"DazStudio is OpenGL based. OpenGL is the only realistic cross platform graphics API. DirectX is pretty much a Windows only affair. OpenGL is also a whole lot easier to code. DirectX is a horror." (btw, opengl id also HARDWARE acceleration, it requires you to have an opengl based graphics card to function, as of opengl spec 1.2) "As to performance differences between OpenGL and DirectX I personally have never seen anything significant enough to outweigh the cons of dealing with DirectX. Although a lot of games are going to DirectX, at the higher end of the graphics hardware and software spectrum, OpenGL pretty much dominates. The new OpenGL 2.0 spec will also level out the differences between OpenGL 1.x and DirectX 9 and above." why not use Mesagl? software based acceleration, if there is no hardware accelerator present, ( as of opengl .8 spec ) and it follows the opengl code in all respects other than requiring hardware acceleration. oh, yeah, mesagl is *nix only, since no-one wants to complie it onto that legacy os shipped with pc's. ( if it was worth using it wouldn't be included with the hardware )