D3D Still Sucks: A Teaser

I'm collecting annoying things about D3D so that I can one day write an article about how it has still not caught up to OpenGL. Here is the latest.

aegisz: D3D is so broken
isanythingnotakn: hehehehe
isanythingnotakn: do tell :D
aegisz: my list is 14 items long
aegisz: latest additions: texture matrices are inconsistent with ever other transform
aegisz: and there's no mathematical specification of how it works.
aegisz:

  // D3D is such a hack.  :-(  Instead of doing texture matrix multiplication like
  // EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING ELSE, it wants translations for 2D texcoords in
  // row 3 instead of 4.  [note: they store matrices in row-major format
  // but document them transposed?!?!?  are they trying to be different
  // just... because?  or did they skip high-school mathematics?]
  mat._31 = mat._41;
  mat._32 = mat._42;

isanythingnotakn: hahah. Yea. See, I think some of the design behind is nice, better than OpenGL. But for some farked up reason they had to jack the other half of it up so bad it sucks
aegisz: I agree.
aegisz: The object-oriented model is nice.
aegisz: And storing tex params as part of the current state and not per-texture is nice.
aegisz: but there are so many things they should have just copied from GL
isanythingnotakn: Yea
aegisz: like, wtf? if texture coordinate translations are in row 3, how do you do rotations in t instead of r and s?
isanythingnotakn: yea haha. i have no idea what msft was smoking, seriously
aegisz: and why even HAVE a 4x4 matrix then? And what if you use 3D texture coordinates? I DON'T UNDERSTAND
aegisz: and it looks like an intern wrote the documentation for texture transformations :P
isanythingnotakn: hahahaha
aegisz: they do totally invalid things.

Imported Comments [?]

elfric on Aug 26, 2005

I can answer a few of those questions I think, but I'd have to have time to actually write them out. sigh

So close to done...so close... =)

IN a week or two, though, I'd love to get together and then maybe we can bitch about Direct X =)

aegisknight on Aug 26, 2005

Sounds fun. :) Also sounds like neither of us have had much time to enjoy the area. ;) This startup thing is tough. Every thing you do affects profit, it seems.

sorcy7 on Aug 26, 2005

Yeah, but I guess people will be forced to get used to Microsoft's sins, seeing as Windows Vista ( as from what I've heard ) is only going to emulate OpenGL. They say OpenGL's perfomance in Windows Vista is going to drop significantly. Dark times are comming >_>

(wth is Vista anyway? did I miss something?)

And that's kind of a myth. They are only referring to when you don't have accelerated OpenGL. If your driver provides it, it will still work fine.

Hmm, you could be right.

Well, you of course know Windows Longhorn. So there won't by any Windows Longhorn for now or forever anymore. They changed it to Windows Vista and are going to release it in 2006.

lol, silly Microsoft, the hype machine. they should be afraid.

Oh, do I have a number of stories from start-ups. Until a few years ago, start-ups were the main thing I ever worked for. I don't miss the lack of corporate money, honestly. Startups have their appeal for sure, but I have to say that these days, I like the freedom that having resources in a big company gives me.

But yes, I agree with you - working at startups is tough. But it can be very fulfilling too!