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DirectX 12 Lies Dormant Within Microsoft's Recent Windows 10 Update

Posted by timothy on from the until-activated-by-a-trigger-word dept.

MojoKid writes After last Wednesday's Windows 10 event, early adopters and IT types were probably anxious for Microsoft to release the next preview build. Fortunately, it didn't take long as it came out on Friday, and it's safe to say that it introduced even more than many were anticipating (but still no Spartan browser). However, in case you missed it, DirectX 12 is actually enabled in this Windows 10 release, though unfortunately we'll need to wait for graphics drivers and apps that support it, to take advantage of DX 12 features and performance enhancements.

24 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. DirectX is obsolete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    DirectX is obsolete. In today's multiplatform world only OpenGL matters.

    1. Re:DirectX is obsolete by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Last time I heard that statement was during DirectX vs. OpenGL battles in the late 1990's. Any halfway decent video card today can support both with all the bells and whistles. I can't remember the last time I had to pick one over the other.

    2. Re:DirectX is obsolete by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft WANTS directX to remain relevant in the modern multiplatform environment. That's why they are bending over backwards trying to get people to buy windows phones.

      Sadly for them, Android beat them to the punch for "Affordable smartphone OS", while apple beat them to the punch for "Luxury smartphone OS". This leaves microsoft scrambling for marketshare in the smartphone space.

      MS keeps trying to reinvent windows "For a new era", but keeps failing miserably.

      MS needs to realize that PCs arent the preferred gateways for social media like they used to be, (Phones have mostly replaced home computers for this) so social media integration with the OS on a PC is just stupidness. No reason why social media cant use web apps tailored for home PCs of course, but OS integration is not required nor desired. PCs have a pretty stable market niche if microsoft would stop trying to be idiots and realize that Peak PC is long passed.

      PCs have 2 major remaining market niches:

      1) Enterprise(/educational) workstations (Like, for doing WORK on.)
      2) PC Gaming

      Microsoft is still zealously trying to pretend that it owns the whole online media consumption experience, and keeps trying to integrate unwanted features into their OS to make it "Easier" to do social networking and other non-productive tasks which are better accomplished with a smartphone or tablet. This is to the detriment of the first market niche they currently hold; enterprise/educational workstations. Allowing users to more easily waste time on facebook is not a value-add for corporations looking to upgrade their installed workstation bases.

      Really, I have to wonder what Microsoft is thinking these days.

    3. Re:DirectX is obsolete by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      did we just jump into an alternate reality where suddenly MS no longer has 90%+ of the desktop gaming market? OpenGL supporters have been saying DX is obsolete for over a decade and if anything they have lost market share during that time.

    4. Re:DirectX is obsolete by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The developer has to support one or both. Most users don't care as long as everything works.

    5. Re:DirectX is obsolete by bondsbw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Really, I have to wonder what Microsoft is thinking these days.

      Maybe they want to win back the consumer market they lost? Perhaps diversify a bit?

      I just appreciate that they need to compete, and they are forcing their major competitors to bring new things to the table. Otherwise we might be looking at a repeat of mid-2000s, with stagnation like happened in Windows XP and IE 6... just with Apple or Google at the helm this time.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    6. Re:DirectX is obsolete by wierd_w · · Score: 4, Interesting

      OpenGL (or rather, some variants thereof) is the leading API for use on portable devices.

      OpenGL lives more places than DirectX does. DirectX is very much a microsoft platform only technology. Granted, it does a bang up job there, but it does not have the "total" market penetration that OpenGL does. An OpenGL based project can be more easily ported to more disparate devices with less trouble than a DirectX based project can.

      I dont mind DirectX, in fact, I think it has a great niche for the PC gaming niche that windows PCs still hold title to. The problem is that Microsoft keeps trying to shoehorn their windows OS onto those other disparate device platforms. (Windows tablets and phones)

      Rather than just accept that the market has changed, microsoft desperately wants to remain "The" gatekeeper for all things digital, and it just wont happen. They should just accept that Enterprise PCs and PC gaming are their bitches, and social media and mobile computing are Apple's and Google's bitches, and just focus on what's in their box to make it the best possible offering in those categories.

      Instead, they keep trying to force this vision of "microsoft everywhere", and it's destroying them.

    7. Re:DirectX is obsolete by bloodhawk · · Score: 2

      high performance gaming where all these expensive gaming cards are made for does not happen on portal devices, it happens on desktops. You can't just say look a variant of OpenGL runs here here and here and claim it is now dominating, the truth is it hasn't made any significant inroads in the desktop gaming area. On the desktop it isn't even a close race, MS completely and utterly dominate the space. As long as they have a strangehold on the desktop then DX will not be obsolete or even close to it, it is even looking like it will be jumping ahead again with performance which will probably increase its market share even more.

    8. Re:DirectX is obsolete by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The developer has to support one or both. Most users don't care as long as everything works.

      And the developer generally means game engine developer, not game developer. If you want to write your own engine that's a pretty big job by itself.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    9. Re:DirectX is obsolete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      people write high end AAA games for windows desktops, on windows desktops DX is still by far and away the best choice for developers even without the coming performance improvements in DX 12. OpenGL has dodgy driver and vendor support, is more complex to program for and doesn't integrate all the controller and sound input as well as MS does. OpenGL has been subpar on windows for nearly a decade now and until they put some real effort into fixing that then DX will remain the dominate gaming platform that devs target. It doesn't matter what runs on Android or Apple or Linux or a mainframe for that matter, what matters is what runs on the platform people use high res gaming on.

    10. Re: DirectX is obsolete by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Informative

      > I can't think of a single game today that uses OpenGL.

      Uh, HELLO McFly; Minecraft. That "insignificant" game that "only" sold 54+ million copies. ~18 MILLION on PC.

      > Why is that?

      Because you didn't even be bothered to spend 2 seconds to look

      Gee, what is Valve using on OSX, and Linux !?!? ... It sure as hell isn't Microsoft's Not-Inventered-Here RenderMorph's Reality Lab which they renamed to Direct3D

    11. Re:DirectX is obsolete by Wootery · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Microsoft WANTS directX to remain relevant in the modern multiplatform environment.

      PCs have 2 major remaining market niches:

      1) Enterprise(/educational) workstations (Like, for doing WORK on.)

      2) PC Gaming

      Those 2 count for quite a lot, though. I don't think Microsoft are too worried about Mac and Linux supplanting Windows for gaming. It could happen, but that's been the case for years now. The same goes for workstations.

    12. Re:DirectX is obsolete by bloodhawk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      PC gaming is currently over 20 Billion and is still growing (though slowly), Mobile gaming is around 20-25 billion as well, how the fuck do you turn a 50% market share into a drop in the bucket? Regardless they are two separate markets. You can't compare mobile games to desktop games, of course those games would never do as well on a desktop, how would COD, Halo, Far Cry do on a mobile device?

    13. Re:DirectX is obsolete by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 2

      ...Android beat them to the punch for "Affordable smartphone OS", while apple beat them to the punch for "Luxury smartphone OS".

      ...Really, I have to wonder what Microsoft is thinking these days.

      They are thinking that there is a total vacuum in the "Magical Smart Phone OS" category...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    14. Re:DirectX is obsolete by wierd_w · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Windows is surprisingly resistant in the recent versions. The problem is that it is a complex piece of software with many parts, and no software is perfect.

      Microsoft is the dominant player in the corporate workstation world, so it makes sense to target their platform for corporate and state espionage, and to zombify them for various other purposes that need a fleet of drone computers to perform.

      This means that Windows has a large attack surface on both fronts, so it is aggressively being pummeled with attacks.

      It is impossible to make the OS completely hackproof (due to issues related to the halting problem), which is why viruses are still a thing. They are getting more and more sophisticated as Microsoft makes it harder to do virus-like-things in their OS.

      (The nastiest ones use the OS's own security model against the user. Nasty stuff there.)

      Asking for perfect virus protection is like asking for perfect birth control. It does not exist, and the "best" solution is abstinence. (In this case, Not running every EXE you find on the internet.) As they say in the medical profession, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Same way in preventing viral infections for PCs.

      All wrapping each process inside a sandbox would do, is move the focus of the virus programmers to breaking the sandbox, and getting control of the hypervisor. Trust me, the motivation would be there (both mental and monetary), and it would eventually happen. Sandboxing isnt a silver bullet.

      The problem I have with modern windows is not what is under the hood-- it's what they are doing with the userspace. The UI is horrible! It's like Microsoft is taking every "popular" thing, and gluing it to the UI like a tawdry bauble. "let's stick twitter integration icons EVERYWHERE! Facebook too! You know what, let's display thumbnails of our news service's top story every time you click the start button!" and all that shit.

      No. How about "I want to do my work now, go away." eh microsoft?

      There's nothing wrong with providing the OPTION to have that level of deep hentai tentacle penetration with social networking if the user really wants that-- but it should not be a mainlined feature that is assumed to be on.

      I dont have a problem with windows concerning what's under the hood. I have issues with how they are trying to engineer user experience and user consumption. They are trying to dictate. They confuse that with "Leading." It is NOT the same thing. It will continue to kill them until they learn their error.

    15. Re:DirectX is obsolete by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      PCs have 2 major remaining market niches:

      1) Enterprise(/educational) workstations (Like, for doing WORK on.)
      2) PC Gaming)

      What does it say about us that we now consider "doing work" to be a niche?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    16. Re:DirectX is obsolete by A+Friendly+Troll · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sadly for them, Android beat them to the punch for "Affordable smartphone OS", while apple beat them to the punch for "Luxury smartphone OS". This leaves microsoft scrambling for marketshare in the smartphone space.

      So what's going to happen when WP hits 30% in Asia and South America? It's on its way there. In several European countries, WP is at ~12-14%. Windows 10 is going to make central phone management easier; want to guess what's going to happen with tens of millions of various employees being issued official company phones?

      WP is going to continue to grow, and iOS is going to continue to fall, until it becomes an irrelevant quirk.

      Having a US-centric view on reality isn't a very good thing.

    17. Re:DirectX is obsolete by CronoCloud · · Score: 2

      Because most home use of PC's is for NOT doing work? The Internet made PC's desirable for those who before the Internet, didn't have them.

      Sure there's always a few garage developers/wanna-be entrepreneurs/SOHO users, but they're a niche.

  2. DirectX 12 cards are here... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    Newegg has 120 DirectX video cards available. So what's the hold up on drivers?

    1. Re:DirectX 12 cards are here... by Narishma · · Score: 2

      DX12 is a major rewrite and a departure from the old bloated APIs, so drivers will probably need to be re-written from scratch. Though since it's a pretty thin API, it shouldn't take very long.

      --
      Mada mada dane.
  3. If DX 12 is "Enabled" then by SeaFox · · Score: 2

    I don't think it would be right to call it "dormant" in the OS.
    If the code is there, but not available to call to, that would be dormant.

  4. May be not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    DX 12, just like DX10 and DX11 can be used to "encourage" people to upgrade in this case from Win7 to Win10. Additionally if I am not mistaken WINE still supports only up to DX10. Considering Microsoft has XBOX which does not allows developers to write OpenGL applications, we see a very clear picture where MS ensures at least some of market share by forcing developers who want to port games to PC to use DX and consequently Windows. This leaves any other OS out of the picture as far as latest generation XBOX ports go, and imo it is still a relevant barrier for adaptation of Linux for gaming. This seams to becomes less of a problem as Steam pushes for their own solution.

    I am interested to see how they are going to lock down market with their new augmented reality headset and relevant IP. Anyone want to bet it will run anything that uses something other than DX12 applications and holographic processor for no apparent reason? (which is probably a moded GPU with drivers designed to screw everyone else)

    Same old, same old.

  5. Re:Windows 10 by bloodhawk · · Score: 3, Informative

    NO, they stated it is free if you upgrade in the first year. After that time if you want to upgrade you pay normal upgrade price. There is no expiry or only good for a year.

  6. Ship of Theseus by abies · · Score: 2

    Minecraft is written in java. How many usable DirectX bindings do you know for java?
    Of course, they can as well rewrite Minecraft from the scratch in C++ or C# and port it to DirectX at same time. And maybe change the name. And gameplay. And developer team. And make it runnable only on Windows.
    At this point, discussion stops to be technical and starts to be philosophical - if they rewrite every single part of it, is it still same game?