OpenGL or Direct3D for a new Windows game project? Or something else?

Question

I\'m starting a hobby game project on Windows that will make heavy use of 3D graphics effects. It will most likely be written in C++.

Should I use OpenGL or Direct3D for

Answer 1

To answer this question well requires more information about you:

• what is your programming ability?

If it's high, I would probably start with Ogre (the best strictly rendering open source engine, IMHO) or another open source game engine, such as Delta3D, if you want additional features (sound, physics, etc.) that a game engine brings.

If you don't want to go with an engine, I would go with Direct3D, because it's being updated much quicker than OpenGL. I don't want to get into all the issues, but version 3.0 of OpenGL was announced during SIGGRAPH and most in the community were very disappointed with it. Direct3D puts you in a much better position to take advantage of shaders and other uses of the programmable pipeline.

If your programming ability is not too high, and you are doing this to learn programming, I would start with OpenGL, because it is easier to learn and there are more resources on the web (see http://nehe.gamedev.net for example).