This article written by Promit Roy outlines the structure, strengths and weaknesses of OpenGL and Direct 3D.
For many years now, the question "Which should I use: Direct3D or OpenGL?" has elicited heated arguments. Most of the things said do very little to help you decide which API you should use. There are fanatics on both sides; some people will tell you that OpenGL is the only way to go, and others will swear by Direct3D. Others will talk about how they have used both, and that you should do the same and decide which you like better, but for someone starting out, that"s not much help either. The point is, it can be a tough decision to make, and I am writing this article to help you do it. My specialty is primarily in Win32 programming, so that will be my focus. No need to fear though, I discuss other platforms as well.
In this article, I concentrate on only two API"s: OpenGL (version 1.3) and Direct3D (version 8.1). I don"t have enough experience with any other API to discuss it in detail, but I"ll at least comment on Glide later. I"ll attempt to present you with the hard facts about each API, their structure, and what kind of code you can expect. I do not, however, actually include any code here. You can find that easily enough in other areas on GameDev.net. There really are no prerequisites to understanding this article (except possibly knowing English). Thus far, I"ve assumed that you know what an API is, and what purpose APIs serve. In case you don"t know this, API stands for Application Programming Interface, and it"s essentially a set of functions that allow you to perform some specific task. For our purposes, that task is interfacing with the graphics hardware.