DirectX 10 Hardware Is Now Obsolete 373
ela_gervaise writes "SIGGRAPH 2007 was the stage where Microsoft dropped the bomb, informing gamers that the currently available DirectX 10 hardware will not support the upcoming DirectX 10.1 in Vista SP1. In essence, all current DX10 hardware is now obsolete. But don't get too upset just yet: 'Gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and, more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about. The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard - such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current. 4xAA is a compulsory standard to support in 10.1, whereas graphics vendors can pick and choose their anti-aliasing support currently. We suspect that the spec is likely to be ill-received. Not only does it require brand new hardware, immediately creating a minuscule sub-set of DX10 owners, but it also requires Vista SP1, and also requires developer implementation.'"
More juice! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More juice! (Score:4, Funny)
Presumably Microsoft will be calling one of the new features "EverReady Boost"
Re:More juice! (Score:5, Interesting)
Support of the feature by the video card is mandatory. Use of the feature by the game is not.
At least, that's how I understand it.
That aside, am I the only person who remembers reading this "bomb" months back? The plan was that instead of checking for individual features (and coding around their lack case-by-case, like we will still get to do with OpenGL) the developer would check for a DirectX version, leaving fewer opportunities for wonky bugs from weird support combinations.
-:sigma.SB
(Disclaimer: I am a game developer who exclusively uses OpenGL for hardware 3D and I fully intend never to write a single line of DirectX code. Ever.)
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Seems like the DX way would be a good thing to me; your game will display more properly and you should have less support issues. The less exceptions you have i
Re:More juice! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Isn't the new OpenGL standard coming out right about now (at Siggraph)? Doesn't it roll a lot of the old extensions into the base standard, and thus end a lot of that kind of case-by-case junk too?
Re:More juice! (Score:5, Informative)
Wait... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am running OS X here and all my games are OS X native but you don't need DX 10 enabled Vista to browse game forums
The absolute need for Vista to run DX 10 killed it from the beginning. The DX 10 and Vista respectively. I am sure lots of game developers who coded direct3d only stuff questioned their choice and started to look to recent OpenGL advancements.
I am hoping they finally started to figure risks of using a MS only technology rather than platform independent, documented frameworks such as OpenGL, OpenAL.
Did MS care to explain what kind of undocumented,hidden quantum computing (!) routines in Vista needed for DX 10 running?
You think that "Linux user" wouldn't have clue but you forget WINE factor. If I had a problem with a missing dll in DirectX, I would talk to WINE people
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
But way back when, I always wondered why a company like valve took an opengl engine and ported it to directx (for hl1) when no one would argue that directx was better then. Hell, carmack had his famous open letter to microsoft to ensure support for opengl. Microsoft saw how big gaming was becoming, and the best way to tie your users to one platform was to tie the developers to one platform. If hl1 was opengl only when it exploded, maybe companies like ati would have got in gear and developed better (i.e. not shit) opengl drivers. Either that or miss on out the huge hit that was/is counterstrike. I'm not saying valve was the lynchpin in how things ended up. But if big players like them stuck to opengl, more companies might be willing to port as their games would be opengl based anyway.
So why valve did that at that time I'll never understand, but microsoft understood the market in this case, all too well.
Why aren't there more game developers like id software who actually care? Carmack has said in the past he tries to keep everything crossplatform not because it's necessarily the profitable move, but because 'it's a good thing'.
For the extra features, I'm guessing (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, AFAIK DirectX offers more features than just rendering. If you'll run "dxdiag", you'll see that it has more tabs and more DLLs listed than just Direct3D and DirectDraw. There's also stuff like DirectSound, DirectInput, DirectPlay, and a bunch of other stuff.
So if you want to make your game portable by not using any DirectX stuff, well, you'll have to write your own equivalent for that other stuff. That translates directly into higher development costs, plus God knows if your own stuff will work as well, and what bugs will it have.
(We all like to pretend that we can write better code in one afternoon than MS in 10 years, but that's actually hardly ever the case. That's more usually just a mixture of hubris and an excuse to write one's own code instead of learning how to use a library. The former is simply more fun than the latter. Don't get me wrong, there _is_ stuff out there that does work better than MS's stuff, but that one too wasn't written in a day or two.)
You also face the issue that, traditionally, most graphics cards have been optimized for DirectX, since that's what the lion's share of the market uses. Traditionally, Nvidia tends to do well in OpenGL too, ATI less so. (Plus, if you actually plan to port it to Linux, there ATI's drivers traditionally are an inside joke. Not a funny one, either.) So the choice to go OpenGL instead of Direct3D also means that a bunch of gamers will post "OMG, your game has crap frame rates" or "OMG, your game doesn't work on my computer." And be quite justified in doing so, btw.
So, there you go. As long as 99% of the PC gamers are running Windows, it makes no sense to annoy those to appease the fragmented rest of the market.
Being able to emulate or dual-boot Windows... well, takes even more out of the motivation there. Windows compatibility is how OS/2 committed seppuku, after all. If OS/2 people can just emulate your program, well, there's no reason for you to put any effort and money into porting it. The same applies to the Mac and Linux market currently, to some extent.
Re:For the extra features, I'm guessing (Score:5, Informative)
Nah there are excellent portable third-party libraries for this stuff now, such as Miles (sound), Bink (video), DemonWare (networking). The components of DirectX that are not Direct3D are pretty much irrelevant today.
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OpenAL titles work fine though.
And... oddly enough... the thing MS changed to in Vista for the sound was what xbox is using... thus making it easier to port back and forth.
Now surely, SURELY, MS didn
Re:Wait... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's Johns 2007 Keynote from Quakecon(?) I believe.
http://www.3ddownloads.com/Action/Rage/Movies/joh
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This is correct and a misunderstanding by Microsoft of the PC Gaming crowd. We like our hardware powerful. Every little thing that can be done to improve fps but keep a balance of beauty is going to be done. (Better hardware to improve fps while trying to keep AA/AF or HDR at a maximum.)
The last thing a hardcore gamer is going to do is get an OS that eats up processor ticks in the background when we want the game to be the sole user
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can explain that one. I read a post a while back where someone who was in the know explained it (it was on one of the Microsoft blogs, I think). DX 10 contained virtualized graphics memory (that may not be the right term). Like system memory, each program would get it's own addresses and you could page in and out graphics data. This is a big feature. It also required kernel and GDI changes. This is why DX 10 could only run on Vista.
Someone (I think it was NVidia), couldn't get it done in time.
So it ended up optional in the spec (or moved out completely, I don't remember). The people who did do it (ATI, I think) got an unfair shake. Now without that feature, there is no technical reason DX 10 can't be run on XP without a few small innocuous changes. But they don't have time at this point (or a business reason).
DX 10 being only on Vista was based on a very valid techical reason... that they gave up on and removed.
DX != OGL (Score:3, Insightful)
I would love to see more PC games developers target OpenGL, but for that to happen the little things that make DirectX at
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The problem is that most gamers have no desire to spend $300 just to play a game with no difference in performance when they had to justify $500 on a video card which at least has the justification that the game will run better.
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I bought a laptop a few months ago and XP was still the default choice. Even now, most of the PC manufacturers/builders I've seen are making Vista available as an option.
It'll just take a few years to become the standard.
Thats when the next version of Windows (possible names include Aurora, Dead Duck).
I'm not saying Vista is dead, or even close to it but the entire computer industry is
Where is OpenGL when we need it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where is OpenGL when we need it? (Score:5, Informative)
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Nobody would dare claim "Upgrade your OS so you can run OpenGL 3 on your compliant hardware".
MS spent billions to DirectX and converting some naive/beginner dev
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I think what you say makes a lot of sense, except the last phrase. If games are easier to write (skipping over the effectiveness/perceived effectiveness of any 'platform'), then there are more people writing games and becoming developers, which would make the game market more competitive, and thusly we would have better games!
I can't see any reason why game development should not be point and click, if they made something like OpenGL easier to write for, I think it would be a positive for the game market,
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I think what you say makes a lot of sense, except the last phrase. If games are easier to write (skipping over the effectiveness/perceived effectiveness of any 'platform'), then there are more people writing games and becoming developers, which would make the game market more competitive, and thusly we would have better games!
I can't see any reason why game development should not be point and click, if they made something like OpenGL easier to write for, I think it would be a positive for the game market, and might bring a viable alternative to Microsoft
Open Standards has some side effects. MS can do everything "click and run" but OpenGL ARB can't do it since it may also end up in some military planes screen. MS can say "Lets drop this, it makes coding complex, nobody would use it in game" but OpenGL can't since it could be in use. Even some high end phones run a stripped version of OpenGL.
I think a developer coding for multiple platforms using open standards must be far more complex/trained/advanced than a guy firing up Visual Studio and run some "Wizard
Re:Where is OpenGL when we need it? (Score:4, Funny)
@llgaz: "No, nothing can be obsolete on open industry standards like OpenGL. At last resort, your OpenGL layer would "software render" the OpenGL 3 content instead of telling GPU to draw it."
Yes, well I remember setting up my first Linux install on an old and ludicrously underpowered machine, and immediately launching (naturally) TuxRacer.
First image: Tux happily sitting on sled at top of hill.
Second image (10 seconds later): Tux careening wildly out of control down the hill.
Third image (10 seconds later): Tux's terror-striken face as he flails through the air toward a stand of trees.
Fourth image (10 seconds later): "Game over."
Re:Where is OpenGL when we need it? (Score:4, Informative)
DirectX isn't "easier" than OpenGL/OpenAL (in fact, OpenAL is higher level than DirectSound or XAudio, if you've ever used any of those APIs). The extra price of OpenGL comes not from "the fact they are intended for real developers" (whatever that means), but rather from the fact that it's not exactly the cleanest API at the moment (but that will change in a few months when OpenGL 3.0 finally hits). In combing through this thread I'm surprised I haven't seen mentioned that one big reason Direct3D took off over OpenGL on Windows is because OpenGL is notoriously difficult to write stable, performant drivers for. An article in issue #2 of the OpenGL newsletter mentioned how the old object model caused unnecessary driver overhead, for instance: http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol002_3/ [opengl.org]
Back in the late 90's when all this stuff was taking off, major games like Half-Life, Quake 2, and Unreal had several graphics renderers encapsulated in DLLs. Half-Life had software, OpenGL, and Direct3D. Quake 2 had software, OpenGL, and I think PowerVR or something. Unreal had a heck of a lot of different renderers, I know software, D3D, Glide, and OpenGL were among them. They did this because driver performance and compatibility was such a big issue back then, by writing to more than one API they could cover all the bases (card X doesn't run GL well but does run D3D well? Then we support that scenario. Card Y runs D3D poorly but does GL well? We support that, too). At the end of the day, the major graphics vendors ended up putting out really excellent D3D drivers and that helped the API out significantly. D3D was the only hardware-agnostic solution back then aside from OpenGL (ATI wasn't implementing Glide), and the API mapped to the general hardware case well enough that it was relatively easy for most vendors to write good drivers for.
Like pretty much everyone else who isn't a Microsoft employee, I do wish Microsoft would have adopted OpenGL as the sole hardware graphics standard instead of running off and creating their own thing and creating yet another obstacle to porting games over to different platforms (and to be clear, there are MANY more issues to porting games to different platforms than I/O APIs, for some reason I'll never understand that point is lost on a lot of people), but painting game developers who use DirectX as corporate Microsoft shills isn't the most honest or productive characterization of why things are the way they are. What is productive is looking at the technical flaws present in OpenGL and rectifying them, which is something the Khronos ARB Working Group has done an excellent job of.
As far as id is concerned, Carmack is using the Direct3D-only Xbox 360 as his benchmark development platform at the moment (you can go back to his Quakecon 2005 speech for a reference on that). That doesn't mean he's turned into a D3D fanboy, the Windows version of Rage is still going to be OpenGL. What it does mean is, these days he's probably more concerned with things like efficient multicore utilization, robust and productive content developer toolsets, and having a nice stable platform with excellent developer support as a testbed (something Mic
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Some clarification: Doom 3/Quake 4 is an OpenGL title. They use DirectX for the DirectInput and DirectSound APIs, I believe. Doom 3 had to use EAX for sound output, I'm sure - I'm just not familiar with it. WoW is a DirectX title with an OpenGL engine (like War3): It uses DirctX for graphics by default, but with the -opengl switch, it uses OpenGL for graphics, which works better for NVIDIA and Wine users and is a carryover from Mac OS X support.
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I assume this was meant tongue in cheek, but in case it wasn't:
Each version of the OpenGL specification defines a set of core functionality. Other features can be added using the extension mechanism[1]. All extensions have a prefix, indicating who supports them. nVidia, for example, have two prefixes; one for experimental features and one for features they want to get into the standard.
Once multiple vendors have agreed on an extension, it is promoted to the EXT_ prefix. These are fairly safe to use;
Re:Where is OpenGL when we need it? (Score:4, Informative)
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Or--even better--a window of opportunity for a new SDL [libsdl.org] version. SDL is comparable to DirectX as it offers control over sound, graphics, mouse/keyboard/joystick. OpenGL is just for graphics so comparing it with DirectX isn't really fair. :)
Re:Where is OpenGL when we need it? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the SDL website:
From http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/AboutGFW/Page s/DirectX10.aspx [gamesforwindows.com] :
No, it is not a joke. Yes, they are comparable.
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No, they are not comparable. On all platforms that it supports, SDL is a layer built on top of that platform's sound and graphics and input device services.
On Windows, SDL uses DirectDraw for graphics, DirectSound for sound. On Linux, it uses X11 for graphics and OSS for sound.
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Only indirectly. It sits on top of OpenGL. They are comparable in that--as the descriptions of both show--they do almost exactly the same thing, but SDL is cross-platform. Seems to me that you're being exceptionally pedantic, if they do the same thing then they are comparable, how they do it is irrelevant.
How's about a car analogy? An electric car and a petrol car are comparable, they are both cars even though the way they work is completely differen
Such a disappointment (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Such a disappointment (Score:5, Funny)
I have dissociative identity disorder, you insensitive clod!
M$ fractures the DX10 community! (Score:5, Funny)
Disin' the DX10. Bitch, yo. (Score:2)
Q: How many DirectX 10 Programmers does it take to change a light bulb.
A: Two and we'll let you know when we get them.
A: Two, and a brand new house with incompatible light sockets
A: Sixty, and that's just to write 500 pages of DirectX initialization code.
A: Two from Microsoft, but after they install it your house is covered with mysterious web cams.
A: It takes a team of lawyers and bottom-of-their-class no-startup-would-touch-us Microsoft programmers
Minor version change (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway - the whole business here seems to be to force hardware upgrades by one hand and software upgrades with the other just to be sure that the flow of money is ensured. How long will it take until video drivers are Vista Only - just to force an upgrade to Vista?
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It is not a major requirement change, because, contrary to the statement of The Inquirer, the previously optional and now mandatoryfeatures are provided by NVidia (source [nvidia.com]) and ATI DX10-cards (source [amd.com]).
Both are have 32-bit fp unified shaders and 4xAA.
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Once again, early adopters take it in the shorts.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Since when is DirectX a standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again, those seven little letters get left out of a "standards" article: d-e f-a-c-t-o.
Re:Since when is DirectX a standard? (Score:5, Funny)
DirectX is a standard and de facto standards are a subset of standards: the minority that are actually used.
A standard is just a set of rules. If I wrote a blog article "Rules for wiping ones arse" that would be a standard. In the unlikely event it became widely accepted it would be a de facto standard. If the international community became concerned about global arse-wiping inconsistency it could ultimately become an ISO standard.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that (Score:4, Funny)
If the international community became concerned about global arse-wiping inconsistency it could ultimately become an ISO standard.
I'm imagining the worst ISO audit ever.
does vista SP1 support Direct X 10.0 ? (Score:2)
I also wonder if there is a license change; charge hardware vendors more or make it unusable with FLOSS or something.
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Nah..
So will people be able to upgrade to SP1 and still keep their current hardware and games ?
Yep
Why (Score:3, Interesting)
Catchy title but... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Obsolete"
You could sum up TFA in a single line: "Microsoft discusses future extensions to the DirectX API. The current generation of hardware won't support those."
Are anyone really surprised? Newsworthy?
Re:Catchy title but... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Some people (like many on Slashdot) hate MS and want them to fail, thus look for anything that makes them look bad and make sure it gets page time.
2) For some reason, some people had the perception that because DX10 was launched with Vista, that made it special and thus it wouldn't be changed for a long time. Never mind that MS has released a version of DirectX that has added a significant feature (as in something that needs more hardware) every 1-2 years in the past.
3) Perhaps because of this many people bought in to the DX10 cards expecting them to be "futureproof". Again no idea why anyone would think that given graphics cards are the things that evolve the fastest and thus obsolete the fastest.
Also I'm not so sure they said it wouldn't support it. Maybe I misread their slides, but all I saw was they said that "upcoming hardware" will support it. That statement doesn't mean that current hardware won't.
Either way, much ado about nothing. Games will continue to be made to support whatever hardware is common on the market. Game companies love all the flashy new toys, but they are in bussiness to make money and you do that by selling games that run on the actual systems that are out there. That means so long as most peopel don't have cards capable of using a new standard, they won't require it (though they may support it to give mroe eye candy to the eairly adopters).
Heck, right now you'll discover that a great number of games require nothing more than a DirectX 8 accelerator. That's a card like a GeForce 4 Ti fore example. Basically that means shader model 1.1 hardware. While many games support 2.0 and 3.0 (DX 9.0 and 9.0c respectively) you'll find that a good number don't require 2.0, and very few require 3.0. The reason is that there are still a lot of people using older cards. Not every one upgrades every year. Thus game makers have to take that in to account.
It's not like the second 10.1 comes out developers are going to say "Ok, everyone better upgrade because this is all we support!" They could try, and they'd just go out of business and other, smarter, developers would support the hardware that more people have.
Heck it is a pretty recent phenomena that developers have stopped supporting Windows ME for games, and some still do. Why? Enough people still used it.
Pierre Bernard says (Score:3, Funny)
Pierre - Comfortable and furious Conan.
Conan - So what are you upset about today?
Pierre - I've been a fan PC Games for ages Conan. To play the latest and greatest games requires me to continually upgrade my computer. Recently I upgraded to Windows Vista by Microsoft in order to play their newest game "Shadowrun". My PC could handle it although there wasn't much benefit over using Windows XP. It, however, required a lot more RAM and faster CPU in order to run smoothly. The game itself required the best video card I could afford. This was a serious investment, the video card alone put me back about the price of a new "non-gaming" PC. All this new hardware also required a bigger power supply, which wound up adding to my expenses. I wound up replacing my entire PC in order to save money. And since I was only upgrading for one game only it was difficult to upgrade for that alone, but I did so knowing my investment would last a year or two. Now Microsoft has announced DirectX 10.1 which makes all hardware for DirectX 10 obsolete. This made my previous investment from a month ago already worthless. To add salt to my wounds most of the features of 10.1 were optional and did nothing to improve the product. PC Gaming is an enjoyable experience, although an expensive one. Hardware should last a minimum of 6 months cutting edge, and about a year for not-the-best but playable.
Bottom line America? Microsoft needs to realize that features need to be worthwhile and should always be optional. If they are truly worth it, they will be adopted as standard by the general public very quickly.
Conan - Thank you Pierre, I'm sure two or three people across America know exactly what you're feeling like.
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So DX10.0 Hardware doesnt support 10.1? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have 10.0 hardware and want it to support 10.1?
Please stop posting such nonsense, or would you cry foul if your SSE3 CPU doesnt support SSE4 when its available?
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How can this be surprising?
You have 10.0 hardware and want it to support 10.1?
Please stop posting such nonsense, or would you cry foul if your SSE3 CPU doesnt support SSE4 when its available?
Well, yes, I would cry foul is my SSE3 CPU suddenly didn't work with
Oh no! (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't think I'd live to see the day where new technology would be unwelcome to the slashdot crowd. I guess it isn't surprising, though, it being a Microsoft product, and slashdot degenerating into a zealot sandbox.
DirectX 10.1 is going to be released about a year after DirectX 10. DirectX 9.0c was released about a year after DirectX 9.0b, and DirectX 9.0b hardware was also incompatible with DirectX 9.0c spec. That didn't create a whole lot of mainstream uproar, as people are generally positive towards new technology. I guess this being Vista and all, people can ignore pesky facts like those and continue their circle jerking unabated.
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I can still play my old games with using my old GF 7900 GTX graphics card even if MS releases DirectX 15.7. And new games won't be going for DX 10.1 only any time soon now. So there is basically no point. And if, as you put it, DX 10.1 doesn't bring anything new into table DX 10.0 compatible cards may already support it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)
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But is that the fault of "Slashdot", or Sony?
ie: did it ever occur to you that you might not be grasping the cause-and-effect relationship here?
Oh, and you people who are posting "Slashdot had cha
Is the developers tipping point reached? (Score:2, Interesting)
But at least the new Unified Shaders seemed to be useful for developers, so at least they had advantages to it. But now, DirectX 10.1 only seems to make certain features compulsory, thus removing choice for the developers and also does not add new features to make it c
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A Bit Late To Notice? (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot even covered it before [slashdot.org].
Just because Microsoft officially announced it at a conference doesn't *exactly* make it new news, since they made it very clear on roadmaps and everything else exactly what was going to happen, and why it wasn't the best idea ever to adopt DirectX 10.0 hardware, rather than hardware capable of 10.1 (or 10.2) and whatever the new superset of OpenGL happened to be (3.0 as it turns out).
Also, the reason to bother [elitebastards.com] with DirectX 10.1 isn't so much that it offers "brand new super features" to games, but the WDDM 2.1 bits, which would allow for far finer-grained context switching and task management. Being able to immediately switch from rendering one small bit, to starting to render something else, which would theorhetically make all of the compiz/Aero type stuff be able to run much more smoothly in conjunction with real 3D rendering (ie, games, CAD).
It all seems an exercise in futility to me, as far as the "DirectX 10" hardware goes. I like faster, I like more features, but there just seems no real reason to upgrade beyond my Geforce 6800 for the price point (which I got 18 months ago). Not to a 7800-series or comparable, and certainly not to an 8x00 or upcoming 9x00 Geforce, unless driver stability improves dramatically, and they can add more real-world-useful features, particularly without the need for Windows Vista. I'm back using WinXP "for a while" again, but I generally won't buy hardware anymore unless it's a notable and drastic improvement in Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD.
I digress, but the point is, the news has already been covered before. If it apparently wasn't that attention-worthy a year ago, is it now? New DirectX versions *always* require brand new hardware, whereas most minor OpenGL revisions have almost always included new features that also work on old hardware (OpenGL 1.5's Vertex Buffer Objects humming along happily on a Geforce 256, for instance), and while full compliance is the best, all you really need to care about is if something implements certain clearly defined extensions, rather than wondering if Nvidia or ATI have 'misinterpreted' specifications over DirectX. Both have been panned in the past for 'creative' adoption of pixel shader standards and bizarre interpretations of DirectX 9.
I'd just hope that eventually, there's more actual competition again, and both companies (and new companies) actually respect and care about standards compliance and that both they and the standards bodies start to care about what customers actually doing with their hardware.
IBM then, Microsoft now (Score:2)
DirectX 10 like Vista is skippable (Score:2, Informative)
> more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about.
Actually it's even better. DirectX 10.0 doesn't add anything you will care about either. Game developers are finding Shader 3.0 (DirectX 9.0c) gives them more than enough to do. There's no need to move to DirectX 10.0 for quite some time. Now add to that DirectX only running under Vista, because someone at Microsoft marketing t
Known Roadmap (Score:4, Interesting)
DirectX 10 and up is not just an accelerated video API but it is also a standard. Microsoft has completely eliminated the capability bits, or "capbits", concept in order to ensure to developers that if they program a specific version of the standard that all of the functionality mandatory by that standard will be supported by the graphics hardware. No longer will a developer target DirectX9 or OpenGL2 and have to ask the hardware whether or not it supports a plethora of options and then have to completely branch their development umpteen ways to support different varieties. If a game targets DirectX10.1 then 4xAA is guaranteed to be there, period. If a game does not require 4xAA then it doesn't have to target DirectX10.1.
So get used to it otherwise you'll be shitting yourself for every single DirectX release going forward. This is how it works now.
This is one deluded discussion... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice Headline (Score:2)
Oh wait... I run Linux/OpenGL. Nevermind.
I don't know why everyone is getting worked up. (Score:3, Insightful)
DirectX 10 other than a few limp patches and demos does not exist, hardware accelerated physics nope not yet, SLI or Dual and Quad GPU's hardly give a return on the investment unless you are running multiple monitors, etc etc etc. None of this is worth getting worked up about. Unplug out brain from the marketing driven fanboy/hater game and just enjoy ride. Graphics and computing power is fabulous compared to what it was just a few years ago, and the fact that MS has set an actual standard is kick ass so that when you go out and buy a card and game that says DX10 on the side you can actually count on it being exactly what it says it is. That beats the "good ol" days before DirectX where you had to wait for your graphic card manufacturer or the game publisher to come out with a patch so that your graphics card would be supported and when they didn't you were just shit out of luck.
DX 10.1 is more about Sound than Graphics... (Score:3, Informative)
Sadly though, sound is one area Vista gets no credit, yet is one of the best selling points of Vista.
With the new Audio subsystem in Vista, if you are running 5.1 or higher you can turn on your Mic and it will auto tune the speakers and environment sounds for an outstanding experience.
Another great thing about Sound in Vista is that even with an old AC'97 sound card and just stereo speakers on a desktop or laptop, the sound fidelity is significantly better than XP or OS X by several factors. For example a Wav,mp3,wma played on the same hardware and same speakers will sound incredibly more rich and defined on Vista than when you are playing it in XP. Even putting the same speakers on a Mac and 'trying' get the fidelity up, the sound quality was NOT even close to what Vista was doing with an old sound card.
And DX10.1 adds back in DirectX level APIs for game developers.
If anyone really wants to understand the Audio in Vista, do a search on Vista Audio Subsystem, or Sonar Vista. There are great technical pieces on why Vista redid the Audio system and also some good examples of why developers of audio products like Sonar continue to choose MS and Vista as their platform of choice for high quality production.
Re:Buy a Mac (Score:4, Informative)
Macs may be nice machines in many respects, but let's be honest- the range and quality of Mac games is poor in comparison with that available for Windows PCs. And then to imagine that hardcore gamers are going to replace their massively-powered PCs and $600 graphics cards with an off-the-shelf iMac and be happy with its performance...?
Seriously, get real. Nice computers, but no-one ever bought a Mac as a games machine.
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I don't understand why this argument still comes up.
surely the range of mac games is ALL games, whereas PCs can run almost, but not quite, all games (no linux or mac-only games).
or is the current iMac's limitation of 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme and ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256MB GDDR3 just too bad to be of any use? I don't know, it's been years since I've followed "hardcore" games and specs. any good benchmarks would be appreciated.
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I don't understand why this argument still comes up.
Because the arguments I made still apply.
surely the range of mac games is ALL games,
If you mean that Macs can run Windows games via bootcamp, it misses the point I was replying to. They said "Seriously.. the new iMac is fun to use an you can put behind Microsoft's psychotic mood swings on its standards forever.". Well, you still need to run Windows to play Windows games. Even if it's on an x86 Mac.
or is the current iMac's limitation of 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme and ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256MB GDDR3 just too bad to be of any use?
Again, this misses the point. It's not whether it's "good enough" for Joe Average to play new games. Since we were discussing DirectX 10 cards (i.e. ex
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Loki is dead so we would never know.
I see same attitude on OS X only users, instead of pushing Apple to fix their issues they go and actually purchase Windows XP to run via boot camp. More ammo to Windows/DirectX monopoly which effects everything.
I am just hoping I wouldn't type "xxxx company, the last OS X native game development co
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However, as long as buying a mac if you *also* like to game isn't a silly idea, I'll be content
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Seriously.. the new iMac is fun to use an you can put behind Microsoft's psychotic mood swings on its standards forever.
Actually some games which are announced by Apple after Mactel move are actually Windows games using commercial Wine-like frameworks.
If anything ships saying "Intel Only" , you will get a clue since there are very powerful PPC (e.g. G5 dual core) Macs out there so CPU "speed" can't be an excuse.
As result they are bound to DirectX policies by MSFT. Lets say MS is not happy about exploding Mac/Intel share on market, they could do couple of tricks even on license text so you would say bye to your next Need For
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Re:I'm not really sure this matters all that much (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_9/ [opengl.org]
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Re:Are they TRYING to shoot themselves in the foot (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft announced 10.1 as a side-by-side update - DirectX 10 is not obsolete, they are both fully supported. Developers and manufacturers have the option of coding for 10.1 or sticking with 10. The real quote:
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OpenGL is the only choice that makes sense for completely new games. Why? Because mobile phones are starting to support OpenGL ES, and it's a lot easier to port a game from OpenGL to OpenGL ES than from DirectX. This means that, in a decade, once you've stopped raking in the money from the initial release, the expansion packs, and the budget release, you can start all over again selling it for mobile phones which are now more powerful than the desktop computers at the time of the original release. Unles
You can tell Microsoft is ignoring customers.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft must be too busy counting their cash to be considering consumer satisfaction right now.
All they're doing right now is getting everyone who uses DirectX to hate them with a passion right now.
I wonder if they've realized what they've done?
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D3D10.1 would be fine if it had new actual features.
Re:Mandatory 4xAA is this a joke? (Score:5, Informative)
They haven't forced you to do anything, and they haven't forced developers either.
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I'd be surprised if ANY hardware was incapable of it, so what's the point of this change?
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I've never owned a card which I was comfortable enabling AA in, I always seem to notice the performance hit, maybe I'm just picky but I want my MINIMUM frames to be 60+ so if I turn on AA and it averages 60 FPS but dips in the 30's or I leave it off and I dip to 45, I'm much happier.
Better texture detail, animation, draw distance all much cooler.
One thing we all thought was a gimmick was the Voodoo 5 6000's effort of motion blur and depth of field.
5 years later in movies of crysis gameplay it lo
Raytracing is overrated (Score:2)
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Some of us find it amazingly funny that anyone gives any software company the benefit of the doubt, at least with their own money. I don't ever do that so I don't ever get burned, end of story.
Never forget that with any version of Windows, millions of adopters will take the risk ahead of you, so it is reasonable to wait and let someone else step in shit first. By the time any n