Farenheit Drops Below Zero

The Register has written up an interesting piece discussing Microsoft's decision to drop OpenGL support from Windows 2000.

According to The Register, Microsoft has stated that they will not move ahead with OpenGL support until Direct3D is running perfectly. In an e-mail two weeks ago, a senior in Microsofts Direct3D division stated:

"Do not let your personal preference for the Quake family of games dominate your understanding of this market. OGL is not strategic for us... as the last three years of history in the multimedia space have shown... SoftImage has about 20,000 seats total. And I just about had them convinced to do a port to D3D before we sold them. Outside of the Quake family of games there are, maybe, two hands-full of apps that use OGL. Somewhere between 5-10 per cent. D3D has overwhelming support in terms of titles, yet we have a serious lack of drivers. D3D drivers are strategic for us."

Apparently, at the time OpenGL was dumped, beta testers reported the applications using it were running slowly and inefficiently. The ending of the project may have been due to squabbles between the two companies related to Linux. In a statement by SGI they say:

"The future key OS platforms for SGI will be IRIX and Linux and to a lesser extent, [our italics] Windows... While it makes sense to have Fahrenheit on all of SGI's strategic operating systems, it makes little sense to have Fahrenheit on only IRIX and Windows. After much deliberation, it was jointly decided that Fahrenheit could best continue as a Windows OS-only product; thus Microsoft will continue the Fahrenheit development process."

While it seems the dump could be due to arguments over SGI's decision to support Linux, the continuing problems Microsoft has been having with Internet Explorer and Windows 98 security issues may also be to blame. Only time will tell if Windows will eventually support OpenGL, and until then, Direct3D will reign in the Windows world.