I have been wondering about this for a while now...what is stopping a group of people from creating an open-source multi-platform 3D api similar to DX or OGL? Take Mesa for example, it is OGL compliant, so the only thing I can think of that is stopping them from adding their own extensions is that they don''t want to piss off the OGL committee. The main reasoning is that OGL isn''t moving fast enough to please developers, were as DX is getting additions regularly. Thoughts.

Its not that OGL isn''t a solid API, but a simple case of evolution. OGL is a solid API, but there are additions it needs to address before it becomes the weaker of the two ( if not already ). Were as DX ( D3D specifically ) has evolved to the point in which it can now deliver equal to better performance than OGL.

Since OGL became the standard, graphic card makers began to incorporate features that took advantage of those in OGL, but graphic cards have a life cycle of about 1-1.5 years (optimistically) and have began to add features that OGL can''t take advantage of because it isn''t evolving with the rest of the market. Now DX, with its frequent updates can allow for these new additions to make it into the *standard*, which allows the developers to take advantage of the features. Even if the card doesn''t support a certain feature, you can just turn if off, but the important fact is that it is in the standard.

Since OGL doesn''t seem to be making a large effort to update the standard, I was wondering why a group - like Mesa3D - doesn''t start adding extensions for the latest gen of graphic cards.

Hopefully this explains where I am coming from, and trying to go with this

ZR