Crytek developing first ever Directx 10 game

[bitwise xor]

And yet people really liked their game. Much more so than Doom3 in fact.

Ah that mythical group called 'people', are there no claims you can't make about them. And I don't understand why you mentioned Doom3 at all.

Anyway, I liked Farcry myself (and Doom3) but seriously doesn't seeing a setting like that give anybody else ideas beyond the usual try-hard military stuff? It would be nice to get a game thats at least somewhat as sophisticated/mature as its visuals are.

 

[Demirug]

I have see this keynode live and there was absolute no hint that this use anything beyond DX9. In any case you can see nothing in this video (Allchin shows only a video not a real program) that goes beyond what you can do with DX9.

D3D10 will be part of the Vista Beta 2

 

[Maintank]

here is the video

http://www.windows-tweaks.info/PDC_2005/Day_4_Keynote_Crytek.avi

Somebody please call the MS Flightsim team and have them render clouds like the ones in this video!

 

[Khronus]

Maybe they're targeting it as a Vista game so that it can take advantage of the increased efficiency of DX under Vista? Wasn't one of Vista's main bonuses that DX is more efficient with less overhead and hence you can get more power from the same hardware? Correct me if I'm wrong there.

 

[ANova]

Maybe they're targeting it as a Vista game so that it can take advantage of the increased efficiency of DX under Vista? Wasn't one of Vista's main bonuses that DX is more efficient with less overhead and hence you can get more power from the same hardware? Correct me if I'm wrong there.

Only if you are running a graphics card specifically designed for Vista and capable of DX10, otherwise it's actually slower.

In all honesty, that video looked like Far Cry with higher res textures, physics and a couple DX9 shader effects thrown in.

 

[KimB]

Only if you are running a graphics card specifically designed for Vista and capable of DX10, otherwise it's actually slower.

I rather doubt that's going to end up being true once manufacturers get their drivers up to scratch.

 

[DevilsRejection]

why are we speculating about an operating system and api that is an entire year away?

 

[Khronus]

why are we speculating about an operating system and api that is an entire year away?

I'm at work, what else am I supposed to do!?!?

 

[RoOoBo]

I doubt that it's running using the reference rasterizer unless they've got some very fast CPUs! I mean, running my little Phong Shading demo with the reference rasterizer resulted in 2 frames per second!

Don't complaint, my simulator takes at least half an hour to render a single 1024x768 frame from UT2004. And minutes to render any simple demo. I don't think anymore on frames per second, but frames per day

 

[fallguy]

Ah that mythical group called 'people', are there no claims you can't make about them. And I don't understand why you mentioned Doom3 at all.

Anyway, I liked Farcry myself (and Doom3) but seriously doesn't seeing a setting like that give anybody else ideas beyond the usual try-hard military stuff? It would be nice to get a game thats at least somewhat as sophisticated/mature as its visuals are.

Because you brought up Farcrys gameplay. So I simply said that more people liked it, than Doom3. Do you need to see proof? Check polls on various forums.

 

[Titanio]

The article clearly states that the game is targeted to debut around the same time as Windows Vista (~ late 2006).

At best it will be a SM2.0+ game with an SM3.0 path like the UE3 engine.

Crytek's prez in an interview said they're supporting SM2.0 and up with this engine.

I'm fairly sure the video shown was likely the SM3.0+ "version" running off a high-end card of today.

 

[Ailuros]

How about defining what that hypothetical "+" stands for in "SM3.0+" ?

How about a different perspective: how many users do you expect to own SM3.0 class accelerators in H2 2006? Excluding all those that still own a SM2.0 GPU is sure a wise idea I guess.

 

[Ailuros]

True, but remember that many people worship CryTek for their engine work they are one of the premier engine/graphics developers around (at least I think they are!). With that in mind it's quite likely that they do have access to a lot of things that "mere mortals" either don't know exist or just can't get close to

Premier? While they've done an excellent with the Cry-engine I don't see any 8th wonder in that one either; in fact considering what I've heard from other developers there are a few tidbits that could have been a lot better in FC.

IHVs don't hand out simulators afaik. They hand out working pre-production prototypes not too long before the launch of a GPU and I don't expect any to be available prior to Q2 2006 at least.

I do distinctly remember when those 4 UE3 videos did the rounds on the net (from GDC '04?) and whomever was narrating mentioned at one point that it was only recently that they had been able to see the engine in real-time (referring to the GeForce 6-series iirc) and made hints at them running through the REFRAST before then.

You seem to miss the point that UE2 is actually more of a SM2.0+ engine than anything else.

We support everything everywhere, and use new hardware features like PS3.0 to implement optimizations: reducing the number of rendering passes to implement an effect, to reduce the number of SetRenderTarget operations needed by performing blending in-place, and so on. Artists create an effect, and it's up to the engine and runtime to figure out how to most efficiently render it faithfully on a given hardware architecture.

http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/sweeneyue3/

More to the engine's features:

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml

 

[Windfire]

I was at PDC05 and the video was pretty impressive. I wasn't so impressed with the fire, but the fooliage, shadows and movement were all pretty cool. It appears to be the next logical step after Farcry.

Speaking of 3D, Vista's use of 3D looks pretty cool too. It's a shame we have to wait another 12-16 months for it.

FYI, the Vista demos (ie: usage of the OS in general--not simply the Crytek demo) were run on a laptop with 512MB according to the presenter.

Later,
Steve

 

[KimB]

You seem to miss the point that UE2 is actually more of a SM2.0+ engine than anything else.

Er, you mean UE3, right?

Anyway, I'd call UE3 a SM2+ engine about as much as I'd call Doom3 a DX8 engine. Sure, Doom3 will run okay on DX8 hardware, but you really need DX9 hardware for it to spread its wings.

 

[Ailuros]

Yeah I meant 3 obviously.

As for the rest I already separated API level from performance at the beginning of this thread. UE3 is still not a DX10 game, despite the fact that you'll need DX10 hardware to get decent performance out of it.

 

[KimB]

Likely no more than Crytek's "first DX10 game" will be a DX10 game.

 

[Ailuros]

Uhmmm ok; now we're back at zero. What did I say about that one on the first page of this thread? LOL

 

[KimB]

Uhmmm ok; now we're back at zero. What did I say about that one on the first page of this thread? LOL

Haha, sorry, I didn't join until page 2, if you'll notice

 

[zgemboandislic]

Caveat: judging an engine based on low-res shakeycam video is always a bad idea.

I think that looked terrific! As usual, though, when you dramatically improve one element it tends to reveal the limitations of others.

- Character movement looks robotic, lacking any subtle variation. It needs a bit of randomness. Backward movement (which looks like a mirror image of forward movement) is especially jarring
- The fire looked really fake (although perhaps less fake than rendered fire usually does)

Particularly nice physics and lighting, however!

Yes, the fire definitely needs some work...maybe they could borrow the fire from Doom 3, which is really done the right way.

The rest is amazing though. How am I ever going to explain to my wife that the X1800XT that I bought 6 months ago isn't good enough any more, because there is a certain game called Far Cry 2 or something and my Athlon X2 4800+ is just a little too slow as well...