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."

Comments

ehh

[Dyinobal]

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.

Re:ehh

[White Flame]

But these go to 11!

Re:ehh

[LOLLinux]

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.

I still watch VHS tapes you insensitive clod!

Re:ehh

[ShooterNeo]

Are you blind? It's one thing to compare DirectX 9 versus 11 video games, where either API lets you create highly detailed, high performance graphics.

It's another to compare the gigantic difference in picture quality between 1080p/720p and craptacular 480p (at most)

The difference between high def and standard is pretty darn immediate and obvious for new content such as TV shows that were made using the right digital cameras. Film, not so much, because the darn camera and lenses in movies is often set to blur hard edges and details, and of course is a craptacular 24fps.

Re:ehh

[Petrushka]

Quoth Dyinobal:

Sure blueray has some nice features ... I don't really need ... I'll upgrade in a few years ...

Quoth webheaded:

... kicking and screaming ... There is no LIMIT to the amount of shit you'll complain about ... the higher version gives you shit fits ... what kind of moron ...

Compare and contrast: which of these two is complaining and having shit fits?

Re:ehh

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are they going to go?

And you should seriously learn some computing history, MS has a long healthy history of pissing off various segments of its developer base. Anyway, you are assuming that the sabotage would be obvious rather than just 'bad documentation' or APIs that return values they aren't supposed to, things that can be easily written off as bugs [which are never fixed] or lazyness.

Re:ehh

[dragonsomnolent]

if you insist: http://xkcd.com/670/

Re:ehh

[hairyfeet]

I think the problem is that DX9 has gotten "good enough" for most folks, at least IMHO. There is only so much pretty you can look at while dodging gunfire and shit blowing up all around you. I haven't played a game in the last 4-5 years where I thought "they really need to add more pretty" because I've been too busy going "Holy Crap! dodge dodge duck blast Shit! The bad guys are packing hefty and I'm packing wimpy! shit!". See for example the first time I whipped around the corner and shot at a splicer and hit Big Daddy in the ass by mistake. When those big red eyes spun on me all I needed was a sound bite of Daffy Duck to make the moment perfect.

For me pretty much everything after Far cry 1 has been past the "good enough" level as far as graphics and bling goes. Now if they would do better on stories and AI I would be a happy camper, but sadly we haven't gotten much better on that front since Far Cry 1. IMHO it isn't so much the graphics that separate the okay from the good from the great, but decent story and AI. Bioshock, FEAR, L4D I was too busy playing the game to actually spend much time looking at the pretty. But the atmosphere, the AI (or lack of it in too many games), the story, these things I notice.

So I have to agree that while I am running Windows 7 HP I just don't see the need to toss my ATI 4650 1Gb. The games I play already look prettier than I can actually pay attention to while not getting the living shit blasted outta me, I haven't seen anything in DX11 that will make bad game companies come out with better AI (I'm looking at you, EA!) or better stories. So I will stick with DX9 until there are enough compelling games out that use DX11 to make it worth using.

And doesn't the X360 use DX9? Considering how many PC games are nothing but shitty X360 ports anymore DX11 will probably be waiting until the x720 before getting adopted. Oh well, that is what MSFT gets for killing MechWarrior and turning every game company they touch into an X360 company.

Re:ehh

[Jeremy Erwin]

On a DVD, if something's out of focus, it could be because of the cinematography, or it could be because the DVD doesn't have enough bits. On a bluray, if something's out of focus, it's probably because the director of photography intended it to be out of focus.
Water looks a bit more realistic. Animation looks a bit sharper.

On a smaller screen, these are all subtleties, and don't jump out at the viewer unless edge enhancement is added-- which tends to bother viewers with larger screens. Too much processing can also make skin look like plastic.

Re:ehh

[Aceticon]

I reckon that being specialists in one technical area or other, many of us are actually knowledgeable enough about technology and technology companies to know that newer is not the same as better.

As such, the old-hands amongst us we feel bound by duty and ethics to inform the bright-eyed, young and inexperienced amongst us of that.

Not that it makes any difference most of the time ...

Re:ehh

[thisnamestoolong]

Yes. You need high quality equipment for the difference between DVD and Blu Ray to be worthwhile. What's your point? There are some of us who care about quality and have thousands of dollars of home theater equipment. There are some who don't. I feel that it makes the experience of watching a film far more engrossing and worth the cost. You have chosen to spend your money differently, so it's not worth upgrading to Blu Ray. On my set-up, however, the difference is immediate, obvious, and clearly worth the money for those who care about such things.

OpenGL Development

[bazald]

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.

HotHardware Test

[DeadPixels]

From the HotHardware test:

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?

Re:HotHardware Test

[darthflo]

If I'm not mistaken, High sets the game to use the highest quality rendering it can get using only DirectX 9 features while Ultra is the only setting that actually enables stuff specific to DirectX 11. The article doesn't mention there being two cards or different installs or anything, so they probably just ran the game twice on the same box, first with DirectX-9-style rendering (done through DiretX 11 and only then switched on DirectX 11's full visual splendor (Ultra quality).

Re:OpenGL

[QuoteMstr]

This is the most ill-informed comment I've ever seen.

You don't have a "direct path" to the hardware on modern computers at all. After all, you're not filling DMAed command buffers and programming memory registers, and you don't want to be: the details would drive you to madness. That's what we have drivers for.

OpenGL and Direct3D are both abstraction layers for the hardware. Neither is intrinsically more "direct", but both were certainly designed for real-time 3D rendering (although OpenGL was initially more used for CAD applications than games).

Bad summary

[julesh]

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?

Re:OpenGL

[noname444]

Cards are lazily called "DX11" or "DX10", but the features are not DirectX-specific. The term shader model, or pixel shader version can be used to describe GPU hardware generations correctly and/or in an API neutral fashion.

Since these are hardware features they are available to any API that implements them, and OpenGL usually is implemented by the graphics driver, which is written by (or under contract of) the graphics card manufacturers, they usually expose any new hardware features to an OpenGL-application through extensions.

It's a shame that the Khronos Group isn't faster when it comes to including the extensions in the standard and upping the version number of OpenGL. I'd love to see an OpenGL release schedule synced with the shader models.

DX8 -> PS1.0 / PS1.1
DX11 -> PS5.0

For more information see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_shader#Hardware

Open*CL* not Open*GL*

[DrYak]

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.

Re:I can see the difference between DX9 and DX10

[thisnamestoolong]

No. Crysis DX9 vs. DX10 really is no appreciable difference at all -- in Crysis, the Very High setting is locked for DX10 only, but this is a totally artificial limitation, probably to try and drum up support for DX10. Even at that, the difference between High and Very High is not earth-shattering. The Internet quickly figured out how to enable all of the Very High graphics setting for DX9 through .INI tweaks, even before Crysis was on store shelves. Being called out on their bullshit, Crytek then released Crysis: Warhead with the Enthusiast (Very High) graphics setting unlocked in DX9. Here is a great article with screenshots:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182140/index.html