Important compatibility issue/question.

[miko2d]

 Hi, AH guys.

 Quite a few of us are considering a graphics card upgrade this fall. Some new offering that support hardware T&L (GeForce, Savage 2000) require the game to use DX7 T&L or OpenGL.
 Some that do not offer that option promise much higher fill rates and other usefull stuff, like full-screen HW anti-aliasing.

 Besides added cost for the new cards, they may not be the best choice this fall if the T&L part is not used.
 If HW T&L is not used, it makes much more sense to buy a TNT2 Ultra which will drop to about $100 once the new cards come out than a GeForce or S2000 card for $250+ which will not be utilized.

 Do you guys support or intend to support DirectX 7 T&L in the near future? I know you do not have OpenGL, otherwise Mac and Linux guys would not be so upset...

miko--

[hitech]

Im sure we will upgrade to dx7 at some time but in past experiances with DX if found it better not to instantly hop to the lastest version.
Funny thing about the openGL V d3d issue is that it's a realitivly small piece of mac v pc v linux porting just writting the Big V Small Endian takes more time than the graphics port.

HiTech

[miko2d]

 DX is much more mature now. While many people can still produce superior graphics engines then DX or OpenGL, the cost of doing that does not justify the increase in speed/quality anymore.

 Besides, guys from Nvidia were instrumental in designing/implementing T&L part of DX7, working close with Microsoft. And we know those guys (Nvidia, not Microsoft) know what they are doing.
 It seems that DX7 is going to be tailored to the new Nvidia cards the way Glide was tailored to Voodoo. I hope other card manufacturers will have no problems producing decent DX7 drivers.

 The list of features besides the raw polygon-crunching speed is very impressive - the hardware implemented cube mapping for instance. Just draw a square, set the texture attribute to reflective, and voila - you have  a working rear-view mirror(s).

 I do not believe that implementing big-small endian conversion is too complicated, but again, I could not care less about those Macs. I work with UNIX and play on PC.
 Maybe implementing Dx7 T&L in AH will be the last straw that will make them junk their overpriced and proprietary boxes and switch to the PC  

miko--