WINE Developers Start On Direct3D 10 Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: WINE Developers Start On Direct3D 10 Support

Word out of WINE HQ this morning is that WINE 1.1.7 has been released. This development release has major changes that consist of improved device management for DOS drives, many Richedit fixes, many Windows installer fixes, and the first steps of a Direct3D 10 implementation...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjgxMA

[ethana2]

Gahh, Direct3D is the job of the GPU drivers, /not/ some API translation shim.

This should not be done by WINE, this should be done by Gallium, or heck, nVidia and ATi.

[Louise]

Gahh, Direct3D is the job of the GPU drivers, /not/ some API translation shim.

This should not be done by WINE, this should be done by Gallium, or heck, nVidia and ATi.

I don't think that is possible, as the Windos program runs inside WINE.

How should WINE be able to push the D3D stuff to the video driver?

[ethana2]

I don't know, but it does fine with OpenGL..

[gentoofu]

I don't know, but it does fine with OpenGL..

Your logic makes sense only if there are a lot open-source programs available that runs D3D natively. How many apps out there that are like that?

[ethana2]

Who cares?

If FOSSers weren't so fricking picky about their gpu drivers maybe linux would have games.

I'd rather have Direct3D9+ than OpenGL 3.

You can expect publishers to compile against Winelibs.
You cannot expect them to translate their graphics APIs.
Until Direct3D performance is equal to Windows or better, people will still use windows for games.
Some of those people don't have time to deal with two operating systems, and it's all or nothing.

Linux needs Direct3D support in its GPU drivers.

[deanjo]

Who cares?

If FOSSers weren't so fricking picky about their gpu drivers maybe linux would have games.

I'd rather have Direct3D9+ than OpenGL 3.

You can expect publishers to compile against Winelibs.
You cannot expect them to translate their graphics APIs.
Until Direct3D performance is equal to Windows or better, people will still use windows for games.
Some of those people don't have time to deal with two operating systems, and it's all or nothing.

Linux needs Direct3D support in its GPU drivers.

OK, first there is this thing called reality. You don't think that there might be thousands of patents involved with DirectX or are you living in a realm where MS produces opensource APIs? Second of all, why can't you expect publishers to compile against winelibs? They also have a choice to support crossplatform API's. That's exactly what they are doing on the Mac side with Cider. Third, if it's a growing pain that you are not willing to go through then no other OS other then Windows is for you.

[ethana2]

OK, first there is this thing called reality. You don't think that there might be thousands of patents involved with DirectX or are you living in a realm where MS produces opensource APIs? Second of all, why can't you expect publishers to compile against winelibs? They also have a choice to support crossplatform API's. That's exactly what they are doing on the Mac side with Cider. Third, if it's a growing pain that you are not willing to go through then no other OS other then Windows is for you.

Microsoft can't take us over patents, IBM, RedHat, Intel-- we have more than they do. It'd be a patent Armageddon. Microsoft would lose.

I said you /can/ expect publishers to compile against winelibs.

Cider seems to be doing the same thing as WINE3D. If it actually /works/, and if the performance is actually decent, then, for one thing it's farther along than Wine3D, and for another I might consider taking back my claims.

I stopped playing games entirely when I switched to linux. I'm the opposite of the people I describe. Since that time I've picked up tremulous and nexuiz.

[deanjo]

Microsoft can't take us over patents, IBM, RedHat, Intel-- we have more than they do. It'd be a patent Armageddon. Microsoft would lose.

In the case of DirectX, you better believe that Microsoft would win, and quite easily at that. It's simply not a case of a "grey" area here. If foss could destroy patents in court don't you think they would have done so on much smaller fish first going against Fraunhofer and the likes?

[ethana2]

In the case of DirectX, you better believe that Microsoft would win, and quite easily at that. It's simply not a case of a "grey" area here. If foss could destroy patents in court don't you think they would have done so on much smaller fish first going against Fraunhofer and the likes?

You can patent an implementation. You can't patent an interface. Suing for reimplementing Direct3D on any level at all would fly in the face of all their 'interoperability' efforts and would constitute very, very bad PR. Since what I propose amounts to for the most part AMD and nVidia leaving their D3D code in when they compile drivers for Linux, and perhaps some shim with X, the companies involved would be doing little if anything /new/ that they could be sued over, and the rest of the implementation would be too drastically different for a 'good' patent to really be applicable.

I'm saying that with any given patent used against us, we could probably either dodge it or get it invalidated.