5punk

Dog Pants wrote:Something interesting I remembered. AMD are now developing their own API. It's not explicitly connected to SteamOS - Nvidia are doing that - but if devs suddenly stop relying on DirectX then Windows becomes a lot less essential. Of course we're still stuck with the problem that they'll have to design a DirectX version for people with Nvidia cards...

Interesting choice for them to do their own API when they could just help out with OpenGL considering it's mature and pretty awesome.

DirectX however is more than just a graphics API, it handles sound and input too, which is why it's just so handy for development.

If you go down the OpenGL or even another API route, you then start having to include things like OpenAL and then find a similar thing for input (or go for OpenGL bundles like freeGLUT or GLFW).

What's more interesting is the reason why DirectX and OpenGL exist, which from what I've read was to get away from the manufacturer specific API's which used to be a big part of setting up games in the mid 90's, in order to make development easier.

Personally for driving games I'll take a joystick over controller every day of the week other than F1 games when you need to keep speed constant round corners and powersliding isn't an option

I wonder if we'll end up with steamOS mobile at some point? I suspect most high end phones would handle the streaming these days.

Apparently the OS is available to download today. it's yet to appear though.

Based on Debian, which is a good, solid base. I'll have to get this fired up on a VM and see what it looks like.