With a preview version slated for November 2008 and beta versions as early as 2009, Microsoft’s newest DirectX will be here sooner than you think. ExtremeTech’s Loyd Case digs deep into DirectX 11 and discusses its new features and how it differs from DX10. While improved graphics are expected out of the new release, DX11 hopes to improve upon crunching complex graphics with the GPU through hardware tessellation, which many people hoped to see in DX10.
And let me guess, this will only work in Vista…
Wake me up when it works on XP, OS X, Linux, and something that can run on lightweight mobile devices.
Edited 2008-09-03 22:37 UTC
No, it will work in Windows 7 too.
What difference would it make? The gaming community for Linux and OSX is virtually nothing.. I mean it would be useless to waste man hours doing something like this.
But the reason the *nix and OSX communities are so small is because you can’t play (most) games on those OS’s.
That, my friend, is a catch 22
Edited 2008-09-04 17:04 UTC
The Linux based OS gaming community is alive and well with a large library of games to select from. These gamers also enjoy the win32 only games though so, being of higher technical skill level, usually have dual boot winXP partitions for DX crippled games.
I sort of think that well developed code could easily be recompiled against the libraries for various platforms with little issue and time for porting the differences over. Being interested in seeing the DX libraries ported to different platforms or even different versions within the windows family is a very valid interest; even if you mistake market share for any kind of remotely accurate measurment of platform usage.
Mind you, I’d be surpised and happy if it even worked with winXP along side whatever flavor of Windows the marketing department will be pushing by then.
Excuse me, Direct3D is a proprietary windows standard which is only supposed to work on windows. So the question of it running on linux doesn’t arise.
Having said that, when Gallium3D will be operational, one can look forward to having full Direct3D 9 acceleration in linux (on cards that support D3D 9). This would be particularly useful for software running on wine. But I am not holding my breath for that one. If only game developers hang on to D3D 9 for a few more years….
Direct3D 9? What’s this, the year 2002?
Game developers are continuously pushing the envelope of graphic cards and you’re harping on about 6 year old technology?
How many DX10 only games are currently on the market? Seems any I’ve seen support DX9/DX10 still. Tell me again how DX9 is dead and gone when nothing ont he store shelves supports it any longer and everyone gives up there legacy games.
I don’t see why Gallium couldn’t emulate DX10 as well, if the driver model below permits it. The framework is designed to support new API’s like OpenGL 3.0, and DX10 should be quite similar in feature set.
Features like memory management that should (finally) go upstream in the following kernel (for Intel at least), and a bit later for Radeon will make it easier (i.e. provide WDDM 1.0 equivalent features).
The remaining problem will be optimisation of OSS drivers; I doubt it will be comparable to closed source equivalents that soon (AMD and Nvidia invest a lot of money to get each bit of GPU time used as efficiently as possible).
It’s quite early to speak about DX10 emulation when the current open-source drivers don’t fully implement OpenGL 1.5/2.0, even with open specifications… Considering that many DX10 features are beyond the OpenGL 3.0 specs, emulation won’t for tomorrow — or even for the end of the decade.
Gallium3D is an humble project, but I don’t see any adoption until it’s backed by an influential commercial vendor.
If there were a better cross platform toolkit for game development I’m sure it would get used. If someone built a complete easy to use toolkit that worked together with other things like physics engines or ogre we might see some more cross platform games. Especially if the toolkit could abstract the platform (ps2 ps3 xbox xbox360 pcwindows pclinux osx) with near native speed. It would also need documentation, community, and support.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSceneGraph
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
http://www.blender.org/
http://www.blender.org/download/resources/
http://www.blender.org/download/python-scripts/
Enjoy.
Edited 2008-09-04 06:24 UTC
There is SDL too.
http://libsdl.org/
SDL is OK for 2D games & such, but it just doesn’t quite have the scope of Openscenegraph and Blender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lone_House.jpg
^^^ made with Blender.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Buck_Bunny
^^^ also made with Blender.
There is even an “Institute” dedicated to making it easier to make big projects with Blender:
http://www.blender.org/blender-institute
Repositories:
http://e2-productions.com/repository/
Community Forums:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/index.php
Edited 2008-09-04 06:52 UTC
You missed the “better” bit. While all of those are fine projects and I’ve worked with several of them, I’d hardly say that they make a better game development platform than DirectX with all available tools. Also I wouldn’t really call the OSG documentation excellent or even very good.
You cannot win converts with almost as good as, or even just as good as, you need to offer something noticeably better.
No. You did. DirectX is not “better”.
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/dcc/revfeat/video_linux_hollywood…
http://www.linuxmovies.org/studios.html
http://www.linuxmovies.org/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5472
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hollywood-Loves-Linux-45571.shtml
Please try a bit harder to keep up with what is going on.
Edited 2008-09-04 09:55 UTC
Did you notice how all of those links are about movies, while we are talking about games?
Please try a bit harder to keep up with what we’re talking about. We’re talking about interactive 3D game development and you post links about render farms. I’m not entirely sure what you are trying to prove.
What tools can you get with anywhere near the scope and performance on the same budget that this tool-set gives you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSceneGraph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGRE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrlicht_Engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_Library
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL
If you actually knew what you where talking about you’d realize that only one of those is a DirectX (or actually Direct3D) replacement. In fact two of those projects run on top of Direct3D.
It is becoming more and more clear that you know very little about the subject you are talking about. Have you actually used in any of those projects? Or are you simply posting more or less random links to Wikipedia without actually understanding what you are linking to.
I know exactly what I am talking about. I am talking about the topic of this sub-thread. That topic is TOOLKIT.
DirectX is only a renderer. That is it. This discussion started when someone claimed there weren’t any cross-platform toolkits available to make games.
I have shown comprehensively that that is not the case.
The end-platform renderer, BTW, is only a very small part of the toolkit that one needs in order to create a game. The renderer is very much a replaceable part. Many of the tools easily target a number of different renderers for different platforms.
BTW: apart from the renderer, and the engine, the other parts of the required software toolkit are common between games, simulations, virtual reality and animated movies.
Most of the capable renderers are based on OpenGL (often in conjunction with OpenGL Performer) and not directX, and gaming is but a small part (and very much the low end) of the available renderers. Even that small part of the market is not dominated by DirectX, it is dominated by the proprietary renderers of games consoles. DirectX is decidedly amongst the low end of this market, alongside game consoles in terms of capability.
Edited 2008-09-04 11:07 UTC
No it started when someone claimed that making “better” cross platform toolkits could help spread games to linux. You posted links to OSG and Blender. I pointed out that those tools hardly count as better than the current state of the art in windows game dev platforms. You then countered this with a set of totally inexplicable links to how linux is used in renderfarms in the movie industry, like that was supposed to prove something. And things got very confusing from there on in as you simply kept responding to all my points with a more or less random collection of links. No one ever claimed that cross platform tools didn’t exist.
Here’s a free hint. Next time you want to make an argument, make it yourself. Don’t just post a half dozen links a think that that some how proves your point.
Only in the vaguest and most general sense. Which of these industries have you worked in and what where the similarities you found. Personally I’ve found that there are far more differences than there are similarities, as they all have very different goals and thus the software involved as to be tailored to these goals.
And that is where you went wrong.
OpenGL is used for all of the high-end cg rendering tasks. Often it would be used on Linux these days, where it used to be SGI.
DirectX is used only in a very narrow, limited segment of the cg rendering market.
The tools for Windows are a very long way behind state-of-the-art.
But we’re talking about games, not high end industrial and academic work. Stop trying to change the subject.
Depends entirely on how you’re counting. However in the PC market DirectX is pretty damn big. Certainly in games it’s huge (which is after all what we are talking about), but it’s also making inroads into content creation and CAD. Between PC games and PC content creation and CAD, you have a fair chunk of the market covered. And when you say cg rendering, I’m assuming you mean interactive 3D rendering.
Not when it comes to games, which is what we are talking about. And again I’d like to know if you have any firsthand experience with any of this and what you’re basing your argument on.
Oh and thanks for not just posting random links.
Actually, we are talking about the cg rendering software directX, and not games.
Read the thread title, and stop trying to change the subject.
If we actually were talking just about games … then the PC is but one games platform. Most games are written for consoles. Most consoles don’t use directX. If I walk into the local games store I will typically see a section for PS2, another for PS3, Xbox, Windows PC, Wii and Nintendo. Of those, only the Xbox and PC games are written to expect a directX renderer. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is a distinct minority of the games in the store.
CAD is an OpenGL market.
cg rendering (computer graphics rendering) is what directX software does. No, it is not necessarily constrained to “interactive 3D rendering” … whatever that is. Rendering is just presenting the pictures, BTW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics)
In other words … cg rendering is what directX does … and directX is the topic of the thread.
No, we are not talking about games, we are talking about directX (the topic of this thread), and what function it performs as a piece of software (which is cg rendering).
Yes, as cg renderers go, DirectX is quite a long way behind the state of the art. It is one of the very low-end pieces of rendering software in terms of its capabilities.
Can directX do radiosity, ray casting or ray tracing, for example? The next big thing in high-end renderers (those ones miles in front of directX) will be to have a capability to do ray tracing in real time (ie > 30 fps). I believe the PS3 is somewhere near that capability but I believe it does ray casting not ray tracing.
You problem seems to be that you can’t grasp what the topic is, even when the topic actually says “directX” and you just somehow read “games” instead.
All of the links I posted were relevant to the topic of cg rendering and the preparation of input data for renderers of various types. These are the tools relevant to directX … not just some sort of games preparation.
PS: spoke to soon. Looks like the PS3 can do real time ray tracing.
http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2007/04/05/real-time-ray-tracing-on-the-pl…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLte5f34ya8
Edited 2008-09-06 09:27 UTC
Can directX do radiosity, ray casting or ray tracing, for example? The next big thing in high-end renderers (those ones miles in front of directX) will be to have a capability to do ray tracing in real time (ie > 30 fps). I believe the PS3 is somewhere near that capability but I believe it does ray casting not ray tracing.
Amen. I agree – that real time ray tracing is definitely the next big thing, and DirectX doesn’t have it… but frankly neither does OpenGL. There’s been a few demos to date from Intel, Nvidia and Sony/IBM, but the fact is they have several shortcomings.
1 – They are not real ray tracing. Real ray tracing supports many scattered secondary rays from bounces/refractions, etc. The demos shown to date limit the # of ray bounces intentionally to maintain interactive performance. The Nvidia demo specifically limited bounces and is evident in the hard shadows. When you limit bounces, you’re not doing much better than rasterization, and you’re cheating the viewer.
2 – They are not using an standard programming pipeline or graphics APIs – not DirectX, not OpenGL – since neither of these support ray tracing directly – but something home grown and optimized just for crafted demos – and until their’s adoption of ray tracing in a standard programming API their won’t be broad adoption by application developers, tools providers, content providers, etc. Essentially – the industry will be stalled until there is standard adoption.
So, what’s needed is real-time real ray tracing that isn’t cutting corners and allowing the full “goodness” of ray tracing to work with many ray bounces, and a standard programming model for people to take advantage of it broadly and push graphics industry forward together.
Let me quote from the opening line of the first post in this thread:
“If there were a better cross platform toolkit for game development…”
CAD was an OpenGL market. More and more CAD tools are supporting DirectX and Microsoft wants to push DirectX at the CAD and content development crowd.
DirectX 11 will, according to several sources, come with ray tracing support. I don’t know if DirectX has or will get built in support for ray casting and radiosity, but several people have done real time ray casting and radiosity with DirectX.
Except DirectX will probably have ray tracing in its next release. Also real time ray tracing isn’t as hard a problem, theoretically, as you seem to be making it out to be. We don’t need some huge leap in high end rendering software to pull it off, people have been doing it for years. It’s largely a question of horsepower and shuffling data around. In other words a hardware problem.
And if you’d read the article you linked to you’d know that the raytracing was done in software and on the CPU, no GPU’s where involved at any point.
Stubborn little so and so, aren’t you?
Let me quote from the actual thread topic, rather than where some “first poster” is trying to steer it towards:
“With a preview version slated for November 2008 and beta versions as early as 2009, Microsoft’s newest DirectX will be here sooner than you think. ExtremeTech’s Loyd Case digs deep into DirectX 11 and discusses its new features and how it differs from DX10.”
See? The thread is about directX, not just games.
And even if it were just about games … I note that you are left without any comeback to my point, from a simple observation of the stock on the shelves of any computer games store, that most games are not directX games.
CAD is not “whatever Microsoft wants”. PCs are not the extent of the CAD market.
dawg:
Precisely. You do realise that DriectX is software on the CPU, don’t you? You do realise that the GPU is exercised through the video driver, which presents the GPU as an abstract resource to directX. This is why one version of DirectX can work on different GPUs from different manufacturers, BTW … because DirectX does not run of the GPUs.
OpenGL software on Linux already supports ray tracing, as shown on the linked video on youtube. That was a software-only renderer (which is probably why it didn’t achieve startling performance). The point is, however … we don’t have to wait for the next release.
Therefore, directX is behind.
Edited 2008-09-07 11:43 UTC
The message you replied to was about games, when I replied to your message I clearly talked about games. This entire thread started from a post about game engines and toolkits. The original news story wasn’t, only, about games, but this thread of it is, and I’ve always been clear that games is what I’ve been talking about.
Never said they where. I said it’s a market PC’s, Microsoft and DirectX have been making extensive inroads. I stand by that statement.
The distinction isn’t as clean as you’re trying to make it out to be. DirectX is an API to access hardware features on the graphics card. So when people talk about DirectX (or Direct3D in this case) they generally refer to the combination of API and supported hardware.
OpenGL doesn’t, to the best of my knowledge, have built in real time ray tracing support. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong (you may even post a link). People have built real time raytracer on top of OpenGL, but they’ve done that on top of DirectX as well, so I fail to see where you get that OpenGL is ahead of DriectX in this particular field.
One can build extended capabilities directly into OpenGL. It is easily extensible … and because it is open source, you are actually allowed to extend it.
DirectX is not open, and only Microsoft may change it. Therefore, if you want to do anything beyond the capabilities that Microsoft provide in DriectX, then you are obliged to provide that through the directX layer. As you say, “on top of” DirectX.
For a function such as raytracing, you must first do the calculations for the ray tracing, then you must recompose the scene graph into something that you can pipe to driectX, only for driectX to then decompose it again. Clearly inefficient. This happens not only for things like ray tracing, but recently Microsoft has made this a necessity for OpenGL itself on a Windows platform. Because of the inefficiency imposed, OpenGL performance is a dog for Microsoft platforms infected with recent versions of directX.
The clear suspicion is that Microsoft wants to kill all possibilities of OpenGL applications working well on Windows, and Microsoft wants driectX to be the only way (the only viable API) to get 3D rendering functionality on Windows.
On a Linux platform, any part of the graphics pipeline is a repalceable part. If a more efficient architecture comes along, then a part of the pipeline can be replaced. In Linux, given that you have no particular barrows to push, you can even come up with a solution that allows several APIs to co-exist on the one platform, rather than forcing one API to be routed through another:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium3D
Conceptual pictures:
http://www.tungstengraphics.com/technologies/gallium3d.html
http://www.tungstengraphics.com/wiki/files/gallium3d-xds2007.pdf [PDF]
Hence, in an “agnostic” architecture such as Gallium 3D, one can write an extension specifically for a new purpose, such as ray-tracing as an example, without forcing it to work via an extra layer represented by the existing renderer. Agnostic architectures also allow for far better cross-platform capability, making it much easier to port games to multiple platforms.
Hence architectures such as Gallium 3D are more advanced than DirectX.
Edited 2008-09-08 01:46 UTC
But without the hardware support to match, you don’t really gain anything in actual performance doing it that way compared to doing it any other way.
Won’t get any argument from me here.
Well obviously. But is it quicker and easier to develop for, and will it allow you to do more impressive stuff? That’s the real problem here and where this whole thing got started. As long as writing windows only games is quicker and easier than writing cross platform games, windows only games will be the norm. Nobody ever claimed that cross platform wasn’t possible, just that it was more trouble than it’s worth in most cases.
Gallium3D has more ambitious goals than DirectX and perhaps hopes to support more advanced features in the future, but it is far from complete. So in any comparison done today between the latest Gallium 3D and the latest DirectX, Gallium won’t fare well. Comparing some theoretical future version of Gallium to the current version of DirectX is hardly a fair comparison.
Where did you get the information that the raytracing demo is using OpenGL? The only OpenGL renderer available on the PS3/Linux platform is MESA, which doesn’t offer any special capability beyond rasterization.
I have seen raycasting/radiosity demos on the PS3. They were doing the entire rendering in software with their own custom API. Drawing was simply done by writing directly to the framebuffer. This demo doesn’t seem different, apart for doing real-time (but not immersive) raytracing.
While OpenGL can be easily expanded by the use of extensions (unlike DirectX), it’s still a rasterizer. Sorry.
You are correct (except for the bit about Mesa being the only option). The Playstations were using Linux for the demo, and they were not using the RSX chip because it is proprietary and apparently “locked out” when using Linux on a PS3 platform.
OpenGL software rendering on Linux, in the absence of hardware acceleration, was traditionally indeed done through Mesa software.
However Mesa 3D is going to be replaced shortly by Gallium 3D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium3D
There already exists at least a partial Gallium 3D driver for the Cell processor. Gallium3D promises faster graphics than Mesa 3D.
More here:
http://www.tungstengraphics.com/wiki/index.php/Gallium3D#Cell_Drive…
I made an assumption, putting two and two together, that the developers had adapted or expanded Gallium 3D to do the ray tracing. I was not justified in making that assumption.
Edited 2008-09-07 23:49 UTC
DirectX and high-end renderers might share the same goal (making synthetic pictures from a mathematical description), but they are not in the same ballpark.
DirectX was originally known as the “Windows Game SDK”. As the name implies, it’s focused on gaming. Therefore, Direct3D tries to deliever real-time graphics at an interactive and immersive rate for humans (above 15 fps) with the support of dedicated video hardware. This is completely different from high-end CG graphics, which is focused on quality by using better physics models with less approximations, no real-time constraint and no specific hardware support.
The raytracing video you linked is a great example for supporting my point. Sure, the result is looking quite good but the performance (about 2-3 fps on three PS3s) is completely unacceptable for delivering a virtual experience. Someday, high-end CG will be done at an immersive rate, but gamers want something now.
Getting back on the original post, most toolkits worth using are cross-platform. However, I wouldn’t recommend OpenSceneGraph as a gaming toolkit for many reasons :
* the quality of documentation isn’t something to write about
* it’s tied to a single rendering backend (not that OpenGL is bad, but many ICDs are)
* there’s no support for sound, physics, input peripherals, etc as it’s just a scene graph (there are community-developed extensions, but they are not part of the project, so their quality may vary)
That said, I don’t expect a one-size-fits-all toolkit soon as every project got their own needs.
Edited 2008-09-06 17:58 UTC
How rude, BTW.
Did you even read the topic of this sub-thread?
I’ll repeat it for you so you can have another think about it:
“Build a better toolkit”.
Get back to me when you understand. You might find some help here:
http://www.opengl.org/
Most of them are too low-end for use on simulators.
Certainly DirectX is way too low-end.
I believe you have to convert an OpenFilght visual database anyway before you could use it with DirectX … so I would use OpenScenegraph of all the tools so far mentioned in preference to DirectX.
More reading if you are interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL_Performer
http://www.multigen.com/products/standards/openflight/index.shtml
http://www.openscenegraph.org/index.php?page=KnowledgeBase.OpenFlig…
Edited 2008-09-04 11:40 UTC
Come on, don’t be silly. Microsoft designed DirectX specifically to make game developers use it instead of OpenGL and lock them into Windows as gaming platform. Why in heaven whould they want to make it cross-platform? If they wanted that, they could’ve worked on OpenGL, SDL or created an open standard.
Game developers can develop for any api they want, they aren’t locked it, users are. If every game developer started using OpenGl on Windows, then MS would have to support that.
The game developers are willing participants in the lock in, because they want to sell games. Windows has the most marketshare, so they write for Direct X. If Game developers want the situation to change, they have the power to do it, but won’t. Writing games that hit 90% of the market is more than good enough from a financial point of view. It’s the low hanging fruit.
This little bit of lock-in is brought to you buy everyone, including apple, who usually ships it’s machines with older or less powerful graphics hardware.
Very debatable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N64
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_GameCube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii
… don’t use driectX AFAIK.
This one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox#Xbox_360
… is about the only one that does.
Most of the heavyweight stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Render_farm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_rendering
… has nothing to do with Windows either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RenderMan_Interface_Specification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Ray
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mrclasses
Edited 2008-09-04 10:13 UTC
I was talking about PC games. Not console games.
It is in tandem between teh game developers and MS DX strategy. I can agree with that fully. The thing that comes to mind though is how fast gamers would switch platforms. These are the people who drop 700 each on two or three gpu homebuilt rigs to squeeze the highest frame rate they can get out of the highest possible resolution. Give them a platform that can have only the minimum required to run the game installed and provides far better resource managemet and you’d see those “Windows is my whole world” gamers jump ship pretty quick. “what, you mean I can get 30% more frame rate out of Crysis on this platform and it’s supported natively? Dude, I’m there!”
I think it’s interesting that even Windows only games tend to run better on other platforms; at lease if WOW is any indication.
It also has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. You do understand the very significant difference between real time interactive 3D graphics and pre-rendered non-interactive 3D graphics don’t you?
Sure I do.
If you want your scene graph to be driven by a game instead of a animation script or a motion simulation model, then you will need a game engine to drive the rendering rather than (say) a flight model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine
To complete your cross-platform toolset for a game engine, you would probably have to go commercial … something like this would do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine
So what else could we use?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine#Notable_engines
Oooh, lots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_Game_Engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamestudio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_Engine
Cross-platform is the rule rather than the exception.
This is the only one mentioned that is tied to DirectX.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truevision3d
PS: Even, though for a game, a game engine drives the action, and it is different than for a simulation or for a animated movie … in all three arenas you still need to create the graphics database and render it.
For a movie … the scene graph renderer would be driven by a script.
For a simulation … the scene graph renderer would be driven by a motion model (ownship) and a tactical environment model (for other players and weapons).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_simulator
Edited 2008-09-04 10:47 UTC
I have to disagree with you on the point that it’s the developers who chose Microsoft and Direct X. It’s the publishers. Honestly, how many developers do you think would say “Yes, let’s only develop for this platform because Microsoft says so.” It’s the publishers that say “Developers, program this for Direct X because Microsoft says so.”
Look at all the games that are multi-platform. The majority of the ports are published by different companies. Read about Cold War and you’ll see what I mean. It was developed using Linux, but came out months afterward because Dream Catcher was sitting on their thumbs, even though could have published the Linux version just as easily as Linux Games Publishing could have.
DX10 apps barely exist.
DX10’s platform broke a lot of legacy games.
Gamers are angry with Microsoft, so Vista SP2, Windows 7 and DX11 better fix the sins of the past and restore directsound and EAX and all the other crap Vista SP1 broke. Gamers do not care , we wont tolerate this abuse any longer.
Most of the modern games has DX10 support, more are just coming.
DX10 didn’t break anything, it didn’t even have backward compatibly with old apps this was done by Dx9Ex and other layers. Main reason why EAX and some others don’t work is due new driver model in Vista and Windows 7. Microsoft dropped DirectSound since it didn’t fit very well on new driver model, thanks to that most games use OpenAL nowdays which offer more portability.
Most “DX10” games have been shown to use the new hardware features only slightly and to minimal visual effect.
All DirectX before 10 could run all directx capable games. Vista SP1 did break a host of legacy games. This shows how little testing and how little experience you have with directx.
The “new driver model” excuse is invalid. A Service Pack broke the sound. This is a fairly bad oversight. Also, the new model could include an emulation of the old at the OS level, so this just laziness and excuses.
I’d like to see the kinds of products you would make if you were a produce manager. You are shortcut taking customer screwing propagandist, good at making excuses for something that is unacceptable and wrong.
I’m having grief with Assasin’s Creed under DX9 with a fully updated system and latest nvidia drivers (Striker2 board even). The game engine has been a lot of fun to play through but I’m just not getting the full effect of the story with partial sound in game and no sound in cut scenes. Neverwinter has no issues playing so it can’t be somethign as simple as chewed sound drivers.
Hello world in C can be compiled by a C++ compiler
There is no technical reason not to selectively allow (by the customer / purchaser / owner of the operating system) drivers to do what they want.
This idea that when things are deprecated they have to be removed shows a total lack of understanding.
Really? I guess those games I saw down the road were a figment of my imagination.
Like what? given that you can install DirectX 9 on Windows Vista, I really don’t see where you’re going with that rant.
Gamers don’t matter jack in the grand scheme of things – read and repeat, you don’t matter, you’re of no value. You may sit at home with your box of tissues, hand lotion and a swivel chair – the vast majority of end users don’t give a toss about your nocturnal activities. The vast majority just use their computer and get on with life. The vast majority don’t see their computer as some sort of ‘extension’ of who they are.
You, my friend, need to get a grip on reality – because the more you post here, the more apparent that your incoherent ramblings add nothing to the discourse.
Edited 2008-09-04 11:36 UTC
“Like what? given that you can install DirectX 9 on Windows Vista, I really don’t see where you’re going with that rant.”
Shows how much you know. you don’t need to install it, its already there. In fact, all directx installations are not side by side, they all supply the libraries to work with all former directx up until 10.1 this is where (Vista SP1) things start to break down.
“Really? I guess those games I saw down the road were a figment of my imagination.”
For those with some technical competence, it has been shown that the hardware-acceleration benefit in real world games like Crysis is minimal, that the visual differences (when the “hidden” settings to prevent DX9 from looking like DX10) are minimal to undetectable, a game can say DX10 on it but the visuals supplied could be completely done in DX9. Again, shows total lack of knowledge on this subject, as these problems have been widely covered.
“Gamers don’t matter jack in the grand scheme of things – read and repeat, you don’t matter, you’re of no value. You may sit at home with your box of tissues, hand lotion and a swivel chair – the vast majority of end users don’t give a toss about your nocturnal activities. The vast majority just use their computer and get on with life. The vast majority don’t see their computer as some sort of ‘extension’ of who they are. You, my friend, need to get a grip on reality – because the more you post here, the more apparent that your incoherent ramblings add nothing to the discourse.”
This is the most moronic ridiculous f–king arrogant statement I have ever seen. If gaming didn’t matter, what about XBOX? XBOX 360? You are so off that games don’t matter its laughable, especially since MSFT thought it important to muscle its way into a crowded low margin industry. What a stupid stupid person.
Your various extrapolations and remarks about swivel chairs and lotions are the mark of a know nothing troll who cant even troll against the particular person being trolled, you use bland fit-everywhere cut and paste screeds that aren’t even intelligently written.
Here is a better specimen. Every time Kaiwai tries, he gets increasingly successful in his attempts to hijack the word “interparenthetically” and use it to trick academics into abandoning the principles of scientific inquiry. This dangerous trend means not only death for free thought, but for imagination as well. This may sound like caricature, but if he honestly believes that some of my points are not valid, I would love to get some specific feedback from him. Maybe it’s not fair to call Kaiwai’s protégés “illaudable” just because they exploit the masses but remember that Kaiwai has so frequently lied about how all any child needs is a big dose of television every day that some weaker-minded people are starting to believe it. We need to explain to such people that a great many of us don’t want Kaiwai to leave a large part of this country’s workforce dislocated and disillusioned. But we feel a prodigious societal pressure to smile, to be nice, and not to object to his hideous, power-hungry endeavors. It is important to differentiate between exploitative rascals and cheeky crybabies who, in a variety of ways, have been lured by his randy exegeses or who have ended up wittingly or unwittingly in coalitions with his thralls or who maintain contact with Kaiwai as part of serious and legitimate research. Now that I’ve had time to think about his quips, my only question is this: Why? Why stir up trouble? The answer is quite simple. I already listed several possibilities, but because Kaiwai lacks the ability to remember beyond the last two seconds of his life I will restate what I said before for his sake: While we do nothing, those who stifle dissent are gloating and smirking. And they will keep on gloating and smirking until we bring strength to our families, power to our nation, and health to our cities.
There are DirectX 10 games out there. Most game reviews seem to show that there is a very slight visual improvement in quality. Due to the frame rate difference plenty of gamers seem to run the DX9 version when they can. However the bulk of development is still DirectX 9 with many gaming companies stating they content to develop new products for DX9 until Vista gets much wider adoption.
Why is DX11 coming out when there are bugger all DirectX 10.1 games?
Regarding marketshare issues. Yes DirectX dominates Windows PC gaming. No surprise there.
However, if we take the blinkers off and look at all gaming and simulation platforms OpenGL has the marketshare. Just think of the billions of devices that use OpenGL; consoles and cellphones (using OpenGL ES), military flight sims, cockpit displays, movie studios, academia etc. With many game and gaming engine developers needing to target both PC and (non-Xbox) consoles I would predict that OpenGL will see more adoption than it has had for a long time (DirectX will still have the lion’s share of developers, but a lower proportion of game manufacturers will be 100% DirectX).
In case you’ve never programmed 3D (I have), OpenGL is a better platform that Direct3D for numerous reasons (simple state model, backward compatibility, extension mechanism, cross-platform, some implementations are 100% hardware, certified versions for FAA, network transparent, etc). Of course there are some things in DirectX 10 that aren’t in OpenGL3 and vice-versa (so let’s not start listing them, ok? you might consider geometry shaders essential while I might think picking is).
Why DirectX got wider adoption than OpenGL on the PC was the bits of DirectX that aren’t Direct3D, like: DirectInput, DirectPlay, DirectSound (although OpenAL seems to be becoming more widely used these days). These made things easy for game developers so they used it.
Thank you that was a great post StaubSaugerNZ. What I keep trying to say but I think I lost some people is if opengl, something like openal, maybe crystalspace3d, and blender could be built into something that would run games on any platform with one language and interface to learn that might kill direct x.
Maybe blender could get there someday I don’t know.
Edited 2008-09-04 19:10 UTC
Cheers. I think developing a ‘DirectX-only’ game makes as much sense these days as developing a ‘Internet Explorer’ webpage rather than one that is W3C compliant. For a little extra effort instead of having the ability to run on 90% of the market you can run on 95%. Although gamers are probably only 20% of the dekstop market anyway (if we discount the Solataire players on Intel chipsets). People who have been in business know what a difference a 5% revenue increase makes to profitability (usually much more than that percentage, given the development cost). I guess not many readers here have been in business for themselves so that’s why they don’t care about such things
Incidentally, for the X-Box fanboys. Microsoft has lost around $US 4 Billon on that project so far, and monthly sales are starting to fall behind PS3 (although total sales are still quite far ahead given the year heads-start). Given Microsoft’s declining balance sheet (have a look: it is still very profitable, but it is burning up balance sheet investment items to do appear profitable while still maintaining its stock price through buybacks) are you sure you should still be developing DirectX-only software for a platform that might not survive the next generation of consoles (if the balance sheet gets really bad)?
I’ve you moved to OpenGL you wouldn’t have this worry – I’m only saying it is worth you considering it from a strategic business point-of-view (plus OpenGL runs on both XP and Vista so you the get the new features and the 90% Windows desktop market rather than having to choose between either XP or Vista if you choose DX9 (75% desktop but no new features) or DX10 or 11 (new features but 15% and 0% of desktop respectively).
I never stated that there are no issues with DirectX, far from it. I usually go on a long and extended tirade on the issues with DirectX – so no, I’m not a DirectX/Microsoft fanboy. The issue I have is the hyperbole which the original author of the thread when on with his rant about the ‘teh evil’ of Microsoft.
Well, I’d say that goes back to when DirectX was a large an coherent API – IIRC, as someone pointed out recently, DirectX has dropped much of the original API”s in favour of pretty much being solely used for graphics only. With that being said, it doesn’t help when Microsoft undermines OpenGL by making it a second class citizen on Windows Vista.
With that being said, DirectX in some respects had merit when it originally started out due to the slow as sloth evolution of OpenGL – but at the same time, are we any better off with one large company controlling a piece of technology. Development might be faster but it appears that less thinking in the establishment of these technologies. When you only have one pair of eyes from one angle looking at something, there are alot of things that could be missed in the process.
Personally, I’d love to see the group standardising OpenGL to work with those who are developing OpenAL and create a mind blowingly awsome API which can provide a cross platform experience. OpenGL 3.0 has the potential to be something that kicks Microsoft in the guts, but unfortunately I am continuously let down by vendors who fail to support the new versions and worse when their implementations of OpenGL leave alot to be desired.
I think that the one thing that does get lost in the debate is this; DirectX is Windows only. The question programmers should ask themselves is whether they feel safe knowing they put all their eggs in one basket. We’ve seen examples in the past of companies who were seen as ‘invincible’ only to find that they are replaced by another technology – leaving all those who tied their whole code base to that particular platform high and dry.
We can compare and compare, but the question, like I’ve said is this; do you want to put you and your companies future on a single piece of technology developed by a single company? Its too bad that many games companies have put convenience before long term security.
From what I understand, DirectInput, DirectPlay, DirectSound have all pretty much been depreciated in favour of native calls rather than DirectX – leaving DirectX to now be consisting of little more than Direct3D.
Edited 2008-09-04 20:40 UTC
Yes, thanks for pointing that out – ka pai (I meant to include it but forgot in the middle of the long post). OpenGL is really let down by buggy implementations from the vendors in the consumer space. I understand that the frustration of this pushed many game developers to DirectX.
One other thing I forgot to mention (for the benefit of others, I know you are very well aware of this kaiwai), OpenGL runs on Mac OS X (it is the underpinning of the slick compositing graphics) and DirectX doesn’t. Given the resurgence of Macs in the high-end consumer space I think it makes good business sense to use an API that works on this platform as well.
Edit: oops, typo.
Edited 2008-09-04 21:12 UTC
The best example of this is Intel’s X3100 which supports OpenGL 1.5 even though 2.0 has been out for quite some time – and worse, MacOS X which supports X3100 but limits it to supporting OpenGL 1.2 rather than taking advantage of the 1.5 features which X3100 supports. Then there are dedicated graphics cards which don’t have proper OpenGL support.
When ever I see the issues in Windows Vista in relation to speed, it reminds me of the questions that were raised over 5 years ago by Microsoft – offloading to the GPU and the potential issue of flooding the bus thus in effect, any possible benefits of GPU offloading would be gobbled up by the bottleneck of the bus itself.
Getting back to MacOS X – they took the smart avenue and rather than dumping everything on the GPU, they were pragmatic and used it where it made sense. Its unfortunate that Microsoft preferred to allow dogma to rule the day rather than asking the question on where the technology is best used to improve the user experience overall.
You cant salvage yourself:
“Gamers don’t matter jack in the grand scheme of things – read and repeat, you don’t matter, you’re of no value. You may sit at home with your box of tissues, hand lotion and a swivel chair – the vast majority of end users don’t give a toss about your nocturnal activities. The vast majority just use their computer and get on with life. The vast majority don’t see their computer as some sort of ‘extension’ of who they are.”
Its crap like this that simply shows how brutally uninformed and trollish you are.
I never said Microsoft is “teh evil,” but when Wine provides better backwards compatibility for DirectSound applications, one has to wonder why Microsoft is not only being a pain, but screwing previously complicit developers.
“Personally, I’d love to see the group standardising[sic] OpenGL to work with those who are developing OpenAL and create a mind blowingly awsome[sic] API which can provide a cross platform experience”
So you promote an API by removing the old ones which can technically exist side by side to “get your way.”
Sounds like a reason not to use it if they vanguards of the API are going to fascist about the OS.
Although DirectX 9 titles can pull the same effects as DirectX 10 and look the same in screen grabs, the real time differences are as apparent as software rendering vs hardware rendering.
The same scene in DX10 titles vs DX9 with exactly the same effects the DX10 version just looks better – smoother and sharper in fluid motion.
Personally I always root for OpenGL but MS has done some good things with DirectX recently but not at the expense of cross platform usability. D3D seems to be the only cog holding many titles back from cross platform migration as well.
That is hardly accidental, standard operating procedure for Microsoft ‘standards’.
There are generations of techs that feel the same way having worked with MS products since Basic.
Some cool stuff here:
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots
Vehicle Simulation Game
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots/VSG
SCANeR©II – driving simulation
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots/SCANeRI…
3DVRII Cityscape simulation
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots/Xiiv3DV…
ViresVIG Image generation System
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots/Vires
Introduction to FlightGear
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Sceenshots/Flightge…
Trian3D Builder from TrianGraphics (terrain generator)
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Sceenshots/Trian3D
VR model of city of Prague
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Sceenshots/Praha4D
Vizard … toolkit for creating interactive virtual environments.
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots/Vizard
http://www.worldviz.com/
Games?
Pok3D (you work out what it is)
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Sceenshots/Pok3D
DIOSoft Pirates
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots/Pirates
Home-made flight sim:
SOKO’s flight simulator
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Screenshots/SOKO
… well, I think it is interesting anyway. For people who know at least a smidgin about cg graphics and how to make it go.
Edited 2008-09-04 12:15 UTC
@ lemur I don’t know if you would be interested please let me know cause if your not I will do it. All the games in your list that are gpl or free but not in the ubuntu repositories can get reported to getdeb’s bug tracking and a package can be built and maintained for ubuntu users.
P.S know any more games
Edited 2008-09-04 14:59 UTC
There’s a liveDVD with almost every game ever compiled on Linux included with it. I haven’t the link but distrowatch should have it pretty easy to find. It’s list of games would be a good place to start.
(the liveDVD is great for testing hardware too before you start chaning your installed OS settings.)
My interest in cg rendering is not primarily in games but in simulators. Or at least it was … I have moved into other project areas lately and I can’t see myself having anything more to do with simulation for some time yet.
thats okay I went through the list pok3d got submitted to getdeb. Thanks for answering I appreciate it!
If you are interested in games for Linux, have a look here:
http://www.talk-gaming.com/unix-linux-games/1930-best-25-linux-game…
and here:
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20080510052539217/Games.html
Most of these should be available in a decent Linux distribution repository.
Oh look, more:
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20080522164112313/Games-Part2.htm…
Edited 2008-09-05 05:06 UTC
Its the little odd ones in development no one knows about yet that I’m interested in. For the record I had to point out on getdeb pok3d is real gambling. Personally that is of no interest to me but maybe to others.
I would like to see the whole tool set from renderer to modeler to 3d engine with physics, 3d, 2d and other libraries tied in. All with one language to learn as easy and fast as possible. Able to abstract the game from the hardware so the game will run anywhere the toolkits abstraction layer has been ported.
As it stands today I got to learn opengl. Then learn c++ for my 3d engine also learn the scripting language of my 3d modeler.Then maybe I can learn to make a decent game.
@lemur cool resources few things I’ve never seen.
This is what the guy said
“If there were a better cross platform toolkit for game development I’m sure it would get used. If someone built a complete easy to use toolkit that worked together with other things like physics engines or ogre we might see some more cross platform games. Especially if the toolkit could abstract the platform (ps2 ps3 xbox xbox360 pcwindows pclinux osx) with near native speed. It would also need documentation, community, and support.”
What good looking cross platform FPS running on PS3/XBOX360/PC/LINUX/MAC was made with blender?
If blender meets the previous commenters requirements, then surely, there is an example you can point to. (and no cheesy Quake 3 re-treads please.) The best FPS I’ve seen in linux is probably sauerbraten and it looks like Quake3+ I wouldn’t even call it Quake 4 quality yet. Remember we’re talking in the context of DX11 here, so your ‘toolkit’ should at least be DX10 or DX9c quality… Torches should be on fire, shadows dancing, physics shoulnd’t feel like a cartoon, textures shouldn’t stick out past the object they’re supposed to be on etc.
Edited 2008-09-04 18:22 UTC
I would like to make a game someday but I’m not there yet. I’ve played with blender I particularly like the idea of a logic block editing system it looks really easy.
As for just having the game ported cross platform the toolkit I’m imagining wouldn’t even need it you write once to the toolkit’s api and the toolkit api is ported everywhere. Think a large api like wine able to take care of all the applications needs.
Also if all you want to make is a first person shooter any quake engine and blender will do but what about other games. A toolkit should ease development but not dictate the directions it can go in
Edited 2008-09-04 18:52 UTC