DirectX9 vs DirectX10 *again*

[Kaotik]

Ah got it, it's in the slides, Aero has been build upon D3D9Ex. Thought M$ used only DX10.

Not suprising considering the usual spaghetti-style SW architecture from Microsoft ;-)

If MS used D3D10 for Aero, no DX9 card could run it

 

[Temporary Name]

Yeah, sure... why speculate if you can simply take a look at WinHEC presentations below?

Thanks for the info. I think you mean "Why read through the WinHEC presentations when you can simply spout BS?", though.

 

[DmitryKo]

DirectX 9.0 L works on Vista only

L is for Longhorn. D'oh!

 

[Skrying]

Inq doesnt have a clue. What they just said makes no sense at all.

 

[Demirug]

David Weller has spoken

 

[Geo]

David Weller has spoken

This weekend has seen the emergence of rumors that DirectX 10 capabilities will be available for Windows XP under a special "secret" new version of DirectX called "DirectX 9.0L".

Allow me to pull out the inordinately-large-hammer-of-truth on that one and bang out some pretty clear messages:
- Absolutely not.
- Definitely not.
- No f'n way.

Somehow I'm reminded of the old politician/pollster's joke for that kind of negative response. . . "I'll put you down as 'undecided'!".

 

[Arty]

Few excerpts of Tim Sweeney from the latest Q&A at FiringSquad

If you look at the long-term graphics roadmap, there have only been a few points where we've gained fundamentally new capabilities. The most visible was the move from DirectX 6, 7 and 8, which in practice were fixed-function, 8-bit rendering APIs, to DirectX 9 with programmable shaders and support for high-precision arithmetic. Most of the in-between steps have brought welcome but incremental improvements, and DirectX 10 falls into that category.

But, despite the marketing hype, DirectX 10 isn't all that different from DirectX 9, so you'll mainly see performance benefits on DirectX 10 rather than striking visual differences.

Ultimately, the DirectX 10 feature set resulted from about 7 years of discussion with key game developers. A lot of major ideas were proposed, including a multi-year effort by John Carmack to lobby for video memory virtualization. The features that didn't make it into DirectX 10 either weren't particularly beneficial, or clearly weren't practical for this timeframe.

 

[CouldntResist]

FiringSquad: As a game developer who is used to working on the cutting edge, which new features in DirectX 10 excite you the most?

Tim Sweeney: I see DirectX 10's support for virtualized video memory and multitasking as the most exciting and forward-looking features. Though they're under-the-covers improvements, they'll help a great deal to bring graphics into the mainstream and increase the visual detail available in future games.

I wish he explained how he thinks a game is going to benefit from GPU multitasking.
I guess this will make the Aero running in background steal less resources from the game , but I don't quite see opportunities for explicit use.

 

[BRiT]

I wish he explained how he thinks a game is going to benefit from GPU multitasking.

I think he's implying that it makes development easier as you wont have to spend as much time doing performance optimizations.

 

[rwolf]

I think he's implying that it makes development easier as you wont have to spend as much time doing performance optimizations.

I seem to recall that there was a lot of developer work involved doing context changes that are nolonger required.

 

[Ateo]

I was just wondering what people here think about DX10 dropping hardware support for sound to use a software mixer under Vista?
Sounds like a step backwards to me...games are much more than graphics...and why anyone would choose to eliminate hardware support in favour of software rendering is beyond me

 

[Richteralan]

I was just wondering what people here think about DX10 dropping hardware support for sound to use a software mixer under Vista?
Sounds like a step backwards to me...games are much more than graphics...and why anyone would choose to eliminate hardware support in favour of software rendering is beyond me

First of all, Dropping DirectSound doesn't mean it'll render in "software".

It's just another driver model as WDDM in graphics. We don't know how well Vista Kernel Mixer can perform but I believe this can allow sound card IHVs to better control their audio driver model.

 

[Ateo]

First of all, Dropping DirectSound doesn't mean it'll render in "software".

It's just another driver model as WDDM in graphics. We don't know how well Vista Kernel Mixer can perform but I believe this can allow sound card IHVs to better control their audio driver model.

I was lead to believe that Windows Vista does not inherit the hardware abstraction layer for audio and thus no longer use hardware acceleration for sound.
So a game that under XP gets hardware audio acceleration, will only get software rendered sound under Vista.
As I see it that will kill of most EAX/hardware acceleration in games under Vista, unless they are "new" enough to incorporate OpenAL.

Eg. you run FEAR under XP(DX9)and get full EAX/hardware support...but if you run the samme game under Vista(DX10) you will loose EAX/hardware support.
I don't see the logic in that.

 

[Bludd]

Will every game dev turn to OpenAL since Vista drops built-in HW accel. for audio?

 

[KimB]

Dropping hardware audio acceleration just doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Ateo]

Will every game dev turn to OpenAL since Vista drops built-in HW accel. for audio?

I don't see any other alternative.
No way I'm gonna have a X-F with 7.1 speakers, just to let Vista "ignore" it and use the CPU instead for lower sound quality, reduced effects and less game immersion.
Games that don't have hardware support for sund won't get my money then
talk abour de-evolution.

Dropping hardware audio acceleration just doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't get it either...not at all.
It kinda goes against why DirectX was created in the first place.

 

[KimB]

That's why I don't think it'll happen. Whatever Microsoft may be, I don't think they're stupid.

 

[Rys]

Sounds to me like Creative simply haven't written that part of their Vista driver yet, so it falls back to CPU paths for compat.

 

[Bludd]

http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.html

As already stated above, Microsoft® will be removing DirectSound 3D Hardware support from Direct X with the launch of Windows Vista. DirectSound and DirectSound3D will still function; however, they will no longer use hardware acceleration.

The native OpenAL devices on Sound Blaster Audigy and Sound Blaster X-Fiâ„¢ soundcards do not use DirectSound or DirectSound 3D and so they will be completely unaffected. For games that use these devices, nothing will change. The game will continue to enjoy hardware based 3D audio and effects.

The Generic Hardware device will no longer be available, as it requires the use of hardware DirectSound 3D Buffers. Instead, this device will gracefully, and automatically, fallback to using the Generic Software device, which will continue to work as before.

I'm sure they are fully biased towards Creative, though.

 

[RejZoR]

I was lead to believe that Windows Vista does not inherit the hardware abstraction layer for audio and thus no longer use hardware acceleration for sound.
So a game that under XP gets hardware audio acceleration, will only get software rendered sound under Vista.
As I see it that will kill of most EAX/hardware acceleration in games under Vista, unless they are "new" enough to incorporate OpenAL.

Eg. you run FEAR under XP(DX9)and get full EAX/hardware support...but if you run the samme game under Vista(DX10) you will loose EAX/hardware support.
I don't see the logic in that.

Em no? FEAR is using OpenAL as audio API. Basically without OpenAL you can't really get EAX4 HD or higher. So any game that supports EAX4 is most likely using OpenAL too.
However Half-Life 1 for example will indeed lose ability to use hardware acceleration and EAX under Vista...