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DirectX 10 Hardware Is Now Obsolete
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.'"
4xAA is a compulsory That would seem to me to be the biggest change, that it requires batteries now.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
You mean developers are actually using DirectX 10?
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
This seems like a window of opportunity for a new OpenGL standard. Anybody knows when it's due?
I'm sure the two developers using DX10 are gonna be pissed.
So let's recap:
1.Introduce DX10 but only for Vista
2.Gamers buy new DX10 compatible hardware and Vista to play new games
3.Introduce DX10.1, only for vista, and incompatible with original DX10 compliant hardware
4.???
5.Shoot self in foot
6.Profit?
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?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The article makes it seem as if Microsoft rushed DX10 out before it was truly ready; when you consider that this is what they often seem to do with their OS's, this should probably come as no surprise. Of course, we're seeing this news on the Inquirer, often considered to be a slightly less-than-reliable source of tech news. Maybe I'll reserve judgement until I hear another explanation from some other source.
This space for rent!
Once again, those seven little letters get left out of a "standards" article: d-e f-a-c-t-o.
I also wonder if there is a license change; charge hardware vendors more or make it unusable with FLOSS or something.
Why this sudden change dx 10 has not even caught on in the hardcore gamers let alone even the above mainstream. Is MS going to make dx 10.2 or 11 radical to where devolpers have no options as well? If so I think its time to move back to OpenGL. No freedom for devlopers. And I want to be able to set my own AA levels.
"Now" is probably an exaggeration, considering that we're talking about Vista SP1.
...I guess my DX9 card has been obsolete for a few years now, it still ticks on nicely though. Heck, all my hardware is probably obsolete.
"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?
Conan - Are you comfortable and angry Pierre?
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.
"Hardware is now obsolete"... jeez, calm down buddy boy... /. is sooo turning into a murdock sensationalism media.
Good, let the technology move forward and for once Microsoft actually has the balls to force it to people. I'm hoping for the day they break backward compatibility with old windows apps too and virtualize them saying "Take it or leave it".
People should not get upset about this. Computers and stuff around it never been like wine (the drink) anyhow. They are more like tomatoes and onions, once you bought them, they are "old news" and worth nothing. Better eat'em up!
In short, nothing much to see here, business as usual.
Say what?
Windows Vista DOESN'T support OpenGL? At all?? (serious question)
Breaking news to me, this.
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?
Is that.. is that progress? New technology requiring new hardware?! BURN IT! BURN THE WITCH!
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.
This is just plain amazingly cruel to everyone who gave them the benefit of the doubt and took the risk of being an early adopter. Things like this are the reason why windows has been relegated from my primary OS to dual booted with linux on only of my 4 computers over the last few years. [the rest run only linux].
I've been considering trying out apple, a mac book proto be specific, in the near future. Being as I don't really care for digg so I don't know that I'd like it.
thats right, I rarely use capitals. deal with it. but don't mistake my laziness for stupidity
You'd have to be nuts to rely on a technology than can only be used by a miniscule subset of the market, namely people running Vista SP1. Move along people, nothing to see here.
OGL calls are forced through DirectX, therefore, never being faster than DX.
The video card industry (i.e. ATI and NVidia) is just as much to blame for this as Microsoft, it's not like MS comes up with random designs and the video card companies follow it without any of their input making their way into the plans.
Developers already have difficulties justifiying DirectX 10 support because Vista marketshare is still so low and most gamers are perfectly fine with XP and DirectX 9. Also, DirectX 10 lacks the backwards compatibilty of the older versions.
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 compelling to use.
So when do developers say "Screw this, DirectX 9 will suffice for the immediate future and works well, we will eschew DirectX 10 and beyond, serve our XP-using customers and use OpenGL for future development"? Especially if the big advantage DirectX had (until version 9), the universal availability on the Windows platform is gone now with DirectX 10 and beyond?
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Wow, what a load of FUD. OpenGL is completely supported under Vista and is in no way routed through DX:
http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_9/
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: Direct3D 10.1 is an incremental, side-by-side update to Direct3D 10.0 that provides a series of new rendering features that will be available in an upcoming generation of graphics hardware.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
But it's NEW man! NEW!!! YOU MUST SUPPORT THE NEW!!! :o EVERYONE GO OUT AND BUY VISTA AND DX10.1 COMPATIBLE GRAPHICS CARDS... NEW!!! Everyone is obsolete!1 The world will soon be out of date ._.
which is totally what she said
That DirectX 10.1 is incompatible with 10.0 (along with new WDDM interface) has been known for at least a year now. It's a bit late for people to be in shock about it.
Slashdot even covered it before.
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 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.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Have they EVER heard of http://netpromoter.com/ Net Promoter Scores? I don't think they have.
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?
Phbbbtt!! Whatever. Screw DirectX and OpenGL. Where is my real-time ray-tracing graphics card?
The Nvidia Renderman 9000 FTW.
make people need you...make them need to upgrade, while you invest in those who supply the upgrade.
Another nail in the very fat and big coffin of Microsoft....
>So let's recap:
>4.???
>5.Shoot self in foot
As the saying goes, stupidity cannot be concealed.
>But it's NEW man! NEW!!! YOU MUST SUPPORT THE NEW!!!
b ender.php?id=181
In other words...
http://counter-strike.de/modules/screenorama/show
(translat at http://pastebin.ca/653400 )
Good lord!
/rant over.
That's ridiculous.
Some people out there (gasp!) actually don't care for AA at all!
I'm a CRT user, 22" screen, I use it in 1280x960 or 1600x1200 and I can tell you now that in a good many games the resources wasted on AA could be better spent on lighting, textures etc, I'm very happy with my image quality in that resolution and other resolutions.
LCD's are similar, if you run your game in it's native resolution you're likely using 1280x1024, 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 again where is AA really 'needed' or needed enough to be mandatory?
All this is going to do is force developers to lower their graphical targets as they are wasting frames on something which should CLEARLY be optional.
If for example I did one day find a game looked too blocky, I could up the resolution from 1152 to 1280 or 1280 to 1600 or even 1600 to 2048 and in the case of LCD's well, most LCD's sold nowadays really are running at quite high resolutions for their sizes as it is (in my opinion)
Oh and I do realise some people like AA, infact I'm sure some people are horrified by my choice but well at least currently it is an option for me.
For some reason this makes me think something more sinister is at hand, maybe I'm wrong but I do know the ATI developed Xbox 360 GPU has 'free' 4xAA due to the way the chip was designed, there's some spare EDRAM on the GPU specifically for this, it's fine if you have one of these chips but what if you don't? Is this simply some kind of conspiracy (unlikely but worth mentioning)
I love it, first they release Vista, try to force Shadowrun and Halo 2 to be locked to it, desperate for gamers to use their 'new and improved' (ugly as shit) operating system, now they are trying to force other nonsense on us.
I really really hope that Sony at least come at a draw with MS this console round so that gaming isn't totally fucked in the future, if these guys were the sole game operators, I think I'd get a new hobby.*
* Sony haters, this does not imply Sony is flawless, this implies competition is good.
Next we'll hear Vista eats children.
Yeah, this move surely fractured the DX10 developer community.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
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 Speed version running under OS X because directx 11 may require running under "pure windows"' without "any kind of emulation" . We wouldn't care about it as end users but billion dollar corps like Electronic Arts would sure care.
This is why people should _still_ support OS X native game development using open standards if they dislike MS way of things. That especially includes Linux people. Once a game uses OpenGL and OpenAL, there is a tiny work left to convert it to a true linux game.
>the range and quality of Mac games is poor in comparison
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.
The one and only real advantage of Microsoft is games (there aren't as many games for any other OS's as there are for windows). Now they're making the gamer community angry AND they're making the game development community angry. I can't help but wonder what ID software, Valve and Blizzard think of this move. Remember Microsoft, there's a very annoying competitor, called linux, out there.
I still wonder what would happen if half of the people monkeying with Wine and breaking 100s of evil MS license terms or dual booting went and bought Linux native games instead.
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 company is dead so we would never know" 2 years later.
How dare! I'm a hadrcore player of tetris, bubblets and solitaire. You windows users should stop bashing Macs!
What a troll
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
Is this the final blow to PC. How can keep up with all this GFX card upgrades? I think both PS3 and the Xbox360 will gain on this. When more and more developers turn to consoles.
No they arn't wrong. They both specify the worry. As a game developer you now have 3 choices. OpenGL, Direct3D 9, Direct3D 10 or Direct3D 10.1. Which one do you choose? Which one has the largest market? Do you choose Direct3D 9 and not be able to take full advantage of the hardware? Do you choose Direct3D 10.1 and hope everyone upgrades to new video cards? Do you choose Direct3D 10 and hope people have Vista? Do you choose OpenGL? Do you choose all 3 and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars doing something that may not even realize a profit? I would posit that it's a scary time right now for game studios.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
In a way, Microsoft is trying to emulate IBM when it tried to jam MCA down the throat of the PC world back in the mid-80's. What happened to IBM then should happen to Microsoft now, too.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com PGP KeyID: 0x0BD32C9B What I'm up to: http://intuitives.mine.nu
Lets see. Lost Planet - supports both DirectX 9 and 10. I see no reason why games companies can't support more than one at a time. I imagine game studios will be busier, rather than them being 'scared'.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
> 'Gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and,
. 0109.1737.15034.htm?Page=1
> 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 thought it'd help Vista sales (it hasn't). Well, Why would you bother? Here's an interview with John Carmack (DOOM, Quake) on many things, including why DirectX 10 is a big bore:
http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200701/N07
I'm assuming that even if (in general) it's possible to connect PC graphics cards to an Intel Mac, that this wouldn't be possible in an iMac due to lack of internal space/expansion, so that's not an option- even if you were prepared to buy an iMac just to have it running Windows 80% of the time (which seems kind of pointless).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It's funny watching everyone who is shocked. Those are the people who have no idea what DirectX 10 is and why the model has shifted so much from OpenGL and earlier versions of DirectX.
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.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Raytracing is really cool for global stuff like refractions, shadows, reflections, caustics. But in most cases, a rasterizer is better. Yes, raytracing is elegant, but a rasterizer will outperform it when rendering opaque surfaces. You should ask yourself why many CGI studios don't use (pure) raytracers anymore. A hybrid seems the way to go: rasterizing by default, but the ability to shoot rays in the pixel shader, which would be extremely cool for reflections and refractions.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
So Dx10 is being replaced? Who cares? Now you see I got a 8800 gtx with a 22" flat screen, and I don't care, because, Dx10 sucks. I have a system across the room with a 7600 gtx card and the difference between the two is barely noticeable. At first I thought it was me but after seeing some examples online between dx10 and dx9, ya gotta laugh. "You can see the cobblestones so much further in the distance in Dx10" " oh and "look the vines on the wall don't even show up in dx9" Uh huh. I know the programming will get better, at least I hope. Only good news here is I can do all the cool new graphic stuff in Vista!!! That crap didn't even keep the kids interested for the day, lol. Well good news for me is Ubuntu and Mint both work well with my setup.
Cart
Just FYI, while it is physically possible to connect any PCI-Express graphics card to the Mac Pro (which is the only Mac that supports upgradable video), the graphics card will only work in Windows unless it supports EFI. BIOS-only graphics cards won't display anything until Windows starts booting. Since Microsoft decided to drop EFI support from Vista, pretty much the only graphics cards that support EFI are the ones that ship with Macs anyway.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
This leaves just:
Maybe I'll reserve judgement until I hear another explanation from some other source. Waiting for confirmation from more than one source, omg that's almost as bad as calling your mom a ho.Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I dunno why this post is considered a troll. I'll never forget the shoddy reporting the Inquirer did PlayStation 3 video memory bandwidth. They didn't actually understand the content of a developer presentation and then reported to the world their incorrect view of the hardware.
but no-one ever bought a Mac as a games machine
When the Mac first came out, it was dismissed as "a game machine". Macs were used for things like drawing pictures and, in 1986, playing Dark Castle. "Real work" was done on PCs.
Also, as long as I'm being picky, "no one" should not be hyphenated.
Buying a mac instead of a pc just for games is a silly idea.
:)
However, as long as buying a mac if you *also* like to game isn't a silly idea, I'll be content
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. Unless, of course, you want to bet that WinCE will take over the mobile world, or that WineLib will be up to the task.
Unfortunately, most big game houses have invested heavily in DirectX-based middleware, and so it requires a large investment to encourage them to switch.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
First off.. technology is made obsolete??? no shit! Its hard to imagine the slashdot crowd finding this to be news. This doesn't mean your dx10 card doesn't work anymore, you don't install SP1 and your PC wont boot with DX10 hardware. If you get upset every time people make revisions and improvements to software and hardware, I suggest you packup your computer and return it to avoid further heart ache. If you are an early adopter of the latest hardware and don't read any reviews (which all from memory said it will be some time before dx10 is going to matter) then thats your fault. Microsoft have explained in numerous interveiws (and documentation of course) how DX 10 will work, they even suggested 10.1 would be out BEFORE vista shipped. Graphics card features change ALL THE TIME, you have to write miles of CAPS checking code and render paths to support the zoo of cards and features. Now with DX10 they roll all the features up and any DX 10.x card will support the featuers, even if you write a DX 10.0 and DX 10.1 path, its only two options you have to support. You didn't see "ATI MAKES LAST CARD OBSOLETE BY INTRODUCING NEW PRODUCT", even though those changes could be far, far more difficult to develop for by having a bunch of changed caps and maybe even a few new proprietary ones. A fixed feature set is what allows developers to squeze out every drop of performance from PS2 hardware to make amazing looking graphics, even though your mobile phone might have more processing power available to it. And lastly.. people who mock the, apparent, modest real world improvments dx10 is offering.. what is your point? Intel brings out a new processor every x months with ~1-3% improvements, by your logic they should just stop bothering making new processors. Of course thats stupid, you wait till the improvment is enough for you to find it compelling.
DirectX 10 hardware is now obsolete?!!? Thank god I stayed with my non-obsolete DX9 hardware.
Oh wait... I run Linux/OpenGL. Nevermind.
What it means now is Lost Planet should support 9, 10 AND 10.1. It's not any of being "busier", it's an issue of money. If they have enough money to support all 3 types then good for them, but if not, they have to choose. There is alot of money needed to develop for all three API's, if your company can afford it, then good for you. If it can't, that's where the fear comes in.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
Your post and the child posts all deserve mod +funny. :-)
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 who couldn't code their way out of a soggy cardboard box even if their company's future depend on it.
A: Who cares about that. Let's start a rumor. Google is going into the graphics API business, and you heard it here first.
From talking with games developers DX and OGL aren't quite the same beast, in terms of functionality. OGL provides the raw basics of graphics, be it 2D or 3D, while Direct-X can be thought of as OGL bundled with APIs that help reduce doing some of the common stuff. OpenGL does not provide what is needed to create spheres and other 'complex' objects, so you are left doing this on your own.
I would love to see more PC games developers target OpenGL, but for that to happen the little things that make DirectX attractive need to either be brought to OpenGL or to an open support API that accompanies OpenGL.
BTW There are companies that have attempted to port DX to other platforms, but they never seem to go anywhere and games companies who developer for DX don't usually seem to care about other platforms anyhow.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Maybe gamers will eventually get sick of getting fucked by Microsoft when this happens a couple more times? Or not...
Except when you're talking about three progressive implementations of the same API, DirectX. I'm guessing (I haven't seen any spec, so this is a guess) that the new parts of 10.1 will be extra implementations on top of 10, so you can turn them on and off easily based on detection. You can use them or not.
You might be right that there are major differences between 9 and 10, enough that some extra investment may be required, but I severely doubt that - and even if it were true, then the difference between 10 and 10.1 is not going to be a case of having to recode an engine from top to bottom, and if it is then maybe your engine needed recoding.
It's all moot - the article was still wrong, DirectX 10 is not obsolete in the same way that DirectX 9 isn't.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
No. Microsoft runs around paying the big development houses (and buying them) to make sure that they code for it's latest greatest platform. The big heaps of money anyone receives for sucking off microsoft will guarantee the trend continues.
The little houses will continue to develop for DX9 as Microsoft has successfully shipped a decrepit version of OpenGL by default with their OS and anyone trying to run an OpenGL game will have a 50% chance of requiring a support call to figure out why it runs so poorly (because it picked up the wrong libraries or their driver installation wasn't correct.)
You're an idiot. OpenGL is call direct to hardware, D3D is call thru OS software layer, then to hardware. OpenGL is more efficient given it has no software layer to go thru, thus requiring less cycles to get stuff done. D3D is CPU intensive as well. Best example I can give was the difference in the original UT. On my 233 MHz system, with an 8meg TNT card, it was slow in D3D. Take the same card in a 533 mhz system, and D3D was suddenly snappy. OpenGL doesn't care about processor speed (I've had UT run on a 133MHz Pentium w/MMX, no problems and glassy smooth) while D3D games were too heavily dependent upon the CPU. OpenGL stomps D3D in almost every aspect.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Are you geniunely that misinformed, or are you just trolling? Just curious.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Um, yeah, GP was an idiot, but you're just as misinformed.
OpenGL and Direct3D interface with the Windows kernel at exactly the same level. Somebody posted an article up the page from OpenGL.org - I suggest you read it.
I wondered where little Timmy went...
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Mind you, it's been almost a decade since last I had anything to do with game development, so take this with a grain of salt. Or to put it otherwise, major talking out the arse follows.
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Mind you, I don't have any inside information from someone actually writing those drivers, so take this with a big grain of salt.
Still, after actually reading TFA (I know, I know..;) I don't see any feature listed there that couldn't be just fixed by a driver update.
4x AA for example is already supported by both ATI and Nvidia for more than 5 years now. I fail to see why they'd have to build a new card to support that.
32-bit floating point filtering... isn't it supported already too? And even if it weren't, there's nothing to stop a driver from, basically, faking it. Both ATI and Nvidia have been known to fake some settings before, e.g., to win extra points in a benchmark. I don't see why they'd refrain from it, when it means making some customers very happy.
Basically, it seems to me that TFA is just inflammatory crap. Whoever bought an 8800 GTX, well, probably will notice no difference. At most they'll have to download a new driver. But then, they probably would have anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://www.eventsounds.com/wav/another.wav
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
In graphics cards that is. Is that required in 10 or 10.1?
Required in DX10, and ALL WDDM drivers in Vista support GPU RAM Virtualization. (Even though NVidia didn't want to support this feature, they have implemented it quite well after some help from MS in the past few months, catching up to XP in gaming performance with it left on, which NVidia didn't think was possible at first.)
GPU RAM virtualization is also used by all WDDM drivers for DX9 hardware and current DirectX games (even 7 & 8), as Vista is in control of the VRAM and also the GPU for scheduling.
This allows gamers with 64mb or 128mb video cards to crank up texture settings in existing games without overloading the VRAM and yet giving them the same performance as XP with the lower quality Texture settings.
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.
Do they even know how to install games on Vista?
Would someone please start a tech news site where people actually talk about the tech?
I read a bunch of +1 or better comments and no one is even talking out the tech, they are just MS bashing.
If folks would read RTFA and do a little research they would find that the tech is actually interesting and worth talking about. Only morons would choose not to learn from what others are doing just because they don't like them.
Oh my; you sir, are a complete and utter moron. You shouldn't even reading /. as your presence is insulting to me.
Is it just me or is the title "DirectX 10 hardware is now obsolete" completely inaccurate in the context of a story which clearly states that some features which were optional are being made compulsory i.e. features that may or may not have been implemented in hardware? Not only this, but it is very likely that those features not supported by the hardware simply will not be available to software attempting to use them. I've run hardware designed in the DX8 era with DX9 and while it wasn't the best performance it still worked. I find it strange that the same people who accuse Microsoft of so many global conspiracies think that they're stupid enough to release software which will be actively avoided by the game development community at large for years to come.
One thing that 10.1 DX addresses is the Sound APIs that developers felt lost without, MS's Sound technology that is used on the Xbox 360 is being added into 10.1 DX, and this is more of what DX 10.1 is about than anything else.
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.
The point of the article is that all early adopters of the whole Vista/DirectX 10 hype have been royally fucked in the ass by MS.
Perhaps you missed: "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." And who other than gamers care about DirectX? Not any sizeable population, and I say that as someome who worked in PC-based molecular visualization.
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.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Microsoft has another, major business unit selling computers to play games.
With thes, they have little reason to make vista (or XP, for that matter) a great gaming platform. They want people playing their games on consoles, and their DRM'd music and DRM'd office applications on thier PC. When you look at gaming this way, vista makes a lot more sense.
That is how it went. Without DirectX, you'd be playing AutoCad on computers.
Nice, little Johnny upgrades his Dad's brand new monster Vista machine Direct X driver in order to play Whack a Mole 2.1 and instantly kills the machine, which now requires a hardware repair before it will work again.
That should go over really well.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
On one hand, I finally caved and shelled out $650 for a new 8800GTX after the fallout from AMD/ATI's recent release did not result in a price drop like I hoped. Oh well, I finally (after 8 months of waiting) have a leading-edge video card that is DX10 compliant and will last me a couple of years hopefully. I can finally crank up all the eye candy in all of my games that my two 7900GTs couldn't handle on my 22" widescreen. Sweet, and game on.
I am still running WinXP because all of my current hardware and software run on it just fine with no problems and I have the OS set up just the way I like. I have no intention of "upgrading" to Vista though so the DX10 compliance of my new card did not really factor in my purchase decision--it's just a nice bullet point that if I wanted to, I could install Vista and run Crysis the way it is meant to be played (when it comes out).
On the other hand, I'm kinda PO'ed that through some arbitrary decision, my expensive new hardware has been "obsoleted". I'd hardly call myself an early adopter since I waited so long to get this card but now that I have it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Oh well, I guess I'm stuck with it. Meh.
There is simply too much glass..
The more you have to support the more you have to maintain. Two weeks down the road, you realise that "Oh wait, this shader isn't quite perfect..." and then you have to change that for atleast two implementations (OpenGL, D3D). It gets old rather soon.
DirectX 10 was bad enough. That DX10 *and* DX10.1 are incompatible is worse. Especially as DX10.1 is a minor version number and thus SHOULDN'T break compatibility with DX10, ever.
They're not incompatible, though. Any game that runs on DX10 will run on DX10.1.
The fact that 10.1 requires a couple of implementations on top of DX10 doesn't prevent DX10 games from running on it.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
If all they are doing is making some optional features mandatory, then wouldn't that mean that some existing cards that are DX10 are already 10.1? Don't high end cards already have these features?
Can you run Madden 2007, NHL 2007 and, or a number of popular baseball games available for Windows under wine. These games will never see the light of day as a Linux port. Worse, a number of war FPS don't run either (Splinter Cell). It seems that the list is mostly limited to geek games (nothing wrong with that) but not likely to appeal to casual gamers, arm chair quarterbacks or FPS freaks. Still, it is nice to see that Linux does have some good gaming options (maturing native ports and wine, elect).
I believe I'll have to disagree with the FPS stance of your post. Quake (id Software), Unreal Tournament (Epic), and Half-Life (Valve Software) all are playable in Wine/Cedega. These games are the pinnacle of first person shooters. In fact, I think id Software has a client port for Linux and Valve Software supports Cedega. (The founders of Valve came from Microsoft.) They each have servers that run on Linux.
I will admit that it will take a long time for the EA's and Activision's of the gaming world to start porting to Linux. But they've proven they are in it strictly for the money. Do you really need an NHL or a Madden game every.single.year? I still have fun with Need For Speed: U2 and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. It is unfortunate that both of these games have little to no expandability, thus replayability.
Smaller shops will be more than willing to create Linux clients if enough people start demanding it.
Yea... I ordered a brand new PC for 2k$ this week including a 8800GTX. There's an unwritten law that states that in the next 48h I purchase something, someone will declare it obsolete.
I honestly don't know. Is DirectX all much better than OpenGL?
If OpenGL will do the job, why even consider DirectX?
You all posted to tell me how wrong I was, didnt you?
Ill let you decide if I'm a troll.
...that this is their version of "people-ready?"
Oh, that's right, only large corporate customers are people. Everyone else is a "consumer." Serves you all right if you ask me.
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
At first I was PISSED about hearing this, but after reading the article and some comments I'm not quite sure what all the hubbub is about. People are right, we won't really have to worry about any of this new crap for a couple of years. I have a 8800GTS and I never bought BECAUSE of Vista. I wanted the speed and some of the other perks to it, not to mention i could tell my friends that i had it :). Maybe I'm missing something? Vista sp1 doesn't REQUIRE this new hardware does it? Meh, whatever...
You don't really know what you're talking about here. Ray-tracing works just as well (in terms of quality of the end result) for diffuse surfaces as rasterizing does. In fact, the only downside of ray-tracing as compared to rasterizing is that ray-tracing is considerably more computationally intense.
Ah, the shrill FOSSie whine continues.
DirectX is backward compatible, so developers aren't FORCED to do anything: they can still support DirectX 10. In fact, there is nothing preventing them from supporting multiple versions of DirectX, either.
This is just another pule for FOSSies to get their panties in a wad, and grind the jealousy axe over the marketplace of ideas abandoning OpenGL.
I play Halo in 1600x1200. It doesn't support AA (or I haven't found that option). I hate that I still see some rugged borders from time to time.
;)
In Car simulations like rFactor I like it in 800x600 with all the AA I can get. It is an incredible different experience than playing it at a high res (much higher framerate), and it still looks amazing.
And in strategy games, f**k the framerate, I want both high res and AA.
CRT user here too
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Seriously, get real. Nice computers, but no-one ever bought a Mac as a games machine.
Of course not... that's what Amigas were for.
Funny how that was construed to mean "toy computer" in the day...
All ID games, and Epic games run on linux without wine/cedega. I play doom3, quake 4, and ut2004 all the time without wine/cedega.
Recently I bought a 8600GT, and it seems my Athlon 3200+ is a little underpowered for it.
As a result, I get almost the same framerate in 640x480 and in 1600x1200, that is, 60-85 FPS (200+ in older games with Vsync disabled).
In that case, I prefer to use the minimal AA (2X), and play at 1600x1200. Not quite the zero AA you use, but very close.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
OpenGL 3.0 will be out later this year, which is equivalent to DirectX 10. Nvidia will support OpenGL 3.0 upgrade through new drivers for current hardware. OpenGL is the choice for developers who want to develop for a cross platform such as Macintosh, PS3 and LINUX. As for DX 10.1, developers will avoid it like a plaque. There will not be ANY games at all that will require 10.1. So this is a good thing, because its pushing the market towards a unified language, OpenGL. This helps push establish Macintosh, PS3 and LINUX which rely on OpenGL. This may be disheartening to R600 and 8800 owners. But its a overall good force in the market. Just be sure to email your favorite game developers to include OpenGL 3.0 in their next patch. And just as a note... Nvidia and ATI should not have made the hardware based on minimum hw requirements.
haha all you morons that upgraded your video cards are going to go crying. I love it!!