Well, it could be made to support any version of DirectX,
I sincerely doubt
that as it currently stands, it can
support future versions of DirectX ;)
I personally think that Valve would be interested in that
though, given
the amount of trouble DirectX causes them
(like they have to install DirectX
with every game that uses it, even if
you surely have that exact version
already installed, because there's no foolproof
way of checking it,
Helper
libraries are not backwards or forward compatible, so
you need to have the same
exact version the game requires
installed - for example, D3DX has over 40
versions for
DirectX9 alone, and as many or more for DirectX 10 and 11 -,
and
so on... Oh, and they can't just redistribute the libraries in question, they
need to distribute the full installer, because of the way Microsoft allows for
DX
redistribution [
source ] I really wish them well
in
their project to offer Steam on
Linux). DirectX is in fact another EEE/barrier of
entry/barrier of exit
strategy for MS. Using OpenGL would make it very easy to
port software to other
OSes, so MS, in the name of "making things work better"
created an
intentionally incompatible (down to meaningless decisions, like if the
coordinate system is left or right handed - OpenGL is right handed, as it's
common
in physics, while DirectX is left handed) version of it with added
features. While
I understand that OpenGL stagnated, and trailed long behind DX,
things have
changed now with mobile platforms coming into play. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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