Geeks Grapple Over 3D

As probably most of the gaming universe has heard by now, there's a conflict in the stratified area of 3D APIs (Application Programming Interface).

A 3D API is a set of software routines used by developers to write 3-D games in a standard way. Until a few months ago, it looked like the world was heading toward Direct3D. Developers at first were pleased that Microsoft was enforcing a standard, though they weren't completely happy with the technical capabilities of Direct3D.

That changed last winter when John Carmack of id Software threw a pocket nuclear weapon into the mix: He used OpenGL, a competing 3D API developed by Silicon Graphics, for the hardware accelerated port of Quake, aka GL Quake.

The 3D whiz kids at 3Dfx immediately supplied users with a miniport (i.e. subset) driver that would work with GL Quake. Quake players have been in heaven ever since, and GL Quake was probably responsible for the sales of a lot of Diamond Monster 3D and Orchid Righteous 3D boards.

Soon afterwards, Chris Hecker, a former Microsoftian, posted an open letter in Game Developer Magazine suggesting that Microsoft do the right thing by dropping Direct3D in favor of OpenGL. Most recently, Chris Hecker convinced some of the top developers in the industry to sign a petition requesting that Microsoft offer better support for OpenGL. Surely the company famous for listening to its customers would pay attention.

Recently, it has come to light that at least one developer of 3D graphics acceleration hardware had invested time and money developing an OpenGL miniclient driver for Windows 95. (Windows 95 OSR/2 comes with OpenGL support in software only.) This would enable a more standard way of running accelerated OpenGL applications under Windows 95. But Microsoft pulled back support for its own MCD toolkit and told the vendor not to ship the MCD, since it was built using the Microsoft MCD toolkit.

As it turns out, there are two types of OpenGL drivers - MCDs are more limited, but can be developed quickly. The other type of driver, the ICD (installable client driver) allows much more customization and optimization, but can take many years to develop. Without the ability to deliver an MCD, support for OpenGL hardware acceleration under Windows 95 essentially is stalled.

It's a slick approach: Microsoft doesn't have to publicly state it isn't supporting OpenGL, and if the folks that make the accelerator hardware can't ship drivers, the whole issue is moot.

The mystery gets a bit deeper than that, however. Another manufacturer of 3D acceleration hardware queried Microsoft about this, and Microsoft source apparently expressed a complete lack of knowledge about the MCD toolkit had being pulled back. Apparently, there isn't even uniform agreement across the Redmond campus.

The public statement all along from the boys in Redmond, however, has been that OpenGL is a high-end API not suitable for gaming. Someone should tell this to John Carmack and all the happy GL Quake gamers. Of course, what could happen is that a card vendor could do a more robust port of OpenGL than 3Dfx's miniGL library - something the game developer community might agree on - and release it into the public domain. Now that would be a standard.