor) then you have basically all the features of a modern DirectX 11 card available.

The problem is that many OpenGL drivers implement the base OpenGL specs and then a couple of extensions here and there. Because of this you can't rely on what's available and you end up with something that's more akin to a mix of many previous versions of DirectX: some advanced capabilities but many basic ones missing.

[DSMan195276]

That's exactly what I was thinking. In fact, IIRC the only other DX implementation you might consider is the DX version that comes with wine, which I think currently supports DX 9 (Depending on your definition of support). The irony is of course that the wine version is written in OpenGL.

[alkonaut]

You pick one API per platform. With DX you get All PC:s that run windows (I.e almost all gaming PC:s), as well as Xbox. If your game targets another platform such as PlayStation you pick LibGCM or similar. GL can be used as a back end for some/all platforms but you can't use a single GL backend for all platforms because of the differences.

The fact that DX is hugely popular as a backend for Win/Xbox even for games/engines that also target non-DX platforms is pretty compelling evidence of its popularity among developers.

[tormeh]

The driver vendors (AMD, Intel, Nvidia) are the implementers of the standards. That's basically the only thing I know about this that you don't, I think.