What are Randys thoughts on some popular 3D APIs?
It appears that some of the people on the list think that I just chose Direct3D because of a love for Microsoft or something. So I thought I would clarify a few things… I have written drivers for nearly every 3D API there has ever been (D3D, SGI OpenGL (CosmoGL), Microsoft OpenGL, Conix OpenGL, Intel’s 3DR, RenderMorphics, RenderWare, Heidi, and 3DFX to name a few). I came to the D3D conclusion for many reasons, and trust me it is the biggest piece of #!$&@! API I have ever worked with. Here were some of my findings: Silicon Graphics OpenGL – Very good, very easy to write API. Just a few problems prevent this driver from being useable. The triple buffering that we do requires copying in and out of buffers in multiple directions, and not always the full size of the window. This copy is very slow when done between two offscreen buffers. This is why moving, zooming, and turning are fast, but moving something around is slow. The current rev of this library does not support hardware, bumm
