DirectX vs. OpenGL for NVIDIA - which?

[legacy-Ataca]

Just a general question:

Nvidia GeForce FX 5600

Which **should** run better? (I realize a lot more than a renderer goes into framerates)

Are there quality differences? And if so, are they noticeable?

Thanks!
Ataca

[legacy-mdhutson]

You could try OpenGL but I have yet to see someone report that the game plays better than with DirectX. If you do try it, post results.

[legacy-Gothik]

You'll miss out on a few special effects using OpenGL. Anything involving render-to-texture for example. (ie Hellbender numberplates using your name).

[legacy-bandenchef]

...(continuing)...only blob charakter shadows in OpenGL

[legacy-NiTrOcALyPsE]

OpenGL is better ran on GeForce cards, and Direct3D is better ran on ATi cards. But the kicker is that UT2004 was built entirely around Direct3D, it only has OpenGl support. You might run into problems with OpenGL.

[legacy-Ataca]

Thanks for the input..

I tried openGL with Frag-Ops and it looked very bad. It seemed like the color was all washed out (which could have simply been my graphics card color settings) and dynamic lighting (the majority of the lighting in the level it seemed) was not working correctly.

Framerate wise it seemed to be doing a little bit better, but the game was unplayable due to appearance. I dont know if this was driver / card settings or the game itself though.

Ataca

[legacy-Necromancer]

d3d>

[legacy-WimpMiester]

I like OpenGL but If you are using ATI or plan on playing the CBP's then you will want to stick with D3D. ATI's are not running UT's OpenGL very good and the CBP will have a missing texture. On my G4 Ti 4200 OpenGL looks about the same, I think the color and lighting look a little better, and gets about the same frame rate as D3D but handles the low frame rate areas better. I just wish they would release the source code so the community can update it like they did for Unreal and UT99. Those games wouldn't be very playable today if it wasn't for the community renders.