Slashdot Mirror
DX11 Tested Against DX9 With Dirt 2 Demo
MojoKid writes "The PC demo for Codemasters' upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect this early on in its adoption cycle."
Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."
I Personally view DX11 as I do sonys push from DVD to blueray. Sure blueray has some nice features but I'm still enjoying my DVDs, and I don't really need uncompressed audio tracks for every language on my disks. Same thing with DX11, I've not even properly gotten set with many DX10 games and now they are pushing DX11 (well pushing as in mostly tech demos) and I've not even got much dust on my latest graphics card. I'll upgrade in a few years, perhaps when I see DX9 vanish, or at least become increasingly uncommon.
Not even sure if I knew there was a DirectX 11.. Does anyone know how OpenGL compares to direct3d 11?
Would be interesting to know if either the DX9 or DX11 codepath had a significantly higher power requirement on DX11 capable hardware.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Most of the "important" features of Direct3D 11 will be exposed immediately as OpenGL extensions.
The next version of OpenGL will officially support those features.
As usual, it will be a nightmare to take advantage of those features without requiring their presence. (GLEW and GLEE help only so much.)
If there are any features of Direct3D that would require architectural changes to OpenGL, they won't appear until the next major version, at the earliest. I'd be surprised if virtualization of texture memory were supported soon, but I'm not really expert in these developments. (For all I know, it is already supported...)
In summary, OpenGL will remain competitive with Direct3D with the usual caveats.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Performance-wise, DX11 didn't take its toll as much as you'd expect...
Apparently you were expecting more than a THIRTY PERCENT (30%) drop in frame rate??
Exactly wtf were your expectations?
while playing Crysis. I haven't seen DX11, but from what I've seen on DX9 vs DX10, the only way you couldn't tell the difference is if the game graphics are poorly programmed. I am sure anyone that has seen Crysis superhigh on DX10 in 30+ fps could tell the difference.
Is it worthy? well, it depends on how much the gamer values graphic quality, so it's really very subjective. But don't say there is no visible difference.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
Just for the record "...notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX." Direct X has nothing to do with textures. (Textures are created by the artist & are bound by engine limitations) The textures would not change unless the game was specifically changed with higher resolution textures. I.e. 4098 vs 2048 etc... now that that's over... The engine is the limiting factor in the benchmark. Remember how games became dx10 when dx10 came out? Its not really using the framework to its full capacity. Such as COH or Bioshock having an update for DX10, it doesnt actually add that much, but compare dx9 crysis to dx10 crysis you'll see a difference as the engine was coded to use both frameworks fully. (or flight simulator X) anyways check out the video it shows dx11 not constrained by the engine, dx11 can actually tessellate normal maps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR40GwRtFyw&feature=player_embedded (go to like 2:50)
Yes Microsoft hired away all of the greatest talent in 3-D graphics many years ago and sequestered them in Redmond, working on hardware-tesselated dynamic water.
Future people will ask how the US squandered all of its great intellectual talent, and the only answer we will have is that we spent it designing hardware tesselators so that video gamers could have photorealistic water.
It is hard to imagine a more horrifying waste of resources.
Microsoft Research has blown through billions of dollars and this is what we get for that?
Just for the record "...notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX." Direct X has nothing to do with textures. (Textures are created by the artist & are bound by engine limitations) The textures would not change unless the game was specifically changed with higher resolution textures. I.e. 4098 vs 2048 etc... now that that's over... The engine is the limiting factor in the benchmark. Remember how games became dx10 when dx10 came out? Its not really using the framework to its full capacity. Such as COH or Bioshock having an update for DX10, it doesnt actually add that much, but compare dx9 crysis to dx10 crysis you'll see a difference as the engine was coded to use both frameworks fully. (or flight simulator X) anyways check out the video it shows dx11 not constrained by the engine, dx11 can actually tessellate normal maps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR40GwRtFyw&feature=player_embedded (go to like 2:50)
"Direct X has nothing to do with textures"
Please tell me how the data for the textures gets from the disk to the screen. Exactly what software manipulates them? What software renders them? What software is responsible for how the textures look on the screen?
Quote from the article:
"DirectCompute 11 accelerated high definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full screen resolution post processing. "
Do you REALLY assert that these features have NO effect on the rendering of textures?
The DirectX 11 performance numbers were recorded with the game set to its "Ultra" quality mode, while the DirectX 9 numbers were recorded with the game set to its "High" quality mode. ... As you can see, performance dropped off significantly in DirectX 11 mode.
Now, is it just me, or does that seem a little biased or inaccurate? Of course you're going to see lower performance when you set the graphics higher. Wouldn't it make much more sense (and be a fairer comparison) to compare the FPS with both cards set on either High or Ultra, instead of each on a different level?
Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: "You'd need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX."
I've seen it, and the difference is like night and day! Well worth the extra $$$.
On a completely unrelated note, I have never seen so much green in one little brown package.
Hint to mods: +1 obscure movie reference
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
"Hardware tesselation is going to be the next big thing (it's been around for a while but this is the first time there's really been a universal standard for it). "
Boy you are really living in some sort of Microsoft fantasy world.
You can't tell the difference between "Microsoft" and "universal".
A shadow under a rock? Anything that has its own acronym should affect more than 0.5% of the pixels in a screenshot.
Summary picks out one point where the article states that graphics haven't improved, but article goes on to discuss improvements in other areas. The pictures speak for themselves; the shadows are much more realistic and the water effects are much more realistic. The textures were fine to start with -- who cares if they improved?
"notice any real difference between textures "
The word NOTICE speaks to its appearance on the screen, which is INDEED affected by shading.
I understand (and to some extent) agree with the "good enough" argument for DX9. Many games look very realistic and are damn impressive.
From the screenshots in the article, I agree it takes a discerning eye to pick out the differences between DX9 and DX11. However, to me some things seem more natural and less CG-ish with DX11. Specially the textures applied to the road (to avoid it looking flat). The DX9 screenshots, while they look just fine (quite good, actually), very much look computer generated to me. The DX11 feel much more natural and realistic (and not realistic in terms of simply being higher resolution). This makes me think that the "next battle" in terms of graphics cards and DX isn't simply about higher resolution, but about recreating the naturalism (and randomness) that occurs in nature in the real world. If that is indeed the case, DX11 seems like it might be in a very good position to tackle that kind of problem.
Sorry that all isn't worded very clearly, I'm up after only two hours of sleep.
NTSC is essentially 30 Hz. Intentionally chosen so 60Hz line noise will be stationary on the screen.
I took a look at the video in TFA, and for a game named "dirt" the cars looked very clean... I mean, in the video the cars drive on a dirt track (with a nice dirt cloud after the cars), with small pools of water, and still the cars looks like they just have been thorough clean and waxing session. While using so much extra power for more realistic flags, crowds and water, which you have no time to see really, why not use some of that to make the cars, which you do see quite a lot, become dirty?
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
I've played Dirt 2 on the PS3, back when it was released a few months ago. I can see why the graphical improvements in the PC version might attract attention, but I have another question...
Does DX11 have any kind of feature that lets you take that complete and utter XTREME moron who does the voice-overs for the game and kill him slowly in imaginative ways? Any enjoyment in the game was killed for me by XTREME SURFER DUDE RAD TO THE MAX guy screaming his head off every time I tried to do anything. Seriously... who actually likes that kind of thing? Who can even actually tolerate it, in a game that doesn't give you any option to turn it off.
I'll stick with Forza 3 for my racing game goodness for the time being. Yes, it has the strange old-bloke with the curious mid-Atlantic accent doing voice work on the menus, but at least he's not being all XTREME and you can shut him up if you want to.
Is your mama Netcraft?
I hate printers.
I always thought the DX9 was better constructed than the DX11 although the lack of multi-timbral operation on the DX9 meant it was more limited.
http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/dx9.php
http://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/dx11.php
is that no game publisher would choose to make a game that looks drastically better on cards that few people have(or worse, the PC version ends up looking way better than the console one). Its bad business. (Not for GPU manufacturers though!)
But, OTOH, if you stick just to demos made by MS, AMD/ATI & NVIDIA all you have are contrived scenarios that use all of what DX11 offers and DX10,9 don't. I would personally suspend judgement till more games are released w/ DX11 support
Are testellated surfaces only for eyecandy or is there for ex. support for collision detection with them? Could it be possible to make a speedboat or jetski racing game where natural waves, bow waves and wakes are correctly affecting all the floating bodies?
Not even sure if I knew there was a DirectX 11
Well, of course.
Most of the new features of DX 11 have nothing to do with graphics. There are few addition to Direct*3D* and biggest new stuff of DX11 is Direct*Compute*.
It's for general purpose computing on GPU.
Therefore it's no surprise that no player and game company gives a damn about it.
It has few advantage to offer on most current games.
It also explains why the testers almost didn't see any *visual* difference between the DX9 and DX11 versions. (It's not the same as between DX9 and DX10 - where most differences were on the graphic side - Direct3D - and thus translated into more eye candy).
DX11 is not used for the visuals. It is used for the computations going under the hood. It will be useful for physics simulations, etc.
The main problem in such situations - just like a few years ago with the PhysX accelerator - is that you can't have different level physics support that won't affect the gameplay.
With difference of graphics capability, you can just have difference in detail level : one configuration will look prettier than the other, but the game will always play the same.
But you can't have more-or-less realistic physics, because the game won't play the same if the objects don't react the same based on the level of physics simulation. Therefore, the gameplay use the same simulation no-matter what the configuration is (the same rigid body physics for all player-driveable vehicles), and GPGPU (CUDA, OpenCL or in this situation DirectCompute) will only be used for a few small details - water surface, cloth simulation, debris displayed on screen during an explosion animation, perhaps ragdoll physics for NPC death (in games where it doesn't matter where the body lands).
Thus differences are virtually invisible on screen shots. Its only while playing that some of the players will say : "Hey look, the monster fell in a funny way down the stairs !"
Does anyone know how OpenGL compares to direct3d 11?
Given the above, the most correct would be to compare Open*CL* to DirectX11.
And OpenCL does very well. It looks like a genericised version of CUDA, with a slightly lower level API on the host setup side (the same level of verbosity as OpenGL).
Also, OpenCL integrates well with OpenGL (just like DiectCompute integrates well with Direct3D)
Last but not least, OpenCL will be supported much more widely in its target market (Scientific computing) having implementation for most OSes (including Linux and MacOS X), having support from major hardware producers (ATI, Nvidia, Intel) including embed ones (ImaginationTech. PowerVR, ARM, etc.), and even having open-source implementation (Gallium3D framework for the next gen Mesa3D).
Whereas DXCompute is only available in Windows 7 and probably soon on the current or on the next XBox.
In conclusion :
In most case, game developers wont bother (except in some simulator requiring as much realism as possible and thus advanced physics support).
They'll rely on 3rd party middle ware for physics (like Havok).
And middle-ware makers will probably target several platforms anyway, in order to be interesting for non-microsoft consoles too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
One thing to keep in mind is that since we are at the point where textures themselves are high enough quality for things to look very good. So, the focus then becomes motion and in the details. Things like physics, and how objects interact are where a lot of the focus is moving to, as well as things like motion, and in the really TINY details that you may not notice when things are in motion, but are still there(like the fuzz and frayed edges on worn clothes, or sweaters). These sorts of things may not be required, but they do add to things. Water is one of those things that people keep pointing to, but improvements in how REAL things feel in a game or computer rendering are what make NEW games look better than things from previous generations.
A big problem that people need to remember is that just because the highest end cards have a lot of power to handle the newest features does not mean that the low end DX11 cards do. This is why adoption of even DirectX 10 has been low, because developers need to code based on what consumers will have in their computers, and if most people can't use a feature, that reduces how attractive that feature is when it comes to selling the game/application. DX11 may not be limited ONLY to Windows 7 this time around, but it will still be limited to people with a DX11 class GPU in their system. I am still seeing many low-end systems with the Geforce 6150LE in them these days, as well as the crappy Intel graphics, so it is clear that it will take at least six years before DX 9 is finally gone(because I expect to see new machines sold with Geforce 6150LEs for the next two years STILL being sold retail).
The big names in the retail/mail order computer field, HP/Compaq, Dell, and Gateway/eMachines are encouraging a shift to newer generations. If this is because they have too high an inventory, or are just unwilling to transition to newer generations I don't know. It is just annoying that THEY are holding us back. I know on the AMD side that it would be NICE to see more entry level systems with an integrated AMD graphics chipset since these not only perform better, but also support the newer standards.
Most of the "important" features of Direct3D 11 will be exposed immediately as OpenGL extensions.
Well, given the fact that the most important feature of DirectX 11 isn't Direct3D, but in fact is DirectCompute, OpenCL would be a better suited equivalent.
And OpenCL integrates nicely with OpenGL, just like DirectCompute with Direct3D.
But beside a few simulation eye candy like water surface or debris during an explosion, it won't cause much difference in games (because otherwise the physics would influence too much on the game play).
That is, until monstrous power hogs like Crysis 3 and Windows 8 are out. Then the users will have to buy modern hardware en masse, and the install base of DX11 hardware will increase. Only then the developers will be free to safely harness DXCompute for complex physics simulations at game-play level.
Imagine a massive stock car race with Rigs-of-Rods -grade physics simulation of every single vehicle - much more realistic collision and more fun, but would require massive acceleration. If a game developer decides to go for DirectCompute as a possible acceleration solution, better check that most of the user have DX11 capable hardware ! (And be ready to say good-bye to PlayStation & Nintendo players)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I haven't seen DX11, but from what I've seen on DX9 vs DX10
It's worse :
- DX9 vs. DX10 was about graphic capabilities. At least they could translate into some visuals.
- DX11 is about DirectCompute - GPGPU (like CUDA, OpenCL, etc.). Hardly anything beside a few discrete eye candy (like water surface, debris in an explosion, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Not worth 20fps on an 80fps game, I'm afraid.
The price you pay for a little more realistic water and other minor changes that could easily be "faked" without DirectX 11 (if they bothered) isn't worth it for the hardware, the driver suppport, forced OS for DirectX11, the increased power of the cards, etc. If that was my PC, I'd be playing it in DirectX 9 mode.
Just for the record "...notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX." Direct X has nothing to do with textures. (Textures are created by the artist & are bound by engine limitations) The textures would not change unless the game was specifically changed with higher resolution textures. I.e. 4098 vs 2048 etc...
In theory "Yes", but not in practice.
What a tester calls "texture" is what he/she sees on the surface of objects.
Which could be a simple bitmap texture mapped on the object.
Or could be the result of a complex shader written to combine several source of data (textures, other parameters) to creat a nice-looking surface (as for example in procedural textures).
For example, parallax mapping can be used go give impression of depth and surface details to something which is only a flat triangle with a texture painted onto it.
DX10 expands shader capability compared to DX9 - thus leading to more complex calculation possible to paint object surface. Thus nicer surface and nicer "textures" in the testers jargon (although "Shader" or "Procedural texture" would be more appropriate in this situation).
Now DX11 adds mainly on the GPGPU front with DirectCompute. So not much more visible graphic eye candy. Thus nothing of interest in screen shots.
The difference will be in some minor physics simulation that doesn't break the gameplay.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
the water effects are much more realistic. The textures were fine to start with -- who cares if they improved?
Water Effects = Physics simulation = not directly to do with graphics = Done by DirectCompute (which is the big new stuff in DX11) (or done by CUDA or OpenCL or other GPGPU)
Texture effects & Shaders & Procedural textures = Graphics rendering = Entirely dependent on Direct3D = Where DX11 doesn't feature as many new gizmos.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They may not have been allowed to dirt up the cars; although you'd have to strangle that out of an employee as they're bound to be under NDAs regarding the exact contracts.
Compare that to car manufacturers not allowing damage models on 'their' cars, or dictating exactly what damage models would be allowed (e.g. a bent fender.. sure. an engine dying.. hell no.)
Ahhh to remember the early 90's when every racing game just tossed in whatever car they da*n well liked at a splendid 50 polygons and car manufacturers were off-the-record just glad for the free advertising.
Bah, try the full version ("available" since the evening of the 2nd), and then see what ya get.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
The days of big changes from DX api change are gone. We had ridiculous hype for DX10 which turned out to be negligible improvement and even Faked "improvement" as in Crysis.
DX11 here is more of the same. Screen shots from both flipped back and forth to point out that this flag has more flap in it.
DX11 is the last reason to buy new graphics hardware (just as DX10 was). Buy new graphics hardware when you need the performance boost a new generation card will bring, or some new feature like Eyefinity if you want to use that, but DX11, that is 99% hype, 1% substance.
Ahh clever.
See what he's doing guys? He's trying out the lesser known Mac-DDOS-attack strategy on Slashdot.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.