On Tue, 11 Nov 2025 13:49:24 +1300, Peter Reutemann quoted:
'But Valve's Windows-to-Linux compatibility layer generally only extends back to games written for Direct3D 8, the proprietary Windows graphics API Microsoft released in late 2000.'
By the way, here <https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/25-years-ago-today-microsoft-released-directx-8-and-changed-pc-graphics-forever-how-programmable-shaders-laid-the-groundwork-for-the-future-of-modern-gpu-rendering> is a look back at the introduction of DirectX 8, a quarter-century ago. It was groundbreaking, in being the first real-time 3D graphics API to include programmable shaders. (The actual idea of programmable shaders seems to date back to RenderMan, Pixar’s CG rendering software, that originated back in the late 1980s. But that was strictly a non-real-time renderer, designed for high-quality imagery for use in movies etc, where it can typically take minutes or hours to render each frame.) OpenGL had nothing like that at the time; programmable shader support was only made available, near as I can tell, as an ARB extension, with OpenGL 1.5 in 2003, and only became part of the core API in OpenGL 2.0 the following year. I think prior to this point the OpenGL community was still dominated by developers of “serious” applications like CAD and scientific visualization. Things changed once the game developers got involved.