This argument has been beaten to death, buried, dug up, and beaten again...

Both have their merits and neither one is going to disappear in the next few years, so I'd suggest that you try both of them and then make a decision.

Well, as you can see on the gdw message board the discussion which of the two apis is better. I use OpenGL befaucse I am to lazy to download the 129 Mb of DX7 SDK ( downloadiung in Germany is really CHEAP ), and because I don't like DirectX. I had so many problems working with this buggy product as a user and I don't want this stress as a developer. With my Riva TNT I had never problems when using OpenGL. The second point why I chosed OpenGL was Half Life. I tried it activating D3D it poorley slow and instable. Then I switched to OpenGL and everything was ok.

OpenGL 1.1 is out for years now but that doesn't mean that it is old or slow . With the Extensions it stays actual.

So the only point on which you decide whether to use D3D or openGL is which one you like more , so try them both.

Just to add my two cents to the never ending debate: I, personally, use DirectX. It has its flaws, but its come a long ways and 7.0 is pretty decent. I've had little trouble using their docs and code to get a working, albeit simple, 3D engine. Perhaps not as easy as OpenGL? Probably (I've never written in it though I heard it is very nice to use). However, if DirectX has a distinct advantage I would see future technologies will start finding their way into DirectX faster and the its already evident that the Direct3D being too difficult arguement is not holding as much weight as it used to. Last, while OpenGL maintains a strong game presence, so does Direct3D. I would venture to say a quickly growing presence. You don't have to look hard to find a D3D only game but OpenGL only is pretty rare, for example.

However I will definitely agree both are good APIs and neither is going away in the immediate future. Trying both may be a wise choice.

I'm fairly new to graphics programming and I'm wanting to get serious about it. The problem is, I don't know which to focus on: D3D or OGL. Which do u feel will have a greater impact in the future? I've heard that DX8.0 will be standard for Win2000 so it's obvious that D3D is being constantly worked on.

Thx for ur time

As was pointed out, this has been debated several times now, so I'm closing this thread.