Shader Model 4 in DX9?!

R

russo121

Regular
Speculation at theinquirer says the following:

AT SOME POINT Microsoft will release a new DirectX upgrade. We didn't expect that DirectX 9 would get some significant upgrades before Longhorn/Vista, but it sounds like the Vole changed its mind.
The company told this to a bunch of developers back at the Game Developer conference in London last week, and this meant that next generation Nvidia and next generation ATI R600 parts will be ready to show their feature sets even before Longhorn comes out to play.

It's a great decision as both Nvidia and ATI Shader Model 4.0 parts are expected sometimes toward the middle of 2006, before Longhorn arrives. We don't have any idea what it is going to be called but DirectX 9.something sounds like a reasonable guess.

If Microsoft decided to wait for the Longhorn for those new shaders, this would have meant that the next generation Nvidia and ATI chips would have had to wait for a few quarters before they would be able to get the full Shader Model 4.0 functionality.

The move from Windows XP to Longhorn will take years and Microsoft knows it, and I can bet that big games publishers would be veru upset if Shader Model 4.0 was a Longhorn baby only
Click to expand...

My question is: Is R520 prepared for SM4?

Edit: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25937
 
That's the inq, they also claim pigs can fly sometimes. And then, if they coincindentaly find a snapshot of a pig being thrown off the cliff, they'll come waving it and screaming "We were right, see?".
 
Still the question remains: Is there any truth to the INQ story, i.e. will we see a major DX9 update with SM4?
 
It makes sense actually. If I understand correctly, WGF 2.0 will be DirectX 10, require a unified architecture and will have a shiny new interface, but will only be available at around Vista launch. So WGF 1.0 could be DirectX 9.1 and have Shader Model 4.0 support.
 
Nick said:
It makes sense actually. If I understand correctly, WGF 2.0 will be DirectX 10, require a unified architecture and will have a shiny new interface, but will only be available at around Vista launch. So WGF 1.0 could be DirectX 9.1 and have Shader Model 4.0 support.
Click to expand...

No, there is no new Shadermodel in WGF 1.0.
 
Nick said:
Ah yes, according to digit-life there will be geometry shaders in WGF 1.0 but Shader Model 4.0 will be for WGF 2.0.
Click to expand...
Where in that article does it say that geometry shaders will be in DX9.L?
 
I find the digit-life discussion of vertices->geometry-shader->stream-output extremely interesting. As far as I can tell it precisely describes Xenos, MEMEXPORT included.

The usual stage of a vertex shader is followed by geometry shader. What is it? It's a shader that manages triangles (assembled from vertices) as entities before they are drawn. That is it can manipulate triangles as objects. Including some control or additional vertex parameters. It can change these parameters, calculate new parameters, specific for the triangle as a whole, and then pass them to a pixel shader. It can mark a triangle with a predicate (and then process it differently, depending on the predicate value), or exclude it from candidates to be drawn. Unfortunately, this shader unexpectedly cannot create new geometry and new triangles at its output, but it's followed by another new stage — Stream Out.
At last it's officially possible to return the data, which was processed in the vertex part of the pipeline, to the buffer (memory) before it's passed and drawn in the pixel section. Then it can again be used for choice. Thus, it allows a lot of things that were previously impossible or very hard to implement. For example, you can now generate new geometry and tessellate surfaces to a greater multiple quantity of triangles by this or that algorithm. In order to do it, you should use two passes in the vertex section, where the first one exports the data stream and stream division coefficients between them (you may remember that DX 9c allowed to set a divider for vertex indices when they were assembled from several independent streams, one for each stream). It's a tad less natural than just generating new vertices and new geometry in a vertex shader, but finally this option has become available. You can even route the data in the output -> input cycle and use predicates to sample and degrade geometry in cycle to simplify a model, for example.

Thus, the importance of exporting data from the middle of the pipeline can scarcely be exaggerated. Interestingly, this data can be then interpreted not only as vertices, bus also as textures or other data structures. It means that procedural textures can be generated fast on the hardware level and then their generated representation can be used without extra delays for constant calculations.

Jawed
 
Wasn't there some discussion a while ago about DX10 no longer being tied to the Vista release date? Perhaps Fudo has just misinterpreted this as being a new DX9, rather than a sooner-than-expected DX10?
 
_xxx_ said:
That's the inq, they also claim pigs can fly sometimes. And then, if they coincindentaly find a snapshot of a pig being thrown off the cliff, they'll come waving it and screaming "We were right, see?".
Click to expand...

Well if you put a pig to a plane, and then the plane flies, the pig is also, flying.. but rather than believing R520 would be SM4.0 ready or DX9 getting SM4.0, I think it's more believeable that those pigs start flying on their own, either by growing wings or by learning how to fly a plane by themselves.
 
Now you mention it there was a great advert in the uk for zurich banking where the little piggies flew...I wonder if the inq has been told
 
No WGF?? Now DX10?

Microsoft speaks DirectX 10

Games Developers Conference Europe WGF is dead, please welcome DX10


By Fuad Abazovic in Londinium: Friday 02 September 2005, 16:01

MICROSOFT finally saw sense and decided to drop Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) and replace it with the more easier and logical DirectX 10 name for its nexgen API.
It gave some details to the developers officially about its upcoming API and we know that it plans to release this API together with Longhorn. Or Visa, as we must learn to call it.

The DirectX 10 API will have completely new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and is supposed to run much faster. The company decided to cut the backward compatibility with DirectX 9, 8, 7 and lower in this API but there will be a way to use games programmed for those APIs. Microsoft will enable support for DX 9 or lower games through a software layer, meaning it might run slower.

The company did this to make the next API faster, it said, and at the same time will take some burden of the CPU runtime. At the same time we learned that DirectX 10 will have support for Shaders beyond Shaders, model 4.0.

It's coming with Longhorn but we learned that Shader Model 4.0 might come even before Vista.
Click to expand...

Dave .. what's your take on this?

Thx
US
 
Xmas said:
Where in that article does it say that geometry shaders will be in DX9.L?
Click to expand...
They changed it, it's a conspiracy!

Or maybe I just have to read more carefully... :(
 
I would be very careful what you read/interpret of the public DX10 information - the best bits are still, to my knowledge, wrapped up in NDA's - so if you do find out about them, you probably shouldn't have :)

As for the name changes... yeah, confusing as. Took me a while to get my head around that stuff, then they went and changed it. Again. My current take is that there will be two versions - DX9.L (aka WGF1) and DX10 (aka WGF2), although the information I've seen on them are both Longhorn/Vista rather than XP.

I also read that the WGF terminology might still make an appearance - but mean something much broader than gaming/D3D10 - probably including GDI (or whatever replaces it).

I guess only time will tell what we actually end up seeing/using :)

hth
Jack
 
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