To be or not to be....OpenGL or Direct3D

[cblodget]

I guess im not realy clear on wich rendering option is the best choice here. What im looking for is, wich rendering option provides the smoothest, best looking game experience? Or is there any real diference in the performance of the two options at all?

I'm having the problem of the client not defaulting to full screen mode when i start up the game. So i guess i need to pick one. I have not tried the OpenGL setting yet but using the Direct3D setting loads the game in fullscreen like it supposed to. So i guess what i need to know is, is there any reason to use the OpenGL settings as opposed to the Direct3D settings. Because i want to use the setting that will work best with my system.

here are my system specs.

WindowsXP SP2
AMD athalon 2.1GHz
NVidia GF FX 5200 (256MB) w/ current drivers
512 MB ram (DDR)
Nforce2 onboard sound.
using DirectX 9c

[bkwrm13]

Typically Nvidia cards run better than ATI cards with OpenGL, so I'd try that option if I were you. With the Nvidia "The way its meant to be played" logo dispayed when the game loads, I'm guessing they've optimized the game for OpenGL too.

[cblodget]

thanks for the reply, i think ill test out the OpenGL settings tonight and see if i notice any reasonable diference in game performance. So far i have been lucky enough not to have any performance issues other than the full sceen bug (knock on wood).

[bkwrm13]

So did it help cblodget?

[Cilar]

The Direct3D mode was made because there were big issue with ATI graphic cards under OpenGL.

[cblodget]

actualy running my NVidia card in OpenGL mode forced the game to once again "forget" that it is supposed to be in fullscreen mode. but i did notice slightly smoother performance in OpenGL mode (less "please wait" lag boxes). just to bad i cant use it in fullscreen mode like its supposed to be or i would probably prefer to use the OpenGL setting.

It kind of erks me when game developers put on there "blinders" and only focus on designing a game around certain product configurations. meaning they mainly support those with Nvidia cards or cards designed primarily around utilizing D3D. how many games out there do you see with the "designed for RADEON" logos as compaired to those that have "playes best with NVidia" stamped right there on the box. wich leave alot of other very good cards and card manufaturer's standing in the background and forcing them to conform to the common accepted practice that D3D should be the " be-all and end-all" of video performance software.

[bkwrm13]

Well, I guess a lot of people see D3D as tainted by Microsoft and OpenGL has been championed by the open source folks, so there's always going to be a split camp. I'd love it if everyone would just choose OpenGL, but most gaming is still done on Windows.

Personally, I'm just glad I'm not working at Nevrax's technical graphics department.

[cacophony]

nVidia tends to run OpenGL better and ATi tends to run D3D better. That's a good general rule, but auto-detection would be the best if it works for you and is available.

[cblodget]

unfortunalty as i stated when using the forced OpenGL setting the game wont run in full screen mode. so unless nevrax decides to toss in a little more OpenGL lovin im gona have to go with the forced D3D mode as my auto detect mode defaults me to the OpenGL configuration. more than likely because, as you stated, NVidia cards are designed to run beter with this configuration

[usagiyo]

I tried D3D pre-patch (todays patch) and crashed whenever the rendering got heavy, so switched to openGL. Seemed to work fine on my Radion 9100 (non agp) 128Mbyte PCI card.

I put it back today (because of patch) to D3D and we'll see how it goes, I'm probably going back to OpenGL because the mouse behavior under D3D in these games is unbearable. If I remember correctly, I had the exact same mouse clunky problems with SWG -- everything was find, things rendered fast and I was able to be at quality with acceptable performance, but no matter what I set it to, my mouse underperformed in D3D.