openGL and Vista

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

i was wondering how the situation with Vista is looking like.

I’ve read that there is no native support from Microsoft for openGL and the Vendors have to take care of their own drivers. openGL will be translated into D3D in order to work on Vista. Any ideas how much performance this will cost?

All in all this sounds like it wold be nice to have a DirectX10 path for windows in unity in the future.

Regards,

taumel

2

Situation with OpenGL on Vista is exactly the same as on XP. That is, OpenGL is fully contained in the video card drivers; Microsoft does not provide any OpenGL implementation on their own (that is, except software renderer which is really not useable).

3

I haven’t installed Vista on my own yet so are there still gfx-card drivers coming with Vista which include openGL drivers beside of that you download them from a vendors site on your own?

4

Yes, fresh Vista install does not have OpenGL drivers, just like Windows XP. I am quite sure that new machines sold from Dell, HP and the like will have OpenGL drivers though.

5

Okay, thanks!

6

But wouldn’t this mean that for windows using DirectX as a renderoption would result into better performance generally?!

7

From http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_performance_amd_catalyst_7.1/page2.asp:

8

Performance - not likely (well, depends on the driver quality of course). In the world where drivers would be ideal OpenGL would have an edge in performance vs. D3D9 on Windows XP; because in GL the draw call overhead is lower. This is a bit different in D3D10 and/or Vista.

9

And as we’re heading towards Vista…

I’m not sure about this but i somehow expect that the DirectX drivers will be taken more care of than the openGL drivers.