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AMD Says There Will Be No DirectX 12 — Ever
mikejuk writes "This is a strange story. AMD Vice President of Global Channel Sales Roy Taylor has said there will be no DirectX12 at any time in the future. In an interview with German magazine Heise.de, Taylor discussed the new trend for graphics card manufacturers to release top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card. One of the reasons for this, he said, is that the DirectX update cycle is no longer driving the market. 'There will be no DirectX 12. That's it.' (Google translation of German original.) Last January there was another hint that things weren't fine with DirectX when Microsoft sent an email to its MVPs saying, 'DirectX is no longer evolving as a technology.' That statement was quickly corrected, but without mentioning any prospect of DirectX 12. So, is this just another error or rumor? Can we dismiss something AMD is basing its future strategy on?"
... it only goes to 11
We did it everyone! OpenGL won, good job everybody. Highest of fives all 'round.
July, 2013: AMD Says 'Okay, There Will Be A DirectX 12, But We're Not Supporting It'
September, 2013: AMD Says DirectX 12 Support By Next Year
March, 2014: New AMD Cards' Poor DirectX 12 Performance Disappointing
May, 2014: AMD Boss Complains About Being 'Left Out' Of DirectX 12 Development
August, 2014: Struggling AMD Says 'Just Wait For DirectX 13!'
Use OpenGL. It's the platform of every rising device. Furthermore you can get the benefits of open source.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So what, are they going to skip 12 and go to 13? They've done it before, with DirectX 4, so it's not a new idea. Maybe 12 turned out to be a huge mess.
I don't see DirectX being discontinued in favor of OpenGL/OpenAL/etc, since the GUIs in their latest products and frameworks all seem to use DirectX to some extent.
(asbestos underpants on) Or maybe they switched to FOSS-style versioning, and just don't see anything new that would demand a major version number. We're going to see abominations like DirectX 11.1.25.4-r6.3 for the rest of time.
If memory serves this was also linked in the related article above. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663275.aspx
DirectX is just becoming part of the Windows 8 SDK. Then presumably the Windows 9, etc, SDKs as well. On until death.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
You're clearly not making the market. DirectX has been the "talking to the graphics card" layer for years. I think the summary is actually right in that the past 5-10 years, developing your own graphical/physics engine is dead. Unreal, unity, havok, source, whatever, it's all cheaper than developing something from scratch and building in the DirectX/openGL core features of the latest generation.
Yeah, you still write shaders, do optimization, whatever, but how you do that will depend on what Unreal supports, not on what bleeding edge directx features are.
I am sure 10 years ago someone could have easily said there would never be an OS 11.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I think you misunderstand what that means. It means directX has moved from a versioned API with new features all the time, to a stable API that they feel safe tying to the OS and pushing updates for through windows update. It's like when an open source project has reached the point where its no longer worth it to pull the latest from git. It's "done".
On the contrary, DirectX10 had the best improvement of all versions. It changed everything. They ditched the fixed pipeline, ditched old "backward-compatibility" that was clobbering the system, connected directly to the Windows hardware layer, support multithreading, etc.
What exactly does "top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card" mean? Have I missed something else in this conversation?
developing your own graphical/physics engine is dead
Interesting. So I should stop coding this new OGL-based engine from scratch because it's easier to use a pre-made engine? Because you think it's 'dead'? Let alone your coding ability going down the toilet because all you do is drag-and-drop 'component blocks' in your engine of choice, what do you do when you hit the looming brick wall that is the engine's limitations?
"Hey guys, let's pack it up. This random dude on the 'net says the custom and one-off engines we've been making for years are dead, and we should just use Unity or Unreal."
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
OpenGL was multithreading capable from the get go. DirectX until 11.2 was single threaded only.
DirectX uses a very different object graph proposition that puts the scene as the major component and for most indoor FPS, that is an easier concept, but those choices mean taking it outside where the scene (in a 3D construction context) is not the primary container for the "world" realised, you've got a much worse system to program. OGL was much better at the open world 3D and a little worse at the enclosed box-room preferred for early FPSs.
DirectX development was only slightly easier, and only for a small segment of what is being done.
The thing with Valve is that they are not exactly an unbiased source. For one, their engine is pretty outdated. They are all DX9 stuff in their games. Now fair enough from a market point of view (though there are been more than a couple very successful DX10+ only titles) but talking technically that is looking at things in a rather outdated fashion. DX10 changed the way you deal with graphics cards and most developers seem to think quite a bit for the better.
Also there's the fact that they are pushing Linux because they are really worried about the future of Steam. Valve makes stupid amounts of money doing very little with Steam. However if the Windows store takes off (something that is not at all certain, but could happen) their money pit dries up. Hence they are looking at bringing Steam to a new platform, that bring Linux.
Finally note that their criticism was that Windows is becoming "not open". Now maybe that will end up being the case, but it is not at this point. Steam still works real well for Windows, as do all other stores. That aside they weren't saying Linux was technically superior, at least not in that talk, they were saying that it had what they needed on a technical side.
There is a time and a place for GC. If you don't understand BOTH the Pros AND Cons you really don't understand a subject in detail.
i.e.
_IF_ one could specify the maximum milliseconds allowed the GC is allowed to run (i.e. 2 ms) per frame THEN it would be acceptable for game development. Currently GC has no place at run-time DUE to its non-deterministic nature.
Relying on GC is like relying on the compiler to guarantee safe array access. Sure it works but one must always remember the cardinal rule:
TINSTAAFL, that is, There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
But there will surely be a Direct3D 12 inside the Windows Platform SDK.
Microsoft is basically removing the individual "DirectX" brand and absorbing it into the platform SDK. Now Direct3D is just another Windows component like GDI. The idea that there will never be an update beyond what we have now is positively absurd and I feel he was either misunderstood or the translation is inaccurate.