[Mendel]

There´s nothing wrong with tesselation as long as there are no textures

So I´d really like to see a flight simulator with flat shaded or gouraud shaded polygons and *heavy* tesselation. Me and 2 other persons would probably buy it too!

[Davros]

Let me guess, an A10 Cuba fan
1

[homerdog]

GCN apparently is DX11.1. Is Fermi, or will NV have to wait for Kepler for 11.1 support? Or will NV skip 11.1 like they did with 10.1?

[MrGaribaldi]

Judging from this I'd say that Fermi supports DX 11.1. It seems to be more focused on easing programming than introducing new HW features.

Also with the DX SDK now a part of the windows sdk my guess is that we will not see IHVs skipping a "version" since the releases probably will slow down.

A possible development here could be that ID3D11Device::CheckFeatureSupport will become a way for IHVs to implement new features between releases, similar to the extensions for OpenGL...

[Ike Turner]

Originally Posted by MrGaribaldi

Judging from this I'd say that Fermi supports DX 11.1. It seems to be more focused on easing programming than introducing new HW features.

Also with the DX SDK now a part of the windows sdk my guess is that we will not see IHVs skipping a "version" since the releases probably will slow down.

A possible development here could be that ID3D11Device::CheckFeatureSupport will become a way for IHVs to implement new features between releases, similar to the extensions for OpenGL...

Given AMD's claim that GCN is the First DX11.1 GPU I would be suprised if Fermi was 11.1 compliant (with a simple driver update)

[Demirug]

Originally Posted by MrGaribaldi

A possible development here could be that ID3D11Device::CheckFeatureSupport will become a way for IHVs to implement new features between releases, similar to the extensions for OpenGL...

This would not work as Direct3D doesn't support a way to add additional functions and return them as function pointer. CheckFeatureSupport is to check for optional features that are part of the standard. There are two kind of optional features. The first one are real optional features that the hardware can support but not part of a required feature set. The second type are features that are part of a higher feature level. This way it's possible to make features accessible without supporting the whole feature level.

There were some so called API Hacks in the past (DX9) that activated additional features by passing magic numbers to specific functions that are normal used for something different. I m not aware that something like this has done for DX10+.

Another way to add additional functions is to provide an additional layer above the Direct3D runtime. This layer will pass the regular call to the standard runtime. Extension calls are passed directly to the driver. Nvidia has done this to provide some 10.1 features for hardware that have no full support.

[MrGaribaldi]

Demiurg, interesting. I don't really know much of DX, but thought they would have put in a mechanism to allow for exposing features.

Will be interesting to see how often they release new windows SDKs, and thus new Direct3D features.

[Demirug]

I don't expect updates in a faster interval then service packs.

One of the main reasons to not allow custom features in DX is the pressure this generates on the IHV. If they want to see something in a new version they have no other choice as to find a common way. Beside of this it prevents that developers from writing custom code for every chip family from every party.

Extensions are nice for researcher and for developers that can force their customers to use specify hardware. But if you are in the consumer software business (like games) the can quickly become a huge pain.

[Rodéric]

Crush those API, no more drivers either, give us an ISA !


Too lazy to check the whole thread so just posting that link to DX11.1
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...(v=vs.85).aspx

[Man from Atlantis]

i find this

Originally Posted by ManuelG

Not all DirectX 11.1 features are software features. Target Independent Rasterization requires hardware support so we can not make DX11 GPUs fully DX11.1 complaint. DX11.1 for the most part is a very small subset of DX11.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s...&#entry1354439

[suryad]

Originally Posted by Man from Atlantis

i find this



http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s...&#entry1354439

I knew it. I remember asking on this forum about DX 11.1 and being completely ignored. I thought there would be a hardware piece to it.

[homerdog]

I'm surprised that Fermi will not be DX11.1 compliant.