^^ dammit, he got there first. Oh well, here’s the same information in a more fanboyish vernacular.
DirectX has been one of Microsoft’s best monopoly tools. It satisfies the ‘what’s theirs is mine and what’s mine is mine’ rule. Basically, Microsoft currently fully supports OpenGL apps so apps can be ported to Microsoft systems but DirectX apps are difficult to port to other systems without the right tools. Notice how you generally see PS2 games ported to XBox but rarely XBox games to PS2? The PS2 uses OpenGL. The more that Microsoft keep pushing their proprietary technology and the more people keep supporting it, the worse it will become. It’s why the internet is littered with windows media, Microsoft word files and IE/windows-only websites. When you support a company for so long and are warned far in advance about the way they behave and then complain that they are going to screw you in the ass, it’s hard to resist saying we told you so.
According to Wikipedia, directx is not really supposed to be in competition with opengl:
OpenGL has always been used to a substantially greater extent in the professional graphics market than DirectX, while DirectX is heavily used for computer game applications. This is in line with Microsoft’s official stand point; Microsoft acknowledges that professional graphics are more the field of OpenGL than DirectX. There are a number of reasons why OpenGL and DirectX are chosen over each other in the two different markets, and it primarily reflects the needs of the two different kinds of users.
Nonetheless, Microsoft obviously have different ideas. There’s no reason why they couldn’t just give it a rest when the OpenGL 2 standard becomes widely available with programmable shaders.
If people find that Vista makes running OpenGL apps too much of a pain, you can always stick with XP or 2000. After all, it’s not like they’re awful systems in need of an upgrade. I’m actually trying to make that not sound sarcastic. What I’m saying is that if you are happy with the system you’ve got then why bother upgrading to a system that will break some of the apps you use most?
Anyway, the Vista OS is way too bloated for most people to even consider running it. Dell reported that Aero Glass would need a 128MB video card and most reports suggest the system will have a minimum requirement of 512MB Ram.
Nigel Page is a strategist with Microsoft Australia. He told APC today that Vista would work best on a video card with more than 256MB RAM, 2GB of DDR3 memory and a S-ATA 2 hard drive.
One of the things you’ll notice about Vista beta 1 is that it runs dramatically quicker than Windows XP. The reason is the GPU is now doing a lot of work that the CPU used to have to do. There are a couple of gotchas though. The GPU needs a very high speed bi-directional bus to communicate with main memory. That has not been the case in the past, and what it means is that AGP will not be optimal.
There’s a LOT of encryption and decryption going on. We communicate on the PCI Express bus in a fully encrypted format because it is considered a public bus.
The downside is that all your existing flat panel monitors and projectors aren’t going to work with high-def videos in Vista. Bad news.
If you move from 32 to 64 bit, you basically need to at least double your memory. 2 gigs in 64 bit is the equivalent of a gig of RAM on a 32bit machine. That’s because you’re dealing with chunks that are twice the size? if you try to make do with what you’ve got you’ll see less performance. But RAM is now so cheap, it’s hardly an issue.
Thirdly, the graphics card and system bus is essential. PCI x16 is going to be very important. Any of today’s 3D GPUs will be fine? we’re not waiting for some mystical monster that may or may not come out. But they need to have 128MB of RAM on it. If they’ve only got 64 don’t panic.
taken from:
http://www.apcstart.com/teched/pivot/entry.php?id=6
Bet you’re all getting the sleeping bags ready for camping outside the Microsoft store when that’s released.
Well, there’s at least some good news:
We acknowledge that many corporate notebooks have fairly low-end integrated graphics chips. They’re not exactly high performance graphics systems. For those users, we will provide a classic UI that looks like XP, and then we will have Aero that will start to make use of the GPU, and then there’s Aero Glass that will demand the higher level.
So I’m guessing all you have to do to get OpenGL apps to work is to turn the bloated GUI off? Not that I care, I’m never going to get one :P.
in .Net the solution is Mono, for OpenGL i believe their is smart way to keep Blender available at Windows platform, don’t worry be happy, keep Blending!