DirectX has a way better API which might be why. DirectX has been COM oriented, OOP design, for years. While OpenGL was handle-based, purely procedural.
> Yes, many that bash DirectX never experienced how the whole ecosystem works and the existing offers in terms of tooling for performance analysis.
Usually people don't "bash" DirectX or D3D. Most OpenGL programmers acknowledge that it is a better API with more corporate backing (ie. budget). But at the same time it is still Windows only, and for a lot of people it simply isn't an option.
For OpenGL, the tooling is provided by individual vendors, and yes, it's not as good as d3d. But the situation has improved in the past few years and keeps on improving.
Which vendors? Besides gDEBugger there isn't any tool that I am aware of, that can match the performance monitoring of DirectX and console specific APIs.
Even NVidia only started to invest in OpenGL performance measuring tools, after their Android support started.
> Which vendors? Besides gDEBugger there isn't any tool that I am aware of, that can match the performance monitoring of DirectX and console specific APIs.
Yes, there probably aren't tools that are as good as the D3D tools. But Nvidia, AMD and Intel have all released OpenGL profiling and debugging tools. Yes, every vendor has their own tools. Not ideal.
This is a bit off topic - Do you know a good source (preferably in book form) on development with Direct3D and HLSL? I have been looking, and I'm not really sure where to start. The focus is on low-level shader programming, not drawing 3D models but manipulating 3D primitives. Preferably if it is possible to do using some C# wrapper.
Fantastic book. C++ but you can use SharpDX for your C# development, which complies reasonably closely with the standard DirectX APIs. There are numerous websites/articles only a Google search away to fill in any gaps if/when you get stuck. This is the approach I've been taking. http://nathanridley.com if you're interested.
