AJ, there will always be some games which write specifically for hardware, particularly if they want a drop-dead beautiful demo. But Direct3D, although historically really bad, is undergoing lots of improvement. Also, Microsoft just released a deal with Silicon Graphics to co-develop OpenGL DDKs for WinX platforms. As these hardware-independent APIs improve, it will be easier to swap graphics cards ... of course some graphics cards will look a lot better, particularly if the software uses escape sequences.
Since I'm not in the game development community, I'm not sure how much of a force 3dfx has become. From bits of news, it sounds like they may be doing quite well.
-Bill |
