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What Game Developers Think about DirectX 10
mikemuch writes "In the last of his series of interviews with the stakeholders in Microsofts upcoming DirectX graphics API, Jason Cross speaks with the developers of Hellgate, Crysis, Flight Simulator X, and Age of Conan. They seem pretty stoked about the new technology's ability to get visual detail to a much higher level of realism, and to offload physics and AI to the CPU." From the article: "Without hardware, it is hard to evaluate which features will really make the biggest performance impact. The geometry shader looks pretty full of potential. So does the fact that you can write to buffers from any shader and then read them into another shader. Texture arrays look like they will make a big dent our batch count, which should lead to much better frame rates. At this point I feel like I'm looking at a shiny new toy through a shop window: I can't wait to get my hands on it and play with it, but I don't really know what it can do."
I think that says it all. All we have now are lofty marketing claims and unfounded speculation. I am as excited as anyone to see what it can do (I admit to being a fan of flight sims) but this does not really help me understand any better. Since this is
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Theres much bigger support for OpenGL 2.0 on pretty much all hardware and platforms. I never saw why people use DirectX when all it does is limit your application to MS platforms and is dictated by MS.
Since these developers clearly don't really know that much, the question is really asking how much they believe whatever marketing hype or hearsay they've encountered. I'd be more interested in finding out what they think about Microsoft potentially shafting OpenGL, or if they even care at all about vendor lock-in.
For the past few years I havent had nearly the urge to upgrade that I did in the past. Most games have become so gpu dependant that upgrading the video card has been sufficient enough to keep the latest games running on even a 2-3 year old machine. From what I read it appears that dx10 is more of an attempt to make the rest of the hardware insufficient than any real improvement in the gaming experience.
With all the talk of physics engines and vista exclusivity it has me concerned that what is already a small market is just going to get smaller. My last video card upgrade was $400 and it was an upper mid-range card (x850 xt platinum) not top of the line. My friends and family thought I was insane since many of their pc's cost less than that. I cant even count how many clients I have that get pissed off that their new dual core system cant run a two year old game because the video included was an onboard intel gpu.
IMHO thats whats wrong with the PC gaming world and what pushes users to "casual" gaming. Most folks I know dont even bother to look at the new games on the shelves because they assume they cant run it and refuse to put up the cash to upgrade what they see as a minor part of their pc. I understand Microsofts and their vendors desire to get people upgrading again but unless computer manufacturers either start uncluding decent video cards or intel increases their integrated performace by leaps and bounds the market is just going to dwindle even more.
Considering that Directx 10 is only on VISTA, any game developer launching games for Vista from the get go will probably be very upset when their sales numbers do not make up for development costs.
I think by now, everyone realizes that Microsofts product isn't good until the second or third version and people will wait. As such, games released with Directx will be directly affected by this.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I'm reading claims that this is some conspiracy between Microsoft and hardware companies to force people to upgrade.
I think what's really going on is that Microsoft is addressing the demands of the gaming industry with DirectX 10. The game industry is obsessed with realism. There's this overwhelming desire to make games look and feel real, with gameplay taking the backseat.
I also can't help but think that developers are getting every more sloppy because they're depending on consumers having sufficiently powerful machines. It almost feels like it's done intentionally. Release a game that struggles to run well even on some of the fastest machines out there and suddenly the game is used for performance benchmarks. It's free marketing. The game is mentioned in computer magazines everywhere. Now the consumer has a game that they absolutely need to get in order to test the limits of their machine.
DirectX 10 seems to offer a few neat features, specifically those dealing with physics. Unfortunately, DirectX 10 is simply perpetuating the poor habits of the gaming industry. It's ensuring we're going to be seeing contrived FPS games for years to come.
However, it's not going to stop anyone who wants to be more creative. Microsoft is simply responding to market demand.