3D Program Supports Three Technologies For 3D Acceleration
Daniel Kreimer asked:
Your 3D Program supports three technologies for 3D acceleration: HDI or Heidi, OpenGL and Direct3D.
All three technologies are faster than just using a standard VGA card-even a 2D accelerated one. Many cards on the market support at least one of the three technologies-many support all three.
Heidi Versus OpenGL: When your 3D Program shipped, there was much debate as to which would be best: Autodesk’s new Heidi technology or the already established OpenGL technology.
Since then, it has become obvious which seems to be winning. The most prominent technology currently is OpenGL. The interesting thing about this video card came from Silicon Graphics. This kind of video accelerator actually began as an acceleration technology for workstations. Today, it is the fastest way to accelerate your 3D display. If you are looking into a card that will accelerate your display, make sure that it supports that kind of video accelerator. Heidi is still a very viable solution, however; but because Heidi is an Autodesk-developed technology, it is not as prominent in much of the industry.
Heidi is supported in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Windows NT provides OpenGL emulation that works with most cards, accelerated or not. If you select this sort of video accelerator option, you might think you have 3D acceleration when in fact you do not. Likewise, Heidi with specific hardware drivers provides 3D acceleration for (but no manufacturer is presently developing Heidi drivers.) Software Z -Buffer is also part of Heidi and is strictly software-based.
Direct 3D is an acceleration technology developed by Windows Vista and Windows 7. Although it is still in its infancy for the workstation market, many game developers are already supporting it for their real-time 3D interactive games in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Because Microsoft is the owner of both OpenGL (a licensed technology) and Direct3D (their own), it will eventually come down to choosing one of the two technologies to support in upcoming versions of Windows.
To be safe, get a card that supports at least that kind of video accelerator, and then check to see if the manufacturer supports Direct3D. Most will in the future-even if they do not currently. it is important to note that many cards support all three acceleration technologies.
