Match : D3D or OpenGL ?





1) D3D or OpenGL ?

You may have seen this question on forums before and the answer usually given is D3D. Is it true ? It's not that obvious and I made this article to show you their main differences, then you be the judge


2) How did I make this article.

A) I used my good old G400 to take all the screenshots and compared them with the ones Pepster took. So the results we have correspond (I hope) to those that you can obtain yourself with your graphics card in D3D or OpenGL. For each screenshots I created a backup file. If you want them write to Barbarella.

B) For the parameters I used in HW:C, see my first post. However, this is insufficient. Most drivers have their own settings, especially for OpenGL. So don't forget to check these settings. To find the right ones, several tries are usually necessary to get the highest quality. For my G400 I used the 'Matrox tech utilities' version 3 (3.05) and I activated the OpenGL quality parameter on 'accuracy'.

C) I'm not making an absolute comparison between D3D and OpenGL, but a comparison showing how HW:C exploits D3D and OpenGL. Please, never forget this point!


3) Energy Cannon




4) Collecting asteroids




5) Collect crystals




6) Repair




7) Textures




8) Analysis of screenshots

- Energy cannon : This is the only case where OpenGL wins the match far ahead of D3D. The difference in color rendering is impressive. colors. colors.

- Collection of asteroids, crystals and repair : In D3D, the halo of light for each of these actions takes on a different color (amber, purple, green), while with OpenGL it is white. However the difference is not as significant as the halo is transparent and in some cases OpenGL will provide a superior artistic result due to the background. But ok, D3D wins this game. cette partie.

- Textures : OpenGL handles textures better than D3D. But why ? First let me remind you that to have a texture quality in OpenGL similar to what the screenshots show you must have correctly configured your drivers and HW:C. Now about the why. I'm not sure but I think there are two possibilities.
- D3D is unable to handle high quality textures like OpenGL. This can be understood insofar as OpenGL is a set of graphics functions originally intended for the professional market, more demanding than the gaming market in terms of quality of detail, a market for which D3D (which is a part of DirectX) has been conceived. Do you remember John Carmack, the creator of the game Quake 1,2,3? This game only uses OpenGL and if I remember correctly, john said he chose OpenGL because it was so much better than D3D. But hey, D3D has made great progress since the DirectX 3.0 version and the 8.0 version should be quite interesting. So things can change, who knows ;)

- D3D is able to handle high quality textures, but Barking Dog / Relic made a mistake. Either he's not using the right function, or they're using it incorrectly. Who knows ?
In fact I think it's more of a Directx problem than Barking Dog / Relic, especially since if you take a game like Unreal Tournament you will find the same problem, namely nicer textures under OpenGL than under D3D.

9) D3D's secret weapon

Even though OpenGL handles textures better, many gamers prefer D3D. If you look closely at some of the screenshots made with D3D, some colors are a bit brighter. It's an old trick to subjectively increase color quality.


10) Who is the winner?

Neither. They both have weaknesses and both will give you as much pleasure to play with HW:C. If only D3D could have an energy cannon or textures like OpenGL. If Relic's next game is Homeworld 2, it will likely be developed solely for D3D and it would be nice if Relic paid attention to texture quality.


About the framerate (or display speed). D3D is generally faster, but this is mostly due to unoptimized OpenGL drivers.





Copyright 2000 : MAQUINÉ Jean-François