Ok, not meant to start a flamewar but this has to be said:
I started 3D programing whit Blitz3D but like a lot other users I realized that Blitz3D couldn't give me everything I wanted for things like GUI or exe size or speed or OOP. I moved to a few other languages and I'm very happy that mark released this B3D SDK. Consider that I'm a Vista user with a GF 8800 GTS and I didn't bought that stuff because I wanted to spend some money. But even today DirectX 7 has some advantages over newer releases of DX or OpenGL. 80% of the people my games are targeting at users that have something like a GeForce 4 MX in their PCs. And now I'm able to reach those 80%. Before I've used OpenGL but even with some caps locked text saying "INSTALL THE LATEST DRIVERS FOR YOUR GRAPHICS CARD TO GET DECENT OPENGL PERFORMANCE!" most of the people just don't get it.
So stop crying about B3D SDK being a useless piece of software. If you don't want to use it then don't use it. Use your Truevision3D, 3DImpact, Torque or whatever. But let us B3D SDK users use the B3D SDK!
I started 3D programing whit Blitz3D but like a lot other users I realized that Blitz3D couldn't give me everything I wanted for things like GUI or exe size or speed or OOP. I moved to a few other languages and I'm very happy that mark released this B3D SDK. Consider that I'm a Vista user with a GF 8800 GTS and I didn't bought that stuff because I wanted to spend some money. But even today DirectX 7 has some advantages over newer releases of DX or OpenGL. 80% of the people my games are targeting at users that have something like a GeForce 4 MX in their PCs. And now I'm able to reach those 80%. Before I've used OpenGL but even with some caps locked text saying "INSTALL THE LATEST DRIVERS FOR YOUR GRAPHICS CARD TO GET DECENT OPENGL PERFORMANCE!" most of the people just don't get it.
So stop crying about B3D SDK being a useless piece of software. If you don't want to use it then don't use it. Use your Truevision3D, 3DImpact, Torque or whatever. But let us B3D SDK users use the B3D SDK!