nice looking 3D engine.

[marzecTM]

@musicalglass nice advertisement you posted.

opengl is as valuable as directx.

here a quick guide:

want to easily support win32/xbox: use directx
want to easily support win32/mobile phones/linux/playstation 3: use opengl

and again. quake 1 to 3 engines are under gpl, they are pure c so check them out. also the descent 1 & 2 engines are gpled so is the homeworld engine. then there's the dukenukem 3d engine and the shadow warrior engine ( which is really the successor of the duke engine ).

[musicalglass]

Don't really care to launch a discussion on which is better between OpenGL or DirectX either.
Clearly if you're a Mac user, it's readily available. I gave away my G4 because I got tired of spending thousands of hours watching my computer reboot when I could have been getting work done. I gave Apple the benefit of the doubt 1001 times and they let me down consistently time and time again to the point where I said I don't care anymore if Steve Jobs is a really nice, down to earth kind of guy and Bill Gates is a demon from Hell, I want a product I can use to get professional quality work done on. While I have adamantly talked friends into getting Macs along the way, I regret having done so as they have only amounted to endless headaches and I've watched them blow far too much to accomplish what they could have for two thirds the same investment in time and money.
Let's put aside the fact that some 90% of the world is using PCs here and if you want OpenGL, you have to go and download it.
Another advantage to DirectX is that there will be up to date support for all the latest 3D graphics cards. So you only have to tie into it once, and you have a system which can automatically adjust itself to whatever video cards people may have.
I would not lock FreeBasic into any one 3D rendering system, but would encourage simultaneous support for making it compatible with as many rendering engines as possible.
Ultimately, being that this is a GNU project, it would be nice to eventually incorporate a 3D graphics engine which is independent and can run on virtually any system like BASIC can. But that would likely be a software based solution. If you want to take advantage of people's 3D graphics cards, what are you going to do? Sit there and write a BASIC driver for each and every one of them?
Once again, if we're thinking in terms of XML extensibility here, we might want to take a comparative look at the languages: OpenGL and DirectX for instance and determine what is similar about the commands and such and consider the possibility of developing an intermediary language of sorts to make it possible to output applications simultaneously in as many platforms as possible.
After all FreeBasic is set up to run on all these different platforms. We should keep an open mind as to what the potentials are instead of pushing our favorite products.
I am suggesting DirectX by consideration of economic feasability. Not because of patriotism or anything.
But if you want to hear me plug something: I am far happier with my Dell than I ever as with any Apple products.

[marzecTM]

who pays you?

nah, directx is all nice and nifty, but i doubt a port of the headers would be a good idea atm. rumors are that the new directx will have great changes to it ( longhorn anyone ). besides directx is com, com is oo. sure there's c headers and wrappers out there, go port them ppl will be greatful.

seriously though your posts sounds like you are advertising for microsoft. stop that. directx is as usable/useless as opengl is. your xbox argument is a bad one. opengl is in fact the industry standard if it comes to crossplattform compatibility, that's a fact.

i use directx in many of my applications, it's pretty neat in terms of functionality. i'm neither pro nor conter directx really, i just think that opengl is easier to use and better supported on other plattforms too.

one solution would be to write a generic gfx interface that let's you chose over the backend implementation ( directx & opengl ) and provides the functionality of both apis. go ahead implement this and everybody will be happy.

fazit: use what is appropriate. period

edit:
besides, there's the 3d engine list http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html last updated 2000 so a little bit outdated but it features a lot of engines that are still around and maintained. also a look on sourceforge will bring up some nice engines that are crossplattform.

writting a general purpose 3d engine is an immense task. check when ogre and irrlicht started and compare them to commercial products. those guys did a good job, don't get me wrong. but it needs a lot of dedication to maintain and continue developement of such a free engine.

i don't get where this xml thing comes from. if you want a scriptlanguage that lets you define 3d scenes easily check out vrml.

and i slightly remember that i had to download directx last time i setup my pc. i also downloaded the latest drivers for my graphicscard that had the opengl drivers installed. and for some reason i just couldn't find directx for linux...

<bash>free software for free ppl</bash> hehe nah j/K

[ShadowWolf]

musicalglass from what i understand are you advocating for a 3d engine to be built in freebasic runtime ? i.e. somthing like darkbasic ?

if that what you want it's never ever going to happen. Freebasic is attamping to be well a serriouse devoplement platform to fill the runtime with such extra bloat would make the language look like a joke.

Freebasic is fallowing the C way of doing things keep the runtime as small as possible and use lib for everything else. i.e. if you want a 3d engine go find a C 3d engine lib and link to it. Freebasic can link to can C lib you can think of and with some hackish code you can link to c++ lib's.

[Nexinarus]

What ever happened to 2D engines like in the NES.. lets go back to the 80's for a sec...

[marzecTM]

@nex agreed 3d is for the posers...

[Dr_Davenstein]

2D? Have you seen the engine by Chaos? It's nice and smooth. The guy moves really cool too.

About the DirectX thing...
Who cares? Why does any of that even matter? Everything we get around here is free. You shouldn't bitch when you're in a breadline. There is absolutely no reason to argue about any of this.

[IHateNintendo]

"anyone who wants a darkbasic style of making games in freebasic is the worst kind of newbie."

but seriously, I still have a hard time understanding how simply loading 3d objects and making them move works in freebasic. I've looked through all the 3D tuts possible on various sites.

but I'm sure one day someone will come up with better tutorials or another SDL that will make life a little easier.

i do indeed understand that this thing is still new.

[SJ Zero]

Don't take this the wrong way, but while fb is new, OpenGL isn't.

Come to your own conclusions.

[marzecTM]

"anyone who wants a darkbasic style of making games in freebasic is the worst kind of newbie."

but seriously, I still have a hard time understanding how simply loading 3d objects and making them move works in freebasic. I've looked through all the 3D tuts possible on various sites.

but I'm sure one day someone will come up with better tutorials or another SDL that will make life a little easier.

i do indeed understand that this thing is still new.

opengl headers are 100% ported, with the gfxlib you don't even have to care about setting up a device context for ogl on windows etc. it can't get easier. sadly enought there'S no such function as loadMyHalfLife2CloneLevelAndRenderIt( ). 3d coding is still one of the places where you have to do some research

being the friendly neighborhood guy i am i give you some places and keywords for google to start.

large fundus of gamedev/gfxdev related articles focusing on a lot of different topics
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/

same as above, different site
http://www.flipcode.org

some keywords for google:

+ opengl red book
+ nehe tutorials ( though i personally find them annoying and bad as they are nothing but a plain code dump

also a reference of opengl commands might come in handy. google for

+ opengl chm

to get the compiled html reference of opengl