[culubalo]

I understand a bit about directx features and stuff like HW-TL etc, but I don't get it that well. Could someone please explain to me what exactly are the differences and similarities between opengl and D3D?

 

[Kane]

They are two different ways of doing the same thing. Basicaly they are two different languages. One owned by MS and rapidly updated. One cross-platform which ends up relying heavily on developer extenstions ('words' made up by a company to make use of thier hardware abilities)

 

[cloudsBro]

what would d3d be best used for? it seems to work beter with my nvidia card than opengl!

 

[blueshogun96]

what would d3d be best used for? it seems to work beter with my nvidia card than opengl!

I always thought OpenGL is the best api for nVidia GPUs. Maybe I'm wrong, as usual :lol:

 

[KillerShots]

D3D is best used for Windows-based games. OpenGL is best used for cross-platform games and any other 3D application. Otherwise, they're pretty much the same thing.

If you want to do games, pick one - whichever you find easier.

If you want to do modeling / simulation applications, use OGL as few people use Windows for such applications (they use SGI workstations, in some cases Macs, and in a few instances linux boxes).

As far as OpenGL being best API for nVidia cards - I'm not sure. All I can say for sure is that nVidia has the best support for OpenGL on standard x86 machines.