There's strength in numbers. The more people that do it, the more it'll inspire other poeple to do it.

On toppic:

Well, I use Allegro && Allegro GL and I am happy with that. Have you tried ?

I really don't agree with you here.

It doesn't matter who marks the change, because the choice to only support GL and lose out on a lot of potential users is a very stupid choice to make. Let the bigger players who can afford it (iD/Doom3, anyone?) handle change.

I was illustrating the similarities between the two ideas, defending my view on it being Linux Ideology. If Doom3 paved this OpenGL path so well, why doesn't everything support GL these days?

And if nobody is paying for the hardware to be supported, the users won't be using it.

Who says it won't have an effect? Also, it's not zealotry. Actively hating against windows, spreading false info and arguing that "Windows sucks" using invalid points is Linux zealotry.

OpenGL wasn't dropped. It's just being supplemented by D3D.

So pass the blame? The fact that it doesn't work, by most users, will fall back on YOUR program, they don't even know or care what drivers are. So, YOU make YOUR program work if you want the customers. Period.

Maybe in Utopia that would work. However, the average joe doesn't know or care what OpenGL and D3D are. The developers can pressure the manufacturers, but at the same time have to support whatever works (in this case, supplementing (NOT REPLACING) OGL with D3D where it helps).

By this thread, I can see deeper insight to the reasons Linux isn't working well at the moment. Compare arguments of KittyCat, Tomasu, and others to the arguments of RP, DDustin, and myself. The differences between the arguments is what I believe the difference between Linux and Windows, and why one works and one doesn't. You can't just live in your utopian world and only support your way of working. You have to support what is there, and make the end user happy. At the end of the day, the end user is more likely to drop the software that doesn't play friendly with their hardware, instead of fighting a losing battle with the hardware manufacturers for driver support.

The first question you need to ask yourself is what your goals are. Then ask yourself what is the best way to achieve those goals?
If strengthening OpenGL is a goal, your game must support it and you should have info on your website about how to make OpenGL software work to increase understanding.
If getting maximum exposure of your game is a goal, then you will have to support as many clients as possible.

Those two goals are clearly in a bit of a conflict, you can't fully commit to both.

yeah, that's true.. I guess I'll have to figure out later on..

Millions, ok, I'm guessing but there are many that have never updated their grx drivers or have low spec machines. These might be your gran's pc, a pc at work, at a club or a family pc. Use OpenGL and there is a good chance your game will not perform well on some of these computers.

You could argue that you write games for games PC's and gamers but people that buy a PC for games buy FPS' and are the thin end of the wedge, that's a market that most homebrew game writers can't in anyway compete with, writing something small and cheap that would appeal to anyone and work on 'those' computers seems more sensible to me.

Except there are already wrappers out there which have the same level of functionality as OpenLayer and yet work on OpenGL and DirectX. You are all ignoring this little fact..

The new Neon Wars uses a modified PTK engine and it works well in our tests. Most machines work better using OpenGL, but a few get better performance from using D3D or don't work at all in OpenGL, but work well in D3D.

Yes, but that doesn't negate my point..

Quite true. Cept with BOTH, the audience is larger

I'd say there are some features I really appreciated about D3D that OpenGL is clearly lacking. What those features are aren't entirely important but whats important is !(OpenGL > D3d). Theres no point in pretended it is.

That is irrelevant. We aren't talking about the workload here, we were discussing utilizing both OGL and D3D. Most of you guys have it set in your mind that its either D3D or OGL. We are talking D3D AND OGL, so the audiences are added, not chosen between.

With as much weight as D3D has, there isn't much of an AND. If D3D works (and you know MS will make damn well sure it does), then people won't bother with OGL (especially if D3D works and OGL doesn't). Making OGL the default may help generate use, but otherwise only people that already want to use OGL over D3D will care.