Steam Dev Days Is Off To A Great Start

[[Knuckles]]

Then you've never heard of ANGLE: http://code.google.com/p/angleproject/

The goal of ANGLE is to allow Windows users to seamlessly run WebGL and other OpenGL ES 2.0 content by translating OpenGL ES 2.0 API calls to DirectX 9 or DirectX 11 API calls.

ANGLE is used as the default WebGL backend for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox on Windows platforms. Chrome uses ANGLE for all graphics rendering on Windows, including the accelerated Canvas2D implementation and the Native Client sandbox environment.

Qt5 can also use angle (not sure if it's default).

D3D is only used on xbox and windows hence bye bye

Let's go step by step, right? I dislike windows, and I like that it seems that it will be going the way of the dodo (loosing more to Android than to other platforms), but don't count microsoft out so soon. Everyone still has windows.

But I'm anxious to see what Valve has got for us. Metro 2033 really impressed me because it showed me what my lowly 9800GT can do, and it was far better than I could image. If Source 2 looks and runs at least as good as Metro 2033, it will be pretty interesting to see.

[fedesog]

I'm quite sure Valve will never have a Linux only Source 2 Engine, first of all they said that there will be no exclusives on their side, considering how little they actually say, if they do make a statement I tend to trust them. Secondly it would hurt most of Steam customers who are on Windows/Mac. Finally Valve says that if a game runs on OpenGL porting it to Linux is straightforward so technically I expect the same simplicity porting from Linux to Windows so a Linux only version would alienate some Linux customers as well since Linux users don't like artificial limitations due to not technical reasons.

Dropping DirectX instead makes much more sense. OpenGL is widely supported, only XBox doesn't support it and only Microsoft can be blamed for that since Windows OS supports OpenGL just fine as does XBox1 hardware. It would be a "technical exclusive" that lock out only XBox console, so dropping DirectX wouldn't make much difference for PC gamers, would make Sony happier (probably pointless but I guess better then nothing) and would make Valve save money since they would have to develop/optimize Source 2 only using OpenGL API. Considering how much work Valve is putting in OpenGL promotions and tools having Source 2 on Direct3D would actually be weird.

As far as I know browsers use ANGLE to translate from OpenGL ES 2.0 to Direct3D and was developed because OpenGL drivers are not guaranteed to be installed on Windows OS giving an unfair advantage to IE (is easier and faster to open a WebGL content with the preinstalled IE than to install a new driver). Eventually I don't think there is an absolute performance problem for OpenGL compared to D3D, Valve says OpenGL is faster, Unigine on Windows is faster in D3D with AMD+OpenGL slightly behind and Nvidia+OpenGL the slowest, a comparison on youtube of Metro Light SteamOS/Windows with equivalent graphic settings on NVidia shows basically the same fps... and everything can change with a new different driver making impossible to prove that OpenGL is faster than D3D or the opposite. Eventually graphic drivers are tailored around EACH game on D3D and I believe will just be the same with OpenGL.

[liamdawe]

Not sure if anyone has pointed this out but "It looks like DirectX will be out the door at Valve! " Mike is actually speculating (nothing wrong with that thought!) as nothing has been confirmed on that matter (I have been following masses of developers at SteamDevDays and spoken to many myself directly).

No one at Valve has actually stated DirectX support won't be there, just that OpenGL will have great support in Source Engine 2.

It means that we should get better performance on Linux with Source Engine 2 based games.

Liam from www.GamingOnLinux.com

[profoundWHALE]

It'll be interesting if/when Mantle is released on Linux as well. I can just imagine the amount of tools/scripts to help with OpenGL->Mantle. Personally, I would like to know how hard it is to Directx->Mantle vs OpenGL->Mantle

EDIT: Just looked it up, apparently there's some really nice OpenGL extensions that rival Mantle on Nvidia hardware

[curaga]

Seriously, why would you use Mantle, and rewrite your renderer in the process with much more code? There are bound to be many optimizations within each respective API that could bring 80% of the speedup for 20% of the work.

[smitty3268]

Also, there haven't been any OpenGL-only engines since the latest Id Tech was used in Rage. I wonder if they'll suffer a bit on windows, especially on AMD hardware -- everyone seems to be avoiding OpenGL in windows, even the cross-platform browsers translate OpenGL to D3D to avoid issues.

AFAIK, Angle used in browsers is 99% about getting things working on systems with old intel drivers. I don't think it's really considered necessary with NVidia, AMD, or modern Intel drivers, but they went ahead and enabled it for all of them just to reduce testing and make sure everything works the same way to help with debugging.

There are tons and tons of desktop systems out there that have an ancient Intel driver that has never been updated since the PC was bought, and users expect their web browsers to run on them.

I think with something like Valve and games, you can have a certain expectation that users will be better at keeping their drivers up to date, and i think Steam will even show alerts if you have older drivers and ask you to update.

However, i also think no one has talked about removing D3D support from their windows games either. Valve's new engine is simply based around OpenGL first, and it will wrap those calls into DirectX when compiled on windows. That's the reverse of their current engine, which was designed around DirectX and wraps those calls into OpenGL on Macs and Linux.