Tuesday, July 22nd 2008
Microsoft DirectX 11 Details Emerge
Microsoft has released a handful of details about DirectX 11, the latest version of the company's API.
Source:
Shacknews
- Full support (including all DX11 hardware features) on Windows Vista as well as future versions of Windows
- Compatibility with DirectX 10 and 10.1 hardware, as well as support for new DirectX 11 hardware
- New compute shader technology that lays the groundwork for the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor
- Multi-threaded resource handling that will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines
- Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close
41 Comments on Microsoft DirectX 11 Details Emerge
Then we have the furniture and of course the terrain. In games they are almost always made of boxes, or shapes that are very close to be boxes. Usually the designer makes the levels so that they have very few rounded surfaces, because they will look better. Tesselation should be used to improve that IMO. Not just increasing the details of characters and models that BTW have already achieved a level of detail that is very good. Increasing it isn't as desirable as increasing the detail of the surroundings.Wrong. Not at all. XBox 360's GPU has 48 SPs and those are not comparable to the ones in R6xx line, are different and more powerfull. You'd do better comparing them to X1xxx series or maybe the ones on Nvidia DX10 cards (G80 and above). You can't really compare them directly, but a better comparison would be to say it has 48 SPs, where HD2400 has 8 and HD2900/3870 has 64. Also remember the ones on the Xbox run at 500 Mhz while R6xx runs almost at 800 Mhz.
Even if you don't need a powerful GPU for imaging getting a powerful one anyway to speed everything up would be worth it if the DX11 info is true. More powerful GPU not so worried about the powerful CPU.
Here's a visual idea......
Like everything else, we'll have to wait and see, but DX 11 sounds exciting!:D
The whole DX11 thing does sound like MS talked a lot to AMD though doesn't it, perhaps they like people that implement their ideas better than those that don't.
But I see no mention of voxels/raytracing, unless that's hidden as part of those 'compute shaders'.
Secondly, NVIDIA was known for their drivers unike ATI before Vista's arrival. In fact, NVIDIA has several issues ongoing with Vista incompatibilities that they seem to refuse to fix. Let me say it before anyone gets all upset, I am not an ATI or an NVIDIA fanboi! I am for products that work and deliver the best value (plus some) that the consumer pays and expects. On the other hand, it depends on what unique games, applications, etc., that you use that determines what specific card is the best value for you. As far as tessellation from NVIDIA, don't hold your breath. You'll turn blue and fall over. ATI at this moment in time holds the cards IMO. ;)
Just my 2 cents.
However, with DX11 having DX10 capabilities, they might finally get around to it.
I liked the comment about using blur to mix real time and cinematics, though I fear in some ways 3d applications are starting to look too real - where at the same time, animations and the like are not realistic enough.
They have tons of people working for them and they could slowly but steadily improve the OS instead of leaving stuff in from the early 90's and even moving that to next OS's and only improving 3 components, they lack pride in their business it seems.