Driver-supported DirectX

[Remco]

I don't know the first thing about driver- and DirectX-programming, so please forgive (and point out) any mistakes.

As a reader of this list I'm wondering; there are quite a few problems that come from the fact that DirectX isn't 1:1 translatable to OpenGL. How about talking to some guys from the GPU-driver department about creating a driver-interface that gives you the right hooks. I guess Parallels and Transgaming would also be interested in such a development. I can imagine that the Nouveau-devs and Xorg-radeon-devs would be more than happy to listen.

This goes beyond the scope of the Wine project I think. But since Wine
has the higher level part of DirectX documented and implemented on top
of OpenGL, wouldn't this be the place to start an independent library?
Codeweavers has a lot of knowledge about Windows, DirectX and Linux.
Only Microsoft itself would be a better choice, but I don't think they
really care that much about Linux. ;)

This would mean that DirectX would be as native to Linux and OSX (and friends) as it would be for Windows. It would be an actual reliable platform that could be used by game developers. It would de-Windows-ize DirectX. Maybe NVIDIA, ATI and Intel would also be interested. They could sell their expensive next-gen cards to those 5% that don't run Windows if games would actually be released for non-Windows OSes.

Or are there really compelling technical reasons to wrap around OpenGL? I can think of the Compiz-issue. Similarly, Microsoft stated that they have to wrap OpenGL around DirectX on Windows, to be able to use both OpenGL and DirectX at the same time (for Aero). But I suspect that this implementation just developed naturally because messing with the drivers would be unthinkable way back when.

Remco





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