Jeremy
MyGaming Alumnus
Valve working on an “entirely new†game engine
Gabe Newell on what’s happening over at Valve HQ
Gabe Newell on what’s happening over at Valve HQ
Valve working on a brand new game engine
- Thread starter Jeremy
- Start date
jangutter
New member
So, this raises an interesting question: The Source engine primarily targeted Direct3D and was ported to OpenGL mainly to cater for PS3 and OSX. What graphic API would Valve choose for their new engine?
There are basically three options:
1. Target Direct3D and write an OpenGL conversion layer (like current Source).
2. Target OpenGL and ignore Direct3D.
3. Target an intermediate layer, and output to OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Direct3D or 3dfx depending on platform.
Aside from Windows Phone, almost every single modern hardware device that supports 3D graphics supports some form of OpenGL. It's definitely got its drawbacks, but it's been getting better and better lately. Check out Valve's own adventures: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/
In short, they got *better* performance running their Direct3D to OpenGL layer than running on naked Direct3D! Keep in mind, however, that the Source engine hardly stresses graphics hardware anymore, but latency is turning into a bigger enemy nowadays. In the quest to up framerates, most graphics cards introduce horrendous latencies because of very deep pipelining.
In the end, end-users only care about the graphics API if it causes worse performance on their systems, or means that a port is unavailable on their platform. I would love Valve coming up with an engine that can compete head-to-head with both Unity and Unreal. That would be awesome.
There are basically three options:
1. Target Direct3D and write an OpenGL conversion layer (like current Source).
2. Target OpenGL and ignore Direct3D.
3. Target an intermediate layer, and output to OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Direct3D or 3dfx depending on platform.
Aside from Windows Phone, almost every single modern hardware device that supports 3D graphics supports some form of OpenGL. It's definitely got its drawbacks, but it's been getting better and better lately. Check out Valve's own adventures: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/
In short, they got *better* performance running their Direct3D to OpenGL layer than running on naked Direct3D! Keep in mind, however, that the Source engine hardly stresses graphics hardware anymore, but latency is turning into a bigger enemy nowadays. In the quest to up framerates, most graphics cards introduce horrendous latencies because of very deep pipelining.
In the end, end-users only care about the graphics API if it causes worse performance on their systems, or means that a port is unavailable on their platform. I would love Valve coming up with an engine that can compete head-to-head with both Unity and Unreal. That would be awesome.