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Microsoft Dependency Has Risks

(blog.miloslavhomer.cz)
152 points ArcHound | 10 comments | 25 Jun 25 20:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.824s | source | bottom
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bob1029 ◴[25 Jun 25 21:41 UTC] No.44382065[source]▶
The trick with Microsoft is to very carefully separate the good parts from the bad ones.

Labeling all of Microsoft as banned is really constraining your technology options. This is a gigantic organization with a very diverse set of people in it.

There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situations. There's a reason every AAA game engine depends on it in some way.

Azure and Windows are where things start to get bad with Microsoft.

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nordsieck ◴[25 Jun 25 22:32 UTC] No.44382372[source]▶
> There aren't many things like .NET, MSSQL and Visual Studio out there. The debugger experience in VS is the holy grail if you have super nasty real world technology situations. There's a reason every AAA game engine depends on it in some way.

The reason all the AAA games are on it is because they're on the Windows platform, and more importantly their customers are on the Windows platform.

If 95% of gamers ran MacOS instead of Windows, you'd see a very different tech stack among game developers.

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1. thefz ◴[26 Jun 25 05:28 UTC] No.44384433[source]▶
Game customers are on Windows because DirectX has been superior to OpenGL - development wise - for what, 30 years?
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2. dismalaf ◴[26 Jun 25 06:27 UTC] No.44384706[source]▶
No, they're on Windows because it was the only viable gaming desktop environment during the 90's and 00's. Apple was all but dead and hardware was limited, Linux was in its infancy, Unix vendors didn't care about normal desktop users, etc...

In the early days of 3D gaming, there were studios that used OpenGL over DirectX on Windows. ID Software were the best known example of choosing OpenGL over DirectX.

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3. thefz ◴[26 Jun 25 06:53 UTC] No.44384861[source]▶
Of course excellent OpenGL products exist (ID software is the worst example because they were... geniuses), but from the developer point of view, DirectX was the full package.
4. h4ck_th3_pl4n3t ◴[26 Jun 25 06:55 UTC] No.44384884[source]▶
> OpenGL

OpenGL is legacy tech, just as DirectX

Vulkan is the new shader thing, and has been for at least a decade by now.

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5. thefz ◴[26 Jun 25 07:00 UTC] No.44384912[source]▶
> has been

I was talking about the past.

6. kookamamie ◴[26 Jun 25 07:23 UTC] No.44385032[source]▶
Yes, that's the essential reason. Even though that barrier has been lifted with Vulkan matching DX12 in many ways, the accumulated mass moves slowly.
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7. jofzar ◴[26 Jun 25 07:50 UTC] No.44385172[source]▶
Has there been a game where vulkan performance has been better then dx12? Whenever they are side by side vulkan always performs worse in my experience.
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8. kookamamie ◴[26 Jun 25 08:00 UTC] No.44385218{3}[source]▶
There have been cases like that, e.g., RDR2, but I think it mostly comes down to implementation quality.
9. z3phyr ◴[26 Jun 25 08:54 UTC] No.44385505[source]▶
DirectX12 is still much better to use than Vulkan.

Natively supports Xbox and PC. Can run on Linux with Proton. The Playstation API functionally resembles DX12.

Vulkan is extension management hell (but has gotten much better, I concede)

10. Arch-TK ◴[26 Jun 25 13:59 UTC] No.44387505{3}[source]▶
If games run faster on linux with DX12 translated to Vulkan than they do on identical hardware running on Windows 11 then I can't imagine a particularly big performance difference.