I am looking to develop a small development library that will enable me to speed-up construction of architectural and environmental visualisations (landscapes, cities etc).
Super Graphical realism is NOT the priority, but i would like what i do to be relatively future-proof (i know how fast things change in the graphical world). The market for the visualisations this library will create is niche and hardware will be restricted to ensure working.
My question, is whether using DirectX 8 is a good idea in terms of graphics cards in the future. I will have to update hardware / Windows in the future. How long will DirectX 8 support last in forthcoming Windows and graphics?
My initial choice of graphical API was OpenGL, but im finding the migration to shaders awkward, having been used to fixed-function, and am drawn now to DirectX 8 because of its straightforward initialisation with Windows and, so far, ease of use.
In spite of this i suppose biting the bullet moving to later Direct X 10/11 is the way it has to be to achieve future-proofing (or as-long-as-possible-proofing)