by Frank W. Zammetti » Jul 7, 2001 @ 11:32pm
Interesting thought Dan, and I do agree with it. I guess the way I would answer it is to say this... <br><br>The idea of porting DirectX to PocketPC was in fact our first thought, but we quickly came to the same conclusion Microsoft itself did: it probahly was not a viable alternative. So, following from that initial idea we decided that using DirectX as a basis for a library made some sense. The idea is to create a standard library that anyone can use for graphics programming, games being the obvious big use, that is similar to DirectX in theory and execution, but still different. Simpler we hope too.<br><br>It's not an original idea by any stretch, but we think the idea of building on top of GAPI may be. GAPI is a good starting point, and when you think of basically extensions to GAPI giving you some of the same features as DirectX, we think that makes a lot of sense.<br><br>I agree completely, an implementation that is 100% DirectX compatible would be a huge boon for PocketPC game development. That just doesn't seem possible for a multitude of reasons. So, the next best thing we think is a standard library that gives you many of the same features but not as expensively.<br><br>I have looked at EasyCE, I think it's excellent. I suspect we will look at it in more detail as things progress too. I'm sure we'll look at a lot of graphics libraries for ideas along the way.<br><br>I agree, it won't be the ideal solution, but we do feel it will be a step in the right direction. Besides, I personally expect Microsoft will port DirectX, likely some specific subset of it, over in due time anyway. We may just be a stopgap solution, but hopefully it'll be of some use anyway!