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OpenGL or DirectX?

I've been looking on the internet for some time now, I've even read this post: OpenGL or DirectX?

but it either doesn't really tell me exactly what the difference is or people just post "what they think they know" about it.

I really want to know exactly what is the difference between them so that I can at least try and make my own judgement on which API to use when create my games.

Community
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Danny
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  • As the very first answer says, are you making a game for Windows? Use DirectX. Otherwise use OpenGL. If portability is important, choose the portal library, OpenGL. Otherwise, choose the more feature-rich library, DirectX. – user229044 Jan 07 '13 at 04:55
  • I'm sceptical about the research you did before asking this question. A google for "OpenGL or DirectX" leads to a [wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenGL_and_Direct3D) comparing OpenGL and Direct3D (which are comparable; DirectX, as mentioned already, is not really comparable to OpenGL). – Samuel Harmer Jan 07 '13 at 08:55

2 Answers2

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As the comments have pointed out DirectX is mainly tied to windows. OpenGL will give you portability. However there is another major difference. DirectX is a full game programming library as it caters for graphics, networking and sound programming to name a few. OpenGL is just a graphics library it does not provide you with sound and network capabilities for example. However graphics wise OpenGL is probably going to give you better performance as you can really tweak it.

Namphibian
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You use DirectX when you want to restrict yourself to Windows and XBox. You use OpenGL when cross-platform viability matters.

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
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