GLDirect - run OpenGL thru DirectX?

[rodent]

Is anyone familiar with GLDirect? It seems to make OpenGL run thru DirectX drivers, which could solve the OpenGL driver issue. Does anyone have any experiences regarding the reliability, speed etc of GLDirect?

[baegsi]

How is it supposed to work anyway? You ship it with your game and install it on your customers pc? What would it cost to do so?

Also, it requires directx 8, so on older machines you still have the problem that your customers has to download a driver, right?

[george]

according to the scitech website, it is based on mesa3d (http://www.mesa3d.org), which is an opengl clone, i.e. the functions and syntax are the same. so it really doesn't use opengl, but since the api is the same, you can compile your opengl code with it.

[baegsi]

What do you mean with "compile your opengl code with it"? Do you mean I install that driver on my development machine, compile my code, some dlls or whatever are generated, and I can ship my game with those dlls to a machine that doesn't have any OpenGL driver installed? So that all I need is to have that driver installed on my computer?

[george]

no, i think it is an opengl-style wrapper for directx (not a driver)... they simply copied the opengl api (function names/syntax, etc. etc.) but the underlying code is directx. so since the api is the same as opengl, you don't have to change your opengl code when you compile with the gldirect library. i don't even think it uses dll's, but probably static libraries instead. the resulting executable will be native directx, it will have no opengl whatsoever.

(of course this is just my understanding from what i saw on their website...)

[illume]

They were supposed to give the code back to mesa3d. But as far as I know they haven't!!!

If they haven't given the code back, it is a violation of the mesa licence.

The mesa software library is fairly quick though. I had my really basic game running acceptably with it once I followed some of the optimization hints on the mesa page.

[Gnatinator]

Im going to do some testing with this on my other machine to see if this really does what it says.

Looks like it could be a decent solution though.

[PoV]

The impression I got is it was a set of gl drivers, to replace your existing gl drivers with ones that use Direct3D for GL rendering. Given that the next most similar product they sell is $3000 (from $20), that made sense to me.

[Gnatinator]

After some testing, I want to warn everyone about GLDirect.

GLDirect does not work well with AllegroGL (The allegro opengl wrapper). Fonts are corrupted and do not show up properley, my game Outer-Rim Pod Digger crashes on launch, and so do most of the AllegroGL demos (and if they didnt crash they had corrupted fonts).

I also tested GLDirect with the following OpenGL-only games:

- Super Dudester
- Alien Flux
- Gate 88
- Wik & the Fable Souls

All of these failed to run. I also tested Gish which -did- run, yet very slowly and corrupted. I did not test any more after Gish.

Ive been pretty much turned off of GLDirect for now.

Its pretty late here so im off to bed, cya all later.

[rodent]

Rats. I was getting my hopes up of being able to go OpenGL after all...

[Raptisoft]

Yup.

DirectX: 4,375
OpenGL: 1

[princec]

Let this be a lesson to anyone who chirps cheerfully "hey, just write an abstraction layer".

Cas

[Jim Buck]

Back in the mid-late 90s, there was a Microsoft intern who was made famous because he got Quake running under Direct3d (assumingly through OpenGL). Does anyone know how he did it?

[luggage]

Let this be a lesson to anyone who chirps cheerfully "hey, just write an abstraction layer".

And what lesson would that be? Make sure you write an abstraction layer and not rely on some 3rd party dodgy stuff?

[Gnatinator]

I just discovered today that GLDirect totally broke my OpenGL drivers (after uninstallation). Do not install this software unless you want to spend time reinstalling corrupted drivers.

EDIT:
Woah hey, the forums have been changing today.

[princec]

That would be expected. If you install drivers over the top of some other drivers, and then uninstall them, you can expect to have no drivers installed, and have to reinstall the old ones.

Cas

[Gnatinator]

It seriously looked like GLDirect broke something in the process (the colors were severely wonked). But meh, I guess it dosent matter now.