greed (was)

[Geoff Gerrietts]

> Linux has become more interesting in the 3D modeling/animation space
> now that Maya and others run on it.

I think the big interest in and power of Linux is that its immense
flexibility in configuration makes it relatively easy to squeeze more
useful cycles out of a machine, and to do it on commodity hardware. I
think on the low end of the 3D business -- the space inhabited by
games rather than animators -- the appeal isn't as strong, because it
requires customization to get what you're after. But Linux has been
popular choice for server farms used in rendering for quite some time.

I guess the point is, "interesting" depends on your perspective.


> But it's totally dull as a consumer/games platform.  It always will
> be, so long as DirectX remains proprietary to Microsoft.  Nobody's
> got any chance of cloning DirectX, Microsoft gratuitously changes it
> all the time. And you're not going to get any help from the console
> vendors, they all want their games to run on their consoles.

Keep in mind also that Microsoft is making a pretty big play in the
console marketplace as well. Given that Microsoft has more money in
petty cash funds than Sony has in market capitalization, it will be
interesting to see how that foray plays out, but the bottom line seems
likely to be that DirectX will be dominant on consoles and in PCs.

And DirectX is really a better toolkit than OpenGL. OpenGL is much
lower-level, and very feature-poor compared to what DirectX offers.

If Linux is going to have a chance in the gaming marketplace, it would
hafta be through the success of some kind of middleware engine, like
CrystalSpace (though maybe not CrystalSpace itself). The DirectX API
is way out in front; OpenGL will never catch it. The only way to catch
it is to build on top of it, and build compatibility with OpenGL into
the superstructure.

Even that's a pretty tough thing to do, not likely to happen. On the
other hand, I think there's a place on the horizon -- not too far
away, really -- when games stop being a pell-mell rush to the next
video card, the next CPU, more bells and whistles. Much like happened
with application software, there's going to come a point of "that's
pretty good", and people won't be willing to pay for more.

When that happens, the content revolution will set in, and games will
be expected to offer more than eye candy. It's possible that Linux
could catch up there, too -- but again, I'm not counting on it. Much
(not all) of the open source application space is devoted to cloning
commercial apps; I don't expect a great deal more ingenuity out of the
games marketplace.

> Do the games in OpenGL you say?  Sure, some will.  But most won't,
> they can't be assed.  DirectX is now ahead of OpenGL in terms of
> features offered, so it's pretty clear where the game industry
> trajectory is going to go.

This has always been the case though. Windows/DOS was established as
the premier PC gaming platform before Linux was even usable. The few
forays that the open source world has made into this arena aren't
especially noteworthy. The collapse of firms doing porting, attests to
that. There's a lack of significant installed base -- serious gamers
might have both Linux and Windows, but none would have Linux only, and
no compelling user-value.

To break this trend, some game publisher would need to release some
compelling, must-have titles on Linux, and not on Windows. If the
title is released as open source, though, it will be ported, so it
would need to be a commercial release. Doing a full commercial release
exclusive to Linux would be akin to corporate suicide.

It's an old story, really. It's only bad if you're evangelical and
want to see Linux spread. I don't, myself; if Linux gets too
much more user-friendly, it will no longer be expert-friendly.
Already, many apps are building crappy-assed GUI configuration tools,
and using them as an excuse to leave the majority of the system's
configuration undocumented. It didn't used to be that way.

--G.

-- Geoff Gerrietts        <geoff at gerrietts dot net>
"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments 
when he was merely stupid."        --Heinrich Heine