I hate to disappoint but ID tech 5 started out on PC and later adapted to consoles once development started going full steam ahead. The mistake here was the focus on consoles once ID tech 5 got up running on them while the PC didn't get much attention until real late in development. ID tech 5 started out on PC then went to consoles. Technically it's not a console port if you think about it.

1. Define "Serious gamers".
2. "Linux is less than optimal for games". Quite a sweeping statement there wouldn't you say? Care to explain that one?
3. By DirectX I assume you really mean Direct3D, which is only the Microsoft standard. OpenGL: PS3, Mac, Linux, Wii, PSVita etc etc etc
4. There is NO standard for game development.

Oooh, we have a new hater.

OK, D3D actually is something of a de-facto standard for games simply because most games are now written using it. That means that drivers get more real world use, more bugs get reported (and fixed) and vendors get to put more effort into optimizing for it. That's not a good thing because a single API that gets 95% coverage is at huge risk of stagnation (like what happened to OpenGL back in the 90s when D3D was crap). Unfortunately the case is that the only mainstream games using OpenGL these days are those based on id software engines, and Minecraft. So less code coverage, a very restricted set of use case scenarios, a comparatively low customer base, and drivers end up not being well tested through all their code paths, resulting in bugs.

That doesn't mean that OpenGL is broken. It only needs a few changes to restore it to it's former glory - GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object needs to be junked and replaced with something that actually works as documented (and with the new extension backported to older hardware, please), whoever on the ARB is so madly in love with bind-to-modify needs to be taken outside and shot, and the GLSL extensions need to be rolled up into one consistent package rather than the madhouse they currently are. Unfortunately those three comprise such a huge proportion of any modern program that it's not funny.

None of that makes D3D "THE standard" in any way, shape or form. Modern OpenGL is more similar to modern D3D than it is different, and generally anything you can do on one can also be done on the other. They're like the German and Dutch languages (despite not sharing a common ancestor) rather than, say, Latin and Sumerian (which they would have been back in 1996).

No, PS3, Wii, etc etc yadda yadda don't use OpenGL. That list is always reeled off as an example of how awesome OpenGL is, and it's just so so badly wrong. Full OpenGL is only available on the big three - Windows, Linux and Mac (and Mac tends to lag several versions behind current). The others have OpenGL ES available, which is a different API and has incompatibilities with full OpenGL. You can't take a full OpenGL program and port it to OpenGL ES without heavy work. In many cases (like the PS3) OpenGL ES is a secondary API which offers substantially lower performance than the platform's primary native API (libgcm in the case of the PS3).

LOL. I'm not a hater. Just didn't enjoy the tone of mjordan's post. To be fair my post was pretty short.

I'm well aware of the differences between GL ES and GL on Windows and Linux/Mac for example (been writing OpenGL programs since 2001).
Your post is pretty spot on. What I was trying to get across to mjordan is that OpenGL (or it's variants) is pretty big. Please don't mistake me for an API really devoted fan. I'm not interested in that kind of nonsense (although DX in general really was enormously crap in the 90s/very early 2000s. D3D 9 and beyond are excellent).

Since GL ES is a sub of OpenGL I don't see any problem in saying that those platforms mentioned are OpenGL platforms. Plus, porting doesn't have to be a nightmare if you steer away from fixed function stuff (which most would be doing for many years now I hope).

Considering the number of non-D3D games made for consoles other than the X360, vs the D3D games made for PC/X360... D3D dominance probably isn't as big as it was 5 years ago.

On a positive note, Rage coming out actually has improved the GL drivers AMD have currently. I've had an FBO/MSAA bug on my personal project bug list for a year that I was planning to report to AMD that went away with the 11.10 driver

Cheers

Ah, my comment was aimed at someone a few posts above your's, sorry about that. You on the other hand are talking a lot of sense.

SLI does not work in Rage. Nvidia has said there is no alternate frame rendering possible so no SLI.