DirectX to survive in Windows Mobile 7 after all
There have been some talk of Microsoft phasing out DirectX for OpenGL on Windows Mobile handsets, but a recent job posts by the Windows Mobile team seem to suggest this will not be the case after all.
The post makes numerous references to DirectX in both its 2D and 3D version.
SENIOR Software Development Engineer (SDE) (705110 -External) Job
Date: Nov 18, 2009
Job Category: Software Engineering: Development
Location: United States, WA, Redmond
Product: Windows Mobile Devices
Division: Entertainment & Devices DivisionLead a team to deliver the graphics platform for Windows Mobile and grow it over future releases. Knowledge of DirectDraw, D2D, and D3D a must. Familiarity with display drivers and GPUs a plus. Must be able to debug complicated low level problems and analyze performance.
RID:862920
DirectX on Windows Mobile is a double edged sword. While a good implementation on Windows Mobile would ease the porting of games from the desktop, the rest of the mobile world uses OpenGL, meaning porting for example iPhone or Android games would be more difficult.
Microsoft has however been doing some good work recently with using DirectX hardware acceleration for HTML rendering in IE9, so it may very well be that we are yet to see the full potential of the technology on our devices.
See the job posting here.
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The rumor that DirectX was being phased out had never been backed by any expression or implication from Microsoft. When asked Microsoft employees have always said the exact opposite. I think the rumor may have been started because of GAPI being phased out.
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I don't see how DX won't be on WM. It is the cornerstone MS hardware access technology, plus it delivers much more than OpenGL.
OpenGL can coexist with DX just fine, destop Windows supported both from the beginning.
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Lennard Reply:
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
"OpenGL can coexist with DX just fine, destop Windows supported both from the beginning."
this is the same thing I was thinking
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Avatar X Reply:
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Not only that. While i cannot say where i saw it. There a now tolls to easily adjust and optimize OpenGL games for DX.
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Avatar X Reply:
November 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
tools, not "tolls"
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OpenGL is just a graphics library, whereas DirectX is (on desktops at least) a set of APIs including DirectSound and Direct3D etc… on WM, it's just Direct3DMobile and DirectDraw.
What's interesting is that the HTC implementation of D3DM is a wrapper around the OpenGL libraries which are probably provided by Qualcomm.
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