Suggestion...DirectX

I'm sure it's probably already been brought up, or suggested to you, but if this game was compatible to play in DirectX, wow would you have more customers, and would it ever be loved all of the time by lots of the people whom already play it.

People correctly if I am wrong ( like I had to ask you to do that), but I believe that my break cross-platform compatibilty.

It would ruin platform compatibility and require a ton of work for little real gain. You can do in OpenGL everything that SL needs, if they would hurry and transition to OpenGL v2.0 we'd be better off, I think they were trying this, or at least a different OpenGL variation a short while ago, so it could happen.
Only problem is that it's more of a pain to implement OpenGL 2.0 on Windows because of all the methods used to try to stop it working without getting law-suits over anti-competetive measures.

Very BAD IDEA
OpenGL= Cross platform (Mac/PC/Linux)
DirectX= Windows only

Yes you can crank some performance if you went to DirectX only but then only windows users could use SL....

OpenGL is the "Standards" way to do it...

It's really not that good an idea, and most people aren't drawn to a game by the low-level graphics libraries it's powered by. If someone's interested in SL, chances are it won't be for graphical reasons.

I also subscribe to the "it should be OpenGL" idea. Clearly cross-platform compatibility is important to much of the SL community, and there is no overwhelming reason to support DirectX.

I am curious, Haravikk, do you have specific references for the quoted comment above? I am not aware of any intentional measures that were taken by Windows to make OpenGL not work (at least not in the last 10 years), and in fact much of my own OpenGL rendering code works beautifully.

I think that the SL rendering engine could use some work, but that work can certainly be done with OpenGL remaining as the low-level engine.

I think he is refering to vista and how it curently does not support both Open-GL and the "Glass UI" at the same time. Vista translates Open-GL 1.?? into Direct 3D calls, but curently does not support version Open GL 2.0.

Then again, It apears that MS has left the door open by saying that video card makers can replace the translation module.

Windows has never included an OpenGL version greater than 1.4.x, despite it being really quite easy to install, under normal circumstances. I'm not sure if one of the service packs to XP made it easier, but I was part of a testing group trying to install an updated version of Myth 2 with OpenGL 2.0 functionality which got dropped, as we couldn't get it to install reliably without compiling every single OpenGL library file into the game itself so that we could run OpenGL 2.0. It made the game a fair bit bigger. Installing OpenGL 2.0 first then running the game (which would have been a huge pain for users) saw it become very unstable with no obvious cause, on later patched versions of 98 and XP.

There was a good article that went into some dirty specifics but it was written a while ago, I'll try my best to find it though as it was useful.

But yeah, maybe it's improved, but they still aren't making it easy, it could come pre-installed EASILY, and programs would just need to make library calls without having to include the entire library they're calling as well. It doesn't look like Vista is going to bother either. I hope NVidia makes a push for it, as many of their cards have excellent OpenGL support.

Would also make thier rendering code bloated compared to OGL. DirectX is strictly with Windows, and no other OS uses it. However OpenGL is cross platform, and thier coding is a lot more streamlined and optmizied than DX would ever be. Plus it's always ran better than DX.

Oh this sucks! However as it is with Windows XP.. it's the DRIVERS from your video card manufacture that gives you the OpenGL functionalty.. Was never a responsibility from Windows to support really. Even back in the 90s we used mini ports of OGL to get Quake to look pretty with your old Voodoo card, and microsoft had nothing to do with it. Since then all video card refrence drivers COME with OGL drivers spcific for thier video chipsets and drivers. So I don't see why this can't continue with in Vista. At least till Areo-glass gets old and people turn it off.

That would require completely rewriting the rendering engine and make compatibility with Mac and Linux far far harder... and almost certainly WOULD NOT do anything to make whatever video card you have play SL any better.

The video cards that can't do a high enoug level of OpenGL to play SL well are limited in OpenGL because, well, they're just plain limited in capabilities.

I've lost count at the amount of people I've tried to get into SL, only to have them turn around and quit within a day or two because "...it just runs like <expletive>."

These are mostly folks who are used to playing current-gen games on a Windows platform such as Half Life 2, Doom 3, Prey, etc. at 40+ frames per second. When they get into SL and are forced to deal with ~15 frames per second, and down to single digits in crowded areas, they get turned off and leave before giving the game a decent try.

I don't think the point of the OP's post was to break cross-platform compatibility, but to improve support for Windows environments.

Yes, this would involve a lot more than a simple flip of a switch and BEHOLD! SL is ported to DirectX, but SL might get a larger userbase if it operated a little smoother for the newer generations of gamers trying it out on Windows platforms.

This would mean in the future we'd have two versions, OGL and DX, which is simply outrageous and a big sink in funds for LL, but it's been done in the past with many games. Diablo 2, and World of Warcraft are two that instantly come to mind with cross-platform compatibility.

And either way, it's just a suggestion of the OP. Although it's been suggested many, many times, there's no need to blow the idea completely out of the water at a simple mentioning of DirectX. If we did that throughout history, we'd still be living in caves and trading shells and rocks as currency.

We understand the intentions, but I think the reply really is that the gains from DirectX would be minimal at best. The problem for SL compared to big major games is that unlike Unreal Tournament, Half Life 2 etc. etc., it doesn't pre-render its environment, everything in it is live, constantly changing and dynamic. While a map in Half Life 2 is mostly static with various destructable things lying around, it doesn't change appearance day to day because someone isn't happy with how part of it looks, or because you have a new neighbour.

We could do with more performance related features and adjustments, but I think the consensus is that these are just as easily done (if not MORE easily done) in OGL as DirectX, and have the added bonus of being cross-platform. They just need to be done is all =P

That has nothing to do with OpenGL versus DirectX. Mac users have the same problem, and OpenGL is native on Mac OS X to the point where the whole GUI uses it: the cards that have a problem with SL under OpenGL would still have a problem with SL under DirectX.

It has to do with the fact that SL has to deal with dynamic in-world object creation, and the linear "unzoned" world, and the incredible flexibility of the whole environment. There are all kinds of optimizations that other games can make because the client can know at the time you start it up, or enter a zone, every object that it will ever have to render in that zone.

SL has to deal with a single avatar wearing chichi hair containing more polygons than Unreal may need to render in the entire field of view. I have an image I took at the corner of the "Plush" shopping sims, with 512m draw distance, that contains more polygons than most entire levels in other games. And all of it had to re-render for every frame, the client couldn't turn part of it into a texture map like Unreal does because it had no way of knowing whether any of it would still look the same from one frame to the next.

THAT is the real problem, and it's a problem that can't be fixed without radically changing the way SL works. Switching to DirectX will do nothing to solve it, and given how hard the problem is I think SL's doing an incredibly good job at it.

Moving SL to DX on windows will mean that Lindens have to work on two versions of the game (well almost 2), and there would come some compatibility issues where one thing works fine on mac while does not work on windows and vice versa.

Plus invisi-prims would probably stop working

Nah, they'd just cast shadows too