Investigation of APIs used for game platforms

Hey Guys!

So I'm going to be talking about APIs and just explaining them and giving examples, so starting from the beginning.

API or Application Programming interface is a collection of code which is accessed by applications, these APIs work as a foundation to most applications as they are a universally used code and it means that the coder wont have to keep rewriting code as its already been written once and can just be reused. So the two main APIs that are used for video games are DirectX and OpenGL, however these aren't just used when it comes to games as they are also involved with computer applications.

So OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, multi-platform application programming interface (API), and its is used for rendering 3D and 2D vector graphics and computer graphics also its used to draw 3D complex scene created from easy shapes. The API is sometimes used to work with a graphics processing unit (GPU) to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.
It was developed by Silicon Graphics Inc and was released in January 1992. OpenGL exposes all the features of the latest graphics hardware in the best way possible. Games that use OpenGL include, Doom 3, Dota 2 and Minecraft. 

So like OpenGL,  OpenAL is an environmental 3D audio library that try's to provide an open replacement for proprietary 3D audio systems such as EAX or A3D. Also OpenAL can add realism to a game by simulating the degradation of sound over distance and the Doppler effect which is the change in frequency as a result of motion, like when you hear an ambulance drive past you with its sirens on and gets super loud when its near you but it fades as it gets further away.

Microsoft’s DirectX is a collection of API’s (application programming interfaces) designed to deal with tasks related to the multimedia, video and game programming on Microsoft platforms. The name DirectX was chosen as a shorthand term for all of these APIs, the X standing in for the particular API names and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later decided to develop the Xbox, the X was used as the basis of the name to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw,  DirectMusic,  DirectPlay, and DirectSound to which they were combined together to create DirectX . It’s been used in a wide variety of games for Windows and the Xbox 360 as well, these include DiRT3 and Lost Planet 2.

With both OpenGL and DirectX there is always people trying to compare them to find the best one and this video is one of those times. But personally I can't exactly tell the difference as they are both of a high quality. But what do you think?

Hope you have enjoyed reading.
Until next time 

Fairwinds internet travellers!

Kristine