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The People Behind DirectX 10
ThinSkin writes "In the first of a three-part series covering the people behind the new DirectX 10, ExtremeTech interviews Microsoft's David Blythe and Chris Donahue to discuss the development, decisions, and future of the new API. They answer several questions such as how different it will be than DX9, why it will only be for Vista (and not for XP), and when we might be able to see it."
It better not be called "X11"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"questions such as how different it will be than DX9, why it will only be for Vista (and not for XP)"
Oh... I don't know... It couldn't be so people will buy vista.
Becuse if somebody found bug in Vista, then it's DX10 fault, period.
Seems more like a bunch of pre-approved PR junk... Some sample 'questions':
A lot of people are complaining, "Oh, why won't we have DirectX 10 for Windows XP." There's a good technical explanation for that, where it's really not possible to do what DX10 does in the Windows XP driver model."
So if the decision had been made, "Yes, we're going to try to make all this work on XP," you'd really have to sort of hamstring DirectX 10. You'd have to say, "Then we can't do this, we can't do that..."
You could even see the graphics card having a big hand in doing some of the stuff that was traditionally done on the CPU. Things like collision detection, or calculating obscured geometry so you don't have to render it. You start to see a lot of flexibility in how developers can use both the geometry shader and the stream-out-to-memory function together.
Video is another area where you're starting to see the graphics card manufacturers doing a lot of fun stuff with their video processing using the power of the GPU. And you could see DX10, especially with the reduced overhead, enabling more powerful video processing on the graphics unit.
and began panicking... no more X10 pop unders!
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From the comments so far, it seems that people feel that Microsoft is somehow failing in a sacred duty by not making DirectX 10 available for Windows XP.
Why should Microsoft make DirectX 10 available for old versions of Windows? How many new video drivers released for Linux in 2006 support early 2.4.x kernels?
Sometimes making progress means saying "sorry, we don't support that; you'll have to upgrade to something newer".
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Because the more lock-ins Microsoft has the harder it is for users to switch to alternatives.
Why have we had lawsuits about media-players and the like, while something like DirectX has been left alone? I mean, DirectX (or more precisely: Direct3D) is replacing OpenGL, especially in games. And DirectX runs only on Windows. Doesn't that mean that porting those games to other platforms would end up being very difficult, and if you wanted to play games on your PC, you practically needed Windows (well, that's true even today, but the reasons for that are elsewhere).
In short: authorities were concerned about Microsoft dominance in the web-browser market. And they have been worried about Mcirosoft dominance in the media-playback market. Yet they are not concerned about DirectX and the dominance it gives to Microsoft? How come?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
In linux, the drivers run in kernel mode. You can write userspace non-root filesystems, but not device drivers.
Why is it that this glue is (ultimately) dictating to the materials what properties they must possess? That's a pretty backwards way of doing things IMO.
Yeah, stupid metaphor. I tried, at least.
I must be the only person who misread it as "DirectX 1.0", like we were going to get some sort of historical retrospective from The Man Himself, Alex St John, on the travesty that was 1.0 :)
I mean really? What obligation are they under? You have a copy of an operating system that runs everything it's supposed to now and in the immediate future. There was nothing in the deal that said "Your copy of Windows XP will continue to support the bleeding edge games for 10 years after we release it".
Come on.
How many programs only run on Mac OSX and don't run on OS9?
I hardly see how a finger is being given at all here... and it's not like you haven't had fair warning that Vista is coming out.. hell it's late, late, late... so there's no big 'whoops I bought XP because I didn't know Vista was coming out'.
The main deal is that Vista will still run all the XP stuff, so you haven't had the 'finger' given to you for buying XP, because when you do upgrade to Vista down the track you won't have to upgrade all your software as well if you don't want to... that would be giving the finger... kinda like how Apple did with OSX not really supporting old OS9 programs.
Man, Microsoft can do no right by some people, no matter how hard they actually do try.
Why don't MSFT simple submit a proposal to extend OpenGL in a open way?
Why *should* they? And don't answer with some ideological doctrine, give a *practical* reason why Microsoft should do what you propose. DirectX has been wildly successful without any submissions to extend OpenGL.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
The X11 drivers run in user-mode. The Kernel module is only a interface to the hardware. The bulk of the [graphics] drivers are user-mode.
How many games support OpenGL these days? DirectX runs on Windows and also both XBoxes, so why the hell would they do anything in OpenGL?
While they're at it, why don't they convert everything over to OpenOffice and hey, just give up on Windows and switch to Linux?
Not true; see Kam VedBrat's comments on Vista and OpenGL support. To summarize, Microsoft will provide an OpenGL 1.4 implementation that sits on top of Direct3D, legacy (XP-era) OpenGL ICDs are supported but will disable Aero, and new OpenGL ICDs may be written that works with Aero.
I remember when Microsoft Windows NT 4 was released with its new in-kernel video drivers. Critics of OS/2 were saying how much better it would be than OS/2 which had the video drivers working in user mode - as DLLs loaded by Presentation Manager.
... but it rather limits the multitasking ability of the system turining it into a fancy DOS.
Sad truth, although it was easily demonstrated that DIVE was faster than DirectX on the same hardware, practically no games were ever written for OS/2 with people citing the critics.
Hopefully with the new driver model, they can address one of DirectX's big shortcomings which has existed since its beginnings - blitting graphics with an obscuring window intersecting it. With DIVE, the fps increases as there is less pixels to blit. DirectX the performance goes down as it makes heavy work with many more kernel-mode/user-mode transitions. Of course, to solve this, Windows games opted for full-screen mode so that there will be no obscuring frames above the window
When I used to play games, I rather enjoyed having the game run in a window next to my wordprocessor... Excellent for turn based games like Civilization.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Basically, DirectX is meant as an Interface between Windows and (Video) hardware. It says "if you call my function xxx, I will translate that to a certain call to the hardware". It is terribly easy to make DirectX 10 compatible with XP. You just take DirectX 9, add the new calls, and let them return "sorry, I cannot do that". Then game developers will simply add an option "activate advanced DirectX 10 features" to show off the cool stuff, but any XP user will still be able to play the game. So there is no good reason to exclude XP from the new games market, as Microsoft is trying to do.
Even better, they could (and IMHO should) open up the source code of DirectX. I am dead certain that an XP version of DirectX 10 would be created in days.
But of course, they have great MARKETING reasons why they will not do that. Yes, it is all marketing. The rest of the argumentation is blah.
It better not be called "X11"...
Unless they actually mean it...
What's keeping MS from backporting some of the new Longhorn kernel/driver niftiness to XP? Oh, right. Money. There's no money in adding new things to an already-sold product. It's all about selling the new hotness.
So, one of the first complains I read over here about Windows is how they have been carrying a legacy of compatibility from Win 3.11 days. Now, they try to simplify the platform (didnt Mac did that when going from OS9 to OSX?, and from PPC to Intel?) and everybody starts whining.
What is keeping Microsoft from backporting is the complexity it would yield, Windows XP is a mess, thats why they had to restart the development of Longhorn to a new model. They decided to throw away the compatilibity and improve the technology.
I do not know how good or bad will vista be, I use Fedora anyways, but I think there is just so much bullshit people can throw at Microsoft, IMHO they are *trying* to do something fine, for a change.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Why argue with an external body dominated by guys from a different side of the industry (cad/cam) just to add some capabilities to your platform?
Many on Slashdot would say its to tighten M$'es dominance - true, but they are probably fed up with standards body bloat too - why let an idea slip due to bureaucracy at some working group when you can implement it now yourself and do the standards thing later when your customers FORCE you to.
Interestingly DirectX adoption seemed to accelerate after NVIDIA tightened its market share in the early part of this decade as 'custom' OpenGL render paths for 3dfx and others disappeared (as the hardware vendors did) in games and were replaced with DirectX 6/7 paths.
By that logic, I should get a free copy of Windows XP because a computer I bought in 1995 came with Windows 95! After all, since DirectX stopped working on Win95 with version 8.0a, why not get a free upgrade to XP to get me past the hump?
How about those poor souls with NT 4.0? Stuck at DirectX 3, I hear. Damn.
Microsoft is a company out to make money. You're lucky they even give out software updates for free; their EULAs certainly go out of its way to specify that you have no guarantees that what you bought from them works, let alone any kind of continued support.
So you can either pirate Vista (because MS activation is not an issue, but chances are you pirate the games too if you do this), pay for Vista anyway, or use something like Cedega or Wine to game under Linux.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had some tricks up their sleaves related to this for OS 10.5, assuming they get their heads of out the sand with regards to the final form of entertainment, interactive video games, that they don't have included in Front Row.
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that DirectX 10 forces you to upgrade to Vista, because all the new shiny metal hardware like new GPUs will be made for DX10.
That may be true for the "usual" XF86/X.org driver, but the kernel module for accelerated NVIDIA cards is not a small module just to interface with the hardware.
Else I find it hard to explain that it is over 4MB in size...
(the typical driver module is typically a few tens of KB in size, up to a few hundred for very complex drivers)
does this mean Duke Nukem Forever will take another few years to develop??
Expensive products that are forcibly sold, do not sell.
DDR was on the go, they said. RDRAM was the hype, they said. Yet in 6 months time all mobo manufacturers resumed ddr models.
Read radical news here
Those are not the same people asking for backporting, and new feature. I request backporting because I am cheap ass and do not want to buy a new system, install it, loose time hunting driver and patch, just to play the new games. JUST.FOR.FREAKING.DIRECT.10.
Other wants new feature because they want the new shiny toys, or search for any excuse to bash MS, or simply try to see if upgrading is interresting.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
1) More than one person comments on Slashdot!
I know it's a shocking idea, that people may have differing opinions rather than following dogma; in a proper, well-organised society, such people would of course be 're-educated'.
2) We like bitching about things.
-Chris
Actually, one can argue that the only reason why DX is successful is because of its submissions, or should I say acquisitions. Microsoft joined OpenGL ARB and all they did was stall the OpenGL with threats of patent infringement. That's all that was needed for them to take the lead. Any graphics developer will tell you what a fine API DirectX is.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Apparently you are new here.
The slashdot paradigm with respect to MS is that we(the FOSS geek community) are right, they are wrong. In the most extreme of cases (such as when MS does something correct) we are right, they are *trying*, but they are still ultimately evil.
Please don't get any hopes up just because you have been modded insightful. This is only a gesture, after which you are pretty much screwed. Kiss your karma goodbye.
Regards,
-F
The GP post is stupid. These trolls forget that Directx != Direct3D. And it is just after you have programmed something using DirectSound, DirectPlay and DirectInput and say something as SDL that you *understand* why cant "MSFT simple (sic) sbumit a proposal to extend OpenGL in an open way".
Really, people please read more or do not comment. You only show that you are stupid.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
"The graphics card companies obviously play a huge role" First read that as: "The graphics card companies obviously on a huge pay role" :/
The printing on game boxes that read "Requires Windows 95" "Requires Windows 98" and "Requires Windows XP" will soon have a brother. Big shock guys, there is going to be a "Requires Windows Vista"
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
That still means running OpenGL will be so much of a hassle that people will actually be forced into using DirectX. If you can use it, but it disables most of the visible cool stuff plus it's an old version which only supports a subset of current capabilities, it could as well not be there at all.
That's a noble sentiment, but what's likely to happen is game developers will stick with DX9 until the overwhelming majority of their customers switch to Vista (which could take a while), or they'll have to write their own DX9/DX10 abstraction layer. Either way it's a pain and the responsibility really should be Microsoft's for writing a compatibility layer for XP. DX10 should be a crossover model, not a throw everything out the window model (no pun intended). Perhaps by DX11 enough people would be using Vista to justify saying it should only run on Vista. Microsoft has been releasing more than one DX version per Windows version, so that's not an unfair way of looking at it. If anything, Microsoft will be hurting their developers and in fact chasing them toward other solutions like OpenGL for graphics and only using the bare necessities from DX for input, etc. DX was already limited to one (admittedly market majority) platform, but now it's narrowed to a single operating system? Personally I don't need user mode execution for my 3D shaders, thanks all the same.
Supporting two different driver model means more complexity and less things added to DX10 in the same timeframe.
I'm still on my first cup of coffee, which may be why I'm confused here - but I was under the impression that all the hardware up till now (IE: Vista) had to support the graphics interface, not the other way around where the graphical sub system had to support the hardware. Isn't this why you would see "Supports OpenGL/DirectX#!!!" on packaging of the given video card?
If I recall correctly, Linux went through a major change in the module structure and there for all the drivers had to be re-written (IE: NVidia), but none of graphical subsystems had to (IE: OpenGL,SDL,etc..). Isn't this essentially the same thing?
The largest reason DX10 will not be on XP is because of the new driver model. For more information about how it is substantially different than the driver model in XP, please see this MDSN blog:
/ 04/02/566767.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/
This post in particular is particularly of interest as it explains the interaction of the new window manager with the new driver model:
http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006
Hardware accellerated desktop, display drivers that can restart themselves if they crash, less reboots to install new drivers, multiple hardware accellerated windows, virtual memory for video cards.
Obviously those are all features intended to overshadow the main new feature... DRM!
Sorry... sarcasm doesn't translate well over the internet...
"You just take DirectX 9, add the new calls, and let them return "sorry, I cannot do that"."
And then you end up with a black screen. Then what???
...is a true universal standard. Remember back when we had Rendition Verite GL, nVidiaGL, ATiGL, MesaGL, GLide, PowerLab GL and Direct3D? Now, it's mainly OpenGL and D3D now. One of these two is going to win out, personally I'm hoping for OpenGL to be the absolute standard, not because I hate Microsoft, but because honestly I like having those extra few FPS. As for sound, I don't know what to think. AC97 is nice and all, but I'm still pretty much an SBLive user - gotta have all of those neat effects for my guitar that's run thru the line-in jack, not to mention the kX drivers (3rd party) work better than creative's OEM (The line-noise issue is a driver problem fixed in the kX audio drivers, the problem being an improper routing of sound channels and mixing.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
... Games are not consumables (like detergent). You still have the products you already own, they will still work in either XP or Vista, and game designers can choose to use DX9 (or corelease). DX10 is just an API.
Vista is not based on the new longhorn code but is a glorified XP, a lot of business apps and features get implemented in XP but not the ones for consumers. Also XP is not old, its not 5 years of age, its brand new, its the newest Windows currently available so you can't really compare it with an old linux kernel and the Mac OS. In fact its more comparable with WMA, QT, Quickdraw, OpenGL, ...
If they didn't remove DX9 support from Vista, game developers would be crazy not to continue writing DX9 games instead. What does DirectX 10 have to offer other than 0% market share for the forseeable future?
I stopped playing consoles when i was a teenager.
MS does have a monopoly on games because of DX. -If you are playing any cutting edge games.. your playing them on Windows. It's sounding like this will become rock solid with dx10.
They should be slapped with a antitrust lawsuit seeing how much money the gaming industry pulls in every year. The main reason besides grahics for myself using WinXP is gaming.. If i could ditch MS i would. Perhaps they know this is true for many people.
I would support a antitrust case on this one.
Kill your TV
You don't need to back it up. All you need is Microsoft and DRM in the same sentence to get +1 insightful.
LMAO!
/Sarcasm
Yeah...right...Cuz game developers *always* code to the lowest common denominator and *never* push the envelope to get better graphics/performance.
And no OS / program / API should *ever* limit backwards compatibility in exchange for *current* compatibility, performance gains, stability, and ease of future improvements....
Seriously, we've been backwards compatible long enough. The time to change to a better model and framework is long overdue. Providing compatibility would not only delay the project, but the cost, effort, and loss of performance and ease of future development on a far superior model would far outweigh any benefit.
Any graphics developer will tell you what a fine API DirectX is.
I've used them both, and while OpenGL isn't a slouch, DX is a lot easier to use (especially in the shader department). Supposedly OpenGL has even that under control nowadays, so it's just a matter of taste, really (and performance, Ati's OpenGL drivers are still buggy).
I wonder if Microsoft would have made this same decision (not backporting at least a skeleton DX10 to XP) if the DOJ antitrust case hadn't had the rug pulled out from underneath it.
Pax -- Ob
Did you actually read his post?
new OpenGL ICDs may be written that works with Aero.
That's the exact same situation that is in XP at the moment, graphics card manufacturers have an OpenGL ICD included in their drivers.
Lowest common denominator? Hardly. But game developers aren't stupid, and more importantly publishers aren't stupid. It doesn't help having the most cutting edge engine if most of your customers can't play the game. The usual decision is: pick the most widely used platform (right now that's XP) and push it to the limit. 95% of game development companies haven't pushed XP/DX9 to the limit yet. Within two or three years the most widely used platform will probably be Vista and then it's a different story. Of course some of the longer term development projects (2-3 years) might make that decision now with the future in mind and that's okay. Of course those are usually the ones who try to push the absolute limits of technology, but they're a minority. Seriously, how many games do you see out on the horizon that need what DX10 has to offer? A few. More importantly, I'm NOT saying DX10 should exchange backward compatibility for performance gain, technological advancement, etc. I'm just saying DX10 should support XP. Of course it wouldn't run quite as well on XP as it does on Vista, but that's okay. It means developers can write for the new platform without sacrificing the currently dominant platform, and when their game comes out it won't force people to upgrade. For most developers the slight speed hit won't matter. For the hard-core gamers and Carmack-esque developers out there, Vista will be there. Essentially Microsoft is forcing developers to spend alot of time writing their own abstraction layers which should be inherent in DX10 in the first place, which delays every major game in development instead of delaying DX10 slightly. Yay. Don't tell me Microsoft doesn't have the money or developers to throw at this project if they had really wanted to get it out in the same timeframe. Heck, they could have had an entire concurrent project team working on it with no impact on the main DX development effort. The entire multimedia framework of your operating system is more than enough justification for this.
The driving force behind adoption of DirectX 10 (or is that DirectX X) isn't Microsoft or the release of Vista. It's game developers, and more importantly, game publishers. If a game publisher sees that 10% of the home user Windows install base is Vista, 80% is 2000/XP, and 10% is earlier versions of Windows, the publisher is going to come to the conclusion that developing for DirectX 10 - and limiting themselves to the meager Vista install base - just isn't worth their time and money.
Game aficionados may pay $60 for a game, but they're not going to pay an extra $100+ for the operating system just to play that game until there's a substantial base of games only available under the new OS (much like consoles sell better when there are a lot of games out for it). So, if Microsoft is really doing this to get people to laterally upgrade to Vista, that's not a winning strategy. The better strategy, if they're trying to achieve forced upgrades, would be for each subsequent version of DirectX to exclude the third-newest OS (in this case, Windows 2000) so that those users will upgrade, while the game publishers see the XP install base and opt to develop for the newest DirectX version.
I say this ruefully, though, because I'm still using Win2k and have no desire to upgrade, because it works just fine for home use, without all the feature bloat that XP and especially Vista provide.
A lot of people here seem to be operating under a major misconeption.
DX10 is *not* a DX9 patch. Yet you're asking MS to make DX9 DX10 compatible?
Microsoft has *never* backported to an older product compatibility for a *new* anything. Ever. Tehy have in the past on occaision provided backwards comptibility in a *new* product, but they have *never* modified an *old* product to support a new model.
DX10 will simply *not* work in XP using XP's driver model. They would be forced to backport the driver model of Vista. This is an absurd expectation.
Does a new Linux kernel backport it's improvements to a previous kernel? Hell no.
This is amazing. I have *never* seen a group of people so blinded by their dislike of a company to expect them to do something *no-one* does.
Apple doesn't do it, Red-Hat doesn't do it, Blizzard doesn't do it, and you expect, no, DEMAND that Microsoft do it.
young-ins, it's too late. there was already X10. ;^)
;^)
X10 was the first popular version of the X-window system releaased back in '86, shortly redesigned and replaced by the first version of X11 that we know today...
As I recall, some of the knocks against X10 was that it was slow, somewhat platform specific, kind of a resource hog and the protocol was not very backward compatible with previous versions... Hmm, that kindof reminds me of some other software
I'm sorry, I gotta stop laughing. Give me a sec...
Okay, I'm better now.
What is stopping devs from writing for both DX9 *and* DX10? (Vista will support both)
Why should MS backport elective technology to an old platform? Consider:
Blizzard Develops Warcraft 1. Then, after a few patches and a long dev cycle releases Warcraft 2. Warcraft 2 improves graphics and network play. Did you hear *anyone* asking, no, demanding that Blizzatd update Warcraft 1 to support the improvements to Warcraft 2? No.
I fail to see how this is *any* different, other than MS having, in the past, provided backwards compatibility. They never *backported* a version of DX to support a *new* version.
Can you see the difference here?
OpenGL2 has this unified shading model
:)
I don't think it has tesselation on GPU (as far as I know)
but what else am I missing? What other key features offered by D3D10 aren't supported by OpenGL and which are? Obviously companies are going to offer some extensions, but has anything been suggested?
Just curious
What is stopping devs from writing for both DX9 *and* DX10? (Vista will support both) Absolutely nothing. You've just made my point. This is *exactly* what I'm saying is going to happen. That was the entire point of my first post (or do you not understand what an abstraction layer is?) But it shouldn't HAVE to happen. Are you a game developer that has had to deal with this? I am. I'm just putting forward my past experience with this issue. It's a matter of efficiency. One company could write one for their own product - or - hundreds of other companies have to write one for themselves. Ergo, one company could delay their product slightly (if at all) - or - hundreds of other companies have to delay their products with extra development and testing on multiple platforms and driver combinations, etc. I fail to see how this is *any* different, other than MS having, in the past, provided backwards compatibility. They never *backported* a version of DX to support a *new* version. A new version of DX still ran on the existing platform. That's the issue here, not the backwards compatibility of the library. All a user had to do in the past was download (or install from the game cd) the new DX runtime on their existing Windows installation, not run out and buy a new operating system and possibly upgrade their hardware in the process. I could be wrong, but as I recall when MS made the jump from Windows 98/ME/2000 to XP DirectX ran on all those platforms, probably a little better on XP, but it ran on old systems.
To force XP users to upgrade to Vista. By requiring DX10 in new versions of Office with non-backwards-compatible file formats. How naive can you be not to guess that?
I expect Vista to come complete with plenty of "DRM" features designed to kill Wine and other Windows emulators/substitutes. If people could use DX10 under Linux, we wouldn't be as locked into Microsoft's monopoly.
--
make install -not war
"Well, as someone already pointed out in another reply somewhere above, this is a FUCKING API. APIs should be designed NOT TO CHANGE when the internals change. So, either Microsoft still hasn't learned how to write a proper API, or they DELIBERATELY CHOSE to make it incompatible."
Actually, my understanding is that API's are supposed to be extensible. I don't think they're dropping support for pre-DirectX versions from DirectX 10. Your older games should run fine. The original API's are not broken. They're extending the API, providing additional functionality that can be called upon should the software developer choose to do so.
If they write the game to DirectX 9 standards, it'll run fine. And if the game companies want the widest possible adoption of their product, they'll do exactly that until such time as Vista is the prevalent OS.
You're getting angry about the wrong thing.
The latest version of the DirectX 9 SDK (April 2005) pisses me off. You can no longer use Visual Studio 6.0 with it, Microsoft forces you to upgrade to a newer version of Visual Studio. I downloaded the free Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition which is actually pretty good, but it still pisses me off that I can no longer use my legit copy of Visual Studio 6.0. The free express version doesn't come with a resource editor.
It is possible to get the latest DirectX SDK working with Visual Studio 6.0, but it's a pain in the ass. Here is a website that goes into detail on howto get it working.
Here are some of the steps you have to go through (involves installing/uninstalling multiple different DirectX SDK versions):
And here is the reason why DirectX is now broken with Visual Studio 6.0
Also:
They broke Visual Studio 6 on purpose to force developers to upgrade to a more recent version of Visual Studio (with .net no doubt).. Luckily for a poor person (student) like myself, Microsoft offers free Visual Studio versions (Express Edition), which you can download here.
why it will only be for Vista (and not for XP) is:
They need a compelling reason for people to buy the upgrade.
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Personally, I'd much rather learn about the people in front of DirectX 10. Nah, silly that Slashdot wastes time on Microsoft's branding-by-familiarizing operations. Of what use is it to anybody to know the people behind DirectX 10. Might as well know the people behind one's favorite shampoo or tire maker. "The People Behind Ajax Shampoo". Wow, gotta see it!
The performance comment cuts both ways. DirectX uses COM, which has overhead compared plain-old-C-function calling.
There is also more to it than "taste". DirectX is one of the better mechanisms Microsoft has come up with to lock developers and titles into Windows. If you plan on writing a game, at least use an engine that supports OpenGL as well. You've increased your potential market, and done a little bit to promote choice in computing.
BTW, NVIDIA's OpenGL drivers are rock solid, including the Linux flavor.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I will "miss out" on DX10, and i guess that's fine, but i'm not an early adopter, sheesh I was running 98SE (stable mind you) until mid 2003.
Making DX10 vista only is just a bad decision in my mind, I can see the advantages but they aren't enough to get me to early adopt, esp when the 3 year old rig i have now runs all of the latest games that are out and I understand XP enough to know the solution to any current driver/game/hardware problems. (and be IT support for the OS btw).
SO to sum up, the parent makes a great point, i think it has some interesting parallels with the HD blu-ray war going on right now, just not enough to justfy upgrading as soon as it comes out.
Every sentence was constructed of frontpage Slashdot topic. I'll confirm it for you all, peice by peice:
No one but the poor sods still doing x86 pc game development give a damn about directx.
true: Simple Direct Media Layer, openAL, and Mesa are all cross-architecture and cross-platform compatible with 100% documented API and daily updates.
The pc market has been in decline for over five years now and there is no sign it will ever recover.
neither true or false: wherever there is economically-available software and an acceptable user-interface to that software, the people will choose.
And it is going to get a lot worse as MMORPGs continue to eat up pc game players gaming budgets of time and money.
conditionally true: modern MMORPGs have proven to be designed for addiction, more than satisfaction; a good MMORPG would agree with a user's will to let down the game and continue about his life with a schedule that isn't violated by entertainment; satisfaction that is decided by unique skill and technique more than variable enhancements of random tools collected in the artificial environment that do less to enhance the scene and more to abbrogate and upset the ballance of responsive interaction by the user. Think of Diablo 2 and Everquest: both are repetitive, addictive, have no technique to play other than collecting a predictable balance of character enhancements, and every player that returns is certainly for the "nostalgia" and not remembering the dissatisfaction that caused their absence.
Every pc developer is looking to Sony and the PS3 so save them with the 100+ million sized installed base of console gamers.
conditionally true: a console has a fixed architecture that developers and users expect to not cause any variation of playability to effect availability of the software and media.
And everyone has to listen to them cry about how their directx codebase is now effectively worthless.
true: DirectX isn't meant to be scalable and backwards-compatible as is openGL, because DirectX is subversion hidden under a misleading title/name that is neither direct and neither associating with technology-X; Microsoft DirectX expects to conquer every venue and leave the compatibility among antiquity and abandonware. At least in Linux, the Amish peacfully co-exist with the Borg and gothic Mimes of Apple.
Boo fucking hoo.
true: Atticus Finch caught Boo in the chicken-coupe with Hoo, and he remedied the situation with a buckette of water. Tell your Mother that her "morality-inspiring" movies are just as dirty as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Anyone dumb enough to still be basing their graphics engine on an increasingly marginalized API like directx deservers what is coming to them.
without prejudice
Apologies to KOMPRESSOR
sudo eat my shorts
The very first sentence of the article starts like this:
"When DirectX 10 rocks your PC with the release of Windows Vista early next year,"
I had to do a double-take to make sure I was reading the content and not an ad. (Although I'm not sure there's much difference between the two in this particular case.)
Previous releases added programmer control APIs for not just 3D, but sound control, joystick devices, and eventually network gameplay. DirectX 10 continues the growth by adding APIs for DirectWaldo, the network control and tactile feedback via specialized electronic gloves, DirectRhinovision, or "Smell-o-vision" scent output devices, and DirectDildonics, for networked remote control of sexual stimulation devices.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Look, no-one knows what those modules do except the engineers at nvidia.
That's the problem.
How we know is more important than what we know.
A new version of DX still ran on the existing platform.
:)
Ah... You are under the impression XP will be considered 'the existing platform'. MS has already focused it's efforts on Vista. Vista will be 'the' existing platform.
I could be wrong, but as I recall when MS made the jump from Windows 98/ME/2000 to XP DirectX ran on all those platforms, probably a little better on XP, but it ran on old systems.
Not *all* versions ran on *all* operating system though. For Instance, just try installing DX9 on a Windows 95 machine, which *does* support DX8
Perhaps, though, Microsoft should have given this new API a different name. Calling it DirectX (even though it shares *no* functions with any other DX version) was probably a mistake, but...branding wins out. Perhaps DXe (enahanced) 1.0?
Point being, this is new. It's not an upgrade, it's not the same API, in fact it's been rewritten from the ground up...*For* Windows Vista.
Not groundbreaking.
Huh.
I suppose this is a purely subjective conjecture. Arguing it with you would be pointless. I suppose I could simply mention Memory Heaps, moving the drivers from Kernel to User mode, Rewritting the Audio subsystem and, of course, rewritting DirectX from the scratch....
But of course you would consider none of those groundbreaking.
Also I seem to recall *many* games that would *only* operate in Windows XP. Not Windows ME, Not Windows 98,a nd Not Windows 2000....very shortly after XP came out. I am not the least bit doubtful that the very same thing will happen upon the release of Vista. Of course, people complained about having to pay for an OS upgrade to play a game then, as well.
[sarcasm]
I guess performance, features, stability, and security are just not all that important to gamers.
[/sarcasm]
That sure is a problem, but in a playing field as we have now it is the only solution.
Of course we can all dream about open hardware available at your store around the corner, developing just as quickly as closed spec videocards, but for now that just isn't happening.
I prefer an affordable and fast videocard with today's interface connectors over a dream about some unrealistic device that may never appear.
At least NVIDIA releases new drivers when new hardware or new Linux versions appear.
There are already more than enough companies that "support Linux" by delivering some driver for an ancient RedHat release and never update it.
Losers. I remember when driver writers reverse engineered the hardware. Oh wait, that was only last week. OpenBSD developers reverse engineer hardware to write drivers all the time. Maybe one day they'll get bored with WiFi cards and SCSI adapters and take on the 3d card manufacturers. That'd be sweet.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Right. other OSes have done it for ages...MS doing it means nothing TO USERS OF THOSE OSES.
It means a HELL of a lot to windows users.
M-dollar fans? Never heard of 'em.
*anyone* using windows should appreciate thet they are finally doing this. Not just their fans.
Thanks for playing, but I'm not really into arguing with folks who see *everything* MS does as a "Bad" thing. Kind of pointless, like banging you head against a wall. You guys are worse than fanboys.