Recently, a developer (hereafter referred to as “Moron”) posted a tirade about how much better OpenGL is than DirectX. This moron of course got himself linked by another group of morons known as “Slashdot”, and probably some adjunct groups of particularly stupid (but not quite moronic) people such as “Digg”. You’ll note that I am unlikely to be honored by either community. I’m also not going to link this post, because there’s no point generating the trackback or sending any more traffic.
By the way, I wrote about this subject many years back, and very little has changed since.
Now, the problem with Moron is multi-faceted.
* Moron’s post is deliberately inflammatory and attention-whoring. (And as one reader points out, so is mine!) It’s kind of like what Cheney does, in that the post is specifically designed to piss off a bunch of people, while on the surface seeming reasonable.
* Moron’s site happens to have a floating banner in your face, asking you to preorder his game. Isn’t that oddly convenient to have, the same day you get slashdotted?
* Moron’s post does not explain what he does. In fact, it TELLS ME what to do. Fuck you too.
* Moron has clearly bothered to do zero actual research on his subject, claiming that the PS3 and Wii support OpenGL. This is patently false.
* Moron quotes Carmack, out of context, knowing full well that nobody who cares about his bullshit will actually bother to understand the context.
* Moron tacitly implies that DirectX developers — ie, the vast majority of the game development world (on PC anyway) — are stupid and can’t figure out OpenGL is so much better. Coming from a two bit indie studio, that takes balls.
* It’s difficult to accuse someone of spreading FUD when you write this a couple paragraphs later:
Its use is being crushed by a monopolistic attack from a monolithic corporate giant trying to dominate an industry that is too young to protect itself. As Direct3D becomes the only gaming graphics API supported on Windows, Microsoft is gaining a stranglehold on PC gaming.
* And there’s this. I’ve added the bold.
If you’re a gamer who uses Windows XP, Mac, or Linux, I hope you can see that DirectX only exists in order to keep new games from reaching your platform, and the only way you can fight back is to support games that use OpenGL. LIKE MINE. CLICK THE PREORDER. BUY MY GAME.
Just say it, you fucking coward.
Promit's Ventspace 
Thank you!
When I saw the post you are talking about, I couldn’t believe how one sided it was. I thought it was going to be a sensible, intelligent discussion of the positives and negatives of both DirectX and OpenGL. Instead it boiled down to “DirectX is bad because big bad MicroSoft is lying to people. OpenGL is good because … it’s better, so there!”
He even had some flat out false statements in the post.
Infuriating. So thanks again for calling him out on it.
I saw that post and was disgusted too. Can’t get any more one-sided, out of touch with reality, and FUD than that. Well, he got the attention he wanted eh. 😦 Nice how he conveniently omitted Carmack’s MUCH more significant comment about DirectX in more recent times:
“…DX9 is really quite a good API level. Even with the D3D side of things, where I know I have a long history of people thinking I’m antagonistic against it. Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step—they’re not worried about breaking backwards compatibility—and it’s a pretty clean API. I especially like the work I’m doing on the 360, and it’s probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I’ve worked with.”
“DirectX developers — ie, the vast majority of the game development world”
Without having read the original post to which you refer, that statement alone reeks of “moron” 😛
To FerretallicA:
I’m not sure how that statement reeks of “moron”. “DirectX Developers” includes pretty much any studio that does either PC or XBox development. How many companies out there do OpenGL-only PC versions and no XBox versions of their games?
Sigh, graphics API wars. Thats so 90s. I wish people would start posting similar things about something which isnt at such a mature level of its evolution. Now we are probably starting to evolve away from a dedicated graphics API, the discussion is a bit pointless.
We should be seeing posts like “CUDA vs Direct Compute vs OpenCL” by now. Also “Havok vs PhysX vs Bullet” might be a good one.
I guess the problem is that MS isnt the major player yet…
As someone who uses and supports OpenGL I read the guy’s post with a feeling of dread. I think having OpenGL around is a good thing, but having uninformed garbage like this as our voice is just not doing us any favours.
Frankly, reading it made *me* want to move to DirectX.
What he (and many dissidents of Microsoft) tend to suggest is that it’s better to be a fanboy of open source technology than to be one of proprietary technology. Either way, you are still a fanboy. Supporting your claims on on false information is just as bad as astroturfing for a corporate entity.
Except that we are talking about OpenGL, which has nothing to do with open source technology.
But it’s available on open-source platforms, and it’s an open standard, so that may be what triggers the usual “Open Source is heaven, closed source is hell” gibberish.
The first time i read “that post” you’re talking about, i could only think: What the ef?
That must be the most elitist (sp?) and retarded OpenGL/OpenSource/Row-Row-Fight-The-Power post i’ve ever seen in my entire life.
Microsoft isnt that bad, even if lots of OpenSource people would disagree with me.
If they were that bad, they’d actually monopolize, prevent OpenGL from existing on Windows, prevent browsers other than Iexplore, etc. They didnt do anything like that so far.
And Closed Source isnt necessarily bad. I dont see why people keep bitching at how OpenSource is the good side and how the Closed Source side is so terribly unfair.
We go to restaurants, but we have no right to get their recipies, even if we do have dinner/lunch there. But OpenSource says that we should have the right to do so. How can people have ANY sort of advantage, or even compete, when everyone has the right to use their advantage?
Not to mention the whole false and misinformed statements about GL/DX.