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Beyond DirectX 10 - A glance at DirectX 10.1

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the one-percent-more dept.

Hanners1979 writes "Although we still appear to be some way away from the release of Windows Vista, and with it DirectX 10, specifications for the first point release of the 3D graphics API, DirectX 10.1, have already been finalised and largely made public. Elite Bastards looks at what's new and what will be changing in this release, set to become available not all that long after DirectX 10 — There's more to it than you might imagine."

21 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. WHOM by mnemonic_ · · Score: 5, Funny

    ACCUSATIVE YOU SON OF A BITCH

    1. Re:WHOM by SpottedKuh · · Score: 3, Informative

      Indeed, you are correct that "whom," as opposed to "who," should have been used. However, I believe the term "accusative" does not apply to the distinction between "who" and "whom" in English. I believe the terms that should be used are "subjective" (who) or "objective" (whom).

      In modern English, the accusative and dative cases that existed in Old English (and are still used in modern languages such as German) collapsed into a single objective usage. That is, "whom" can be used either as a direct object pronoun, corresponding to an accusative usage in other languages ("Whom did you hit?"); or, it can be used as an indirect object pronoun, corresponding to a dative usage in other languages ("To whom did you give the apple?"). There's a much better explanation here.

    2. Re:WHOM by bersl2 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Let my failure to use the objective case be an indication of the severity of my anger.

  2. Re:If I hear "DirectX" this or "DirectX" that agai by radiotyler · · Score: 4, Funny

    DirectX.


    DirectX! DirectX! DirectX!

    --
    hi mom!
  3. DirectX does not seem good for the industry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    DirectX does not seem a good standard for the industry to follow. DX9 came out how long ago? It seems as if 3D technology advances have slowed down. Yes there have been updates to DX9, but I don't really remember anything that was exciting. Yes, there has been talk about DX10 and the changes it would bring, but now it's known that it's Vista only. That's why it has taken so long. So the industry is waiting for Vista to finally have implementation of their new graphics features? Sounds like a bad move. What if MS delays Vista? What then? Are the graphic chip makers gonna sit and wait? What we need is an actual open industry standard. Bring back OpenGL so we can make improvements as they come, and not having to wait for Microsoft to lead it where they feel they can control it to make money, and continue locking out other platforms.

    1. Re:DirectX does not seem good for the industry by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bring back OpenGL?

      OpenGL is alive and well. It would be great if some of the Windows developers started using it though, since they are in the majority. Please, feel free to join the rest of the world.

    2. Re:DirectX does not seem good for the industry by peipas · · Score: 5, Funny

      What if MS delays Vista?

      Are you crazy? MS would never delay Vista!

    3. Re:DirectX does not seem good for the industry by eebra82 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "I think DirectX sucks for a variety of reasons but the truth of the matter is there are no real video card features DX9 doesn't currently implement. Neither Nvidia or ATI have yet to release a card with the new feature sets in DX10."

      Well, you can run games using older versions of DirectX in Vista, so how exactly is this a problem. DirectX 10 isn't out yet and you're complaining about the lack of DX10 cards? ATI and nVidia are on development cycles and they would obviously not include DX10 support on current graphics cards, simply because DX10 wasn't mature when today's architecture was under development. I am very sure both nVidia and ATI are dying to get DX10 cards out as soon as Vista is out, since selling the first fully Vista compatible cards is a huge thing. You can't expect today's tech to support something that isn't even released yet. That doesn't make sense.

      Even then it makes me wonder what the point is. When games like WoW get all the headlines using technology that barely require DX8. Maybe if you are into FPS games this will matter but for everyone else the featureset you are calling dated far outpaced the software that runs on it years ago.

      Excuse me, but are you even aware of how many of today's games rely heavily on DX9 technology? You are also saying that games like World of WarCraft barely use any DX9 tech. Do you have any documentation on that? Also, what is "games like WoW"? In fact, many "games like WoW" today use pixel shaders and therefore require DX9. Yes, FPS games are clearly taking advantage of the latest technology, but the simple reason is that realism is far more important in such games than, say, strategy games. But on the other hand, there are so many types of FPS titles. We have racing games, action games, MMORPG and even adventure games. World of WarCraft may not be the most graphically advanced game, but this is for three main reasons: it's huge and would simply require too many gigs of space if it was more complex than it already is. Blizzard is also targeting a larger mass who isn't constantly upgrading its hardware as much as some other groups do. Last but not least, have you ever thought of how much more time and money Blizzard would have to invest to include the latest technology with the highest level of detail?

      I'm pretty skeptical of how OpenGL will survive in games now that Carmack has sold out. It's a bleak future for those of us gamers who want to someday drop Windows and use a real OS.

      You know, Carmack has all the money in the world already. I doubt he would kiss Microsoft's ass if OpenGL was more promising than DirectX. After all, as a DirectX developer, you also get to release your games for the Xbox without too much hazzle, which is only one of many reasons why DirectX is more successful. OpenGL is in no way a poor API, but most developers currently support DirectX because it looks more promising than OpenGL. Also, Carmack was one of the main donators to the OpenGL foundation. Why would he fund a project like this and then kill it? I'm sure it was painful but as Carmack is always set on developing the latest in technology, he is also looking at the two API:s individually before deciding what to go for.

      --
      Full Tilt
  4. GPUs already are "computers on a chip" by cos(x) · · Score: 5, Informative

    GPU shader processors certainly are Turing complete and there are plenty of people (ab-)using them for general purpose calculations. See for example http://www.gpgpu.org/. For some types of calculations, GPUs are much faster than CPUs due to their massively parallel processing. In fact, I have written my thesis on that very topic, comparing CPU and GPU based implementations of some algorithms.

  5. Article Text by insane_machine · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just by reading this article title, it may seem rather like we're getting ahead of ourselves here - After all, we still have another handful of DirectX 9 boards to come from ATI, never mind being a fair few months away from the launch of Windows Vista, and with it the latest iteration of the DirectX API, DirectX 10.

    Nonetheless, despite all this, DirectX 10 is likely to see a number of point revisions during its lifespan and the first of these, imaginatively titled DirectX 10.1, will be the first of these. It may surprise some of you reading this, but the features which will be added by DirectX 10.1 have already been decided upon and information made available about them, so in this article we'll be taking a look through what we can expect to see in DirectX 10.1 compliant hardware.

    I would imagine this goes without saying, but before tackling this article I'd well and truly recommend beginning by reading our look at what DirectX 10 has to offer in our article entitled "ATI on the possibilities of DirectX 10" to get yourself up to speed on everything that this major inflection point in 3D graphics rendering entails, from geometry shaders through to (more importantly for this article) the WDDM driver model. So, if you feel that you know all you need to know about DirectX 10, let's move onwards to the future world of DirectX 10.1.

    Introduction

    Before we begin outright, we should remind ourselves briefly as to exactly why the API will be seeing point releases as of DirectX 10. The main reason for this move is the removal of cap (or capability) bits in the API. In the past, cap bits allowed for graphics vendors to basically pick and choose what features their hardware would support (albeit within some fairly strict guidelines to ensure compliancy to particular DirectX and Shader Model revisions). Although this left the likes of NVIDIA and ATI with plenty of room to develop and tout features that the other didn't have, it also had the side effect of creating development Hell for any game developers working on titles, leaving them to sort through a myriad of cap bits for different GPUs and configurations to ensure that they were supporting the right features for the right boards - More often than not, this simply meant that advanced features that only one graphics vendor supported were left out of the vast majority of titles altogether (Truform anyone?). The removal of this labyrinth was one of the main things developers were screaming out for when it came to discussing what was required of DirectX 10, and so it came to pass.

    Of course, this removal of cap bits had to be offset against the ever changing and progressing world of GPU development, so the graphics vendors still needed a way to push the technology forward and allow new technologies to find their way into games. Thus, DirectX 10 will be seeing point releases, one of the main facets of which will be to facilitate the inclusion of new funtionality for compliant graphics hardware to make use of. This makes life easier both for developers (who can target DirectX 10, 10.1 etc rather than individual features) and consumers - How do you explain to the man on the street that yes, a Radeon X800 and GeForce 6800 are both DirectX 9 parts, but both support different Shader Models in their respective architectures. It isn't much fun, trust me. As DirectX 10 and its point releases will also have very little in the way of features that are only optional in the API, buying a graphics board compliant with a particular DirectX 10 version will ensure that it does everything it needs to do to satisfy game titles that use that level of technology. No more Vertex Texture Fetch-esque confusions this time around then.

    The other question to answer (or not answer, such is the way these things work) before we start is - When will DirectX 10.1 be released? From what we've heard thus far, it appears that it may well become available not all that long after DirectX 10 itself. What isn't so likely however, is that we'll be seeing DirectX 10.1

  6. Why is directX still tied to windows? by tomstdenis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just like Visual Studio and Office it's yet another thing that props up Windows.

    If I were a DX developer I'd be more interested in playing "ubiquitous developer" than "Windows Sock Puppet".

    I may get modded down for this comment, but honestly, what is so special about windows that makes DX infeasible to implement for other platforms?

    Tom

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  7. DirectX shuts out porting of games to LINUX/Mac by Danathar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It used to be that games used both OpenGL and DirectX (especially before Direct3d had the features to compete with OpenGL), but since game developers have made windoze their PC development platform, direct3d has become the defacto graphics library to use. One of the reasons there was no Half-Life 2 native LINUX/Mac port is because there was no OpenGL development and Valve had no inclination to do MAJOR programming work to make it work with OpenGL.

    Until somebody writes a game that does something on LINUX/MAC that can't be done on windows because of the underlying OS that is successful I doubt if we'll see any change.

  8. Re:2 years for adoption by MBCook · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Considering [...] DirectX10 is only available on Vista and that 50% of employers say they are not going to purchase [soon], it's a safe bet to say that we won't be seeing any games [...] for at least 2 years.

    I think I found the flaw in your logic. Employers != Consumers.

    The fact is, games will probably drive Vista adoption more than any other factor save factory pre-installs. We proabaly won't see much requiring DX10 for a year or more, but that is because most big games take 1-3 years to develop so that's about the earliest that we'll see stuff.

    This may cause game manufacturers to change tactics since OpenGL is supported on ALL OS's.

    That fact has always been true, and it hasn't made much of a difference so far, even back when OpenGL and DirectX were much closer in abilities (without needing extensions and such).

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
  9. OpenGL vs. DirectX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    After years of pushing DirectX, Nvidia is now betting on OpenGL and has promised first class OpenGL support for their upcoming cards. What does this mean? At the very least it means that there must be good reason for choosing OpenGL over DirectX. Also, keep in mind that OpenGL is an actual graphics standard whereas DirectX is not. Both will co-exist for the next couple of years but it is likely that in the long run OpenGL leaves DirectX in the dust.

    1. Re:OpenGL vs. DirectX by Tolleman · · Score: 5, Informative

      nVidia has always had excellent support for OpenGL. And concidering that alot of the guys at nVidia is former SGI employees, SGI being the ones that made OpenGL, they've always been OpenGL fans. So basicly, is anything you wrote correct?

  10. The best thing about DirectX 10.x... by Teckla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...is that the vendor lock-in is FREE!

  11. It's whom! by WilliamSChips · · Score: 4, Funny

    Jacob Carter: But by who?
    Jack O'Neill: It's whom!
    Samantha Carter: Actually, it's what.

    --
    Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
  12. Re:Even more vaporware ! by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm especially looking forward to DirectX11, which will reportedly be based on the XFree86 4.4 implementation of X11 (under a new license, of course).

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  13. Beta? by bky1701 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Doesn't this officially make 10.0 a beta? It's outdated before realise; sounds beta to me...

    --
    Great Intellect...
  14. Not so simple by Rob+Simpson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The difference is that it will be very easy to make games that run on both Vista and XP/2000/etc compared to making a Linux or Mac port. While I'm sure there will be a large market for Vista, if a company can use OpenGL (or even DirectX 9) just as easily and sell the game for other versions of Windows as well, they would be stupid not to. There'd have to be a some feature in DirectX 10 or Vista that is essential to the game, which I find unlikely.

  15. Re:Not much of a business case for OpenGL ... by Andrew+Kismet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not all PC Gamers (like myself) have ultra-cutting-edge systems. Some of us know how quickly technology progresses, and know that a $3000 rig will be worth $300 in two years. I'm currently typing this on my "gaming laptop", and while I don't play the real CPU/GPU eating monsters like Civilisation 4, this thing handles Half-Life 2 and it's expansions like a charm. As you've noticed, I use said machine to go online. I also use it for work - Maxis, Microsoft Office, and Mozilla Firefox sitting side by side.

    Also, since when is the entirety of Linux considered stable? Half the time the drivers are up in the air, and there's enough competition and conflict between various builds and organisations as to achieve bugger all on a standards level. If game companies started porting to a stable Linux core, they'd be porting to Wii - THAT has a Linux OS with Opera installed.