DirectX9 - For More Than Just Gamers?

Xev writes "HEXUS.net are showing a review of a new product called 3DEdit. This uses the DirectX 9 3D rendering engine; 3D transitions; DirectX 9 Shader-based filters, in order to give you a powerful home DV editing suite. This proves a lot more value to me as a Video editor than a card which just lets me play the latest games. Perhaps there is more use for these cards even at a consumer level?"

Comments

Typo

[PhraudulentOne]

For more THAN just Gamers.

And?

[Darren Winsper]

Using DirectX to create a horribly non-standard and ugly interface? Meh, it's been done before.

Perhaps you will come to this conclusion?

[delta_avi_delta]

Perhaps there is more use for these cards even at a consumer level?"

Is it just me, or has almost every second story today had some kind of spurious leading comment tagged on to the end?

Give me facts dammit, I can make my own opinions from there!

CoreImage

[cjwl]

Check out Apple's upcoming CoreImage system if you're interested in uses of a video card for things other than video games:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/coreimage.html/

Wake up!

[NYhXc]

WOW, that's the ugliest interface I ever saw at a video editing program!

OpenGL

[Glock27]

OpenGL stands for "Open Graphics Library". Microsoft did Direct3D as a way to lock 3D content into the Microsoft platform. Only id Software's stance on OpenGL for gaming saved the day. At the time, even Microsoft admitted that OpenGL was more appropriate for "professional" 3D apps like CAD. Now I'm sure they'd like to lure developers into using Direct3D for professional apps, just as this developer has done.

Developers should use OpenGL in preference to Direct3D if they want cross-platform compatibility, or simply to use a better API. One way to do this that provides a lot of flexibility is to choose a high-level scene graph library that uses OpenGL or Direct3D at a low level.

OpenGL apps run on Windows, MacOS and Linux. OpenGL has always been "For More Than Just Gamers".

Re:OpenGL

[robocrop]

Filtering through the "open source" - and therefore anything with the word "open" in it - fanatacism:

Microsoft did Direct3D as a way to lock 3D content into the Microsoft platform. Only id Software's stance on OpenGL for gaming saved the day.

First, while I certainly won't defend MS's business practices, it's more than a bit short-sighted to say MS only created D3D to "lock" developers onto Windows. MS wanted to grow Windows as a gaming platform (beyond crap like WinG) so they made their own accelerated API. One could certainly argue that the existence of D3D has pushed OpenGL to stay modern and competitive, so has been twofold beneficial.

Second, where does this nonsense about id saving OpenGL come from? OpenGL has always had plenty of users - as you mention it is consistently used in CAD tools. There is no valid reason, other than fanboyism, to believe that OpenGL would have died if Carmack hadn't used it in his games. And there are other people who have used OpenGL to make their games work on multiple platforms (which, by the way, is usually a very hard sell to your publisher).

Developers should use OpenGL in preference to Direct3D if they want cross-platform compatibility, or simply to use a better API

What a smooth, effortless transition from fact to propaganda.

As a person who has written numerous game engines, I can attest to the fact that OpenGL is - for me - not a better API. It is convoluted and over-complicated by the very fact that it is an "open" standard, decided upon by a committee of people who wouldn't know good design if it bit them in the rear.

Just the fact that most of the features easily found in D3D cannot be accessed in OpenGL, years after their invention, without the use of custom extensions is enough to throw me off the API.

If you want to use OpenGL that's your right. But it is not an objectively better API any more than Mac is objectively better than PC, Linux objectively better than Windows, or any of the other /. propaganda that we consistently read.

Well, maybe not today, but...

[Faust7]

Is it just me, or has almost every second story today had some kind of spurious leading comment tagged on to the end?

"Perhaps this is the end of Microsoft?"
"Perhaps this is Apple's rebirth?"
"Perhaps Sun is growing up?"
"Perhaps Firefox really is taking over?"
"Perhaps Linux really is taking over?"
"Perhaps games are sacrificing gameplay for graphics?"
"Perhaps RIAA/MPAA execs really do eat babies?"
"Perhaps AMD's stuff is better than Intel's?"
"Perhaps Bush really is an autistic monkey?"

consumer level?!

[Anita Coney]

Did the poster even read the review? The machine 3D Edit was tested on had dual Xeon CPUs running at 3.06GHz with 1MByte L3 cache, water cooling, 2 gigs of RAM, 15,000rpm SCSI hard drives, and a Radeon X800 XT.

Exactly how many CONSUMERS have THAT system?!

Re:consumer level?!

[LiquidCoooled]

I used to.

Then I found out it still wouldn't run Longhorn, so I sold it.

All I got left is this damned t-shirt.

Video Shader

[sklib]

A friend of mine who used to work at ATI made a video shader demo that shows some neat video effects you can do in just a pixel shader -- i.e. render 1 rectangle that fills the screen with the video as your texture, and do all the "fun" stuff in a pixel shader. The ATI developer page that links to the binary is here.

If you look at the requirements for that demo, it wants a radeon 9500, which means that cards have bene powerful enough to do these things for years. I wouldn't be surprized if apple's video editing tools used the video card to composite scenes off-screen. Probably the same thing for newer versions of Premiere.

Re:Ugly UI, Functional UI

[amalcon]

I have a friend who works for Sun Microsystems, and he tells me they're working on a 3D version of JDS (don't get me wrong, a desktop system is the LAST thing I'd want to see Java used for, but that's not the point). Among other things, you can rotate a window, say, 80 degrees and stick it in a corner. It's then still recognizable, but it doesn't take up much space. You can also turn things around and write notes on the back. This is a REAL use of 3D in a graphical shell. Now, if only somebody would take their idea and implement it in C++ (or some other language with a goal other than portability).