Crytek developing first ever Directx 10 game

[fallguy]

It's almost a shame that what's in that Crytek video is ultimatly going to be filled with cheesy, tough guy, soldier boy B movieness with a terrible story and terrible characters where the aim is to run around and blow everybodies brains out.

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

 

[Kombatant]

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

Well actually it's not very difficult for any game to be better than Doom3

 

[AlNom]

If they're going to bother with a day/night cycle, they should at least implement a method for changing the clouds.

 

[Ragemare]

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

Yep and we all know Doom 3 didn't have any tough guy cheese in it.

edit: oh and the video looked really good.

 

[Temporary Name]

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!

 

[nagus]

impressive....

any word on what hardware was used? (R600 maybe?)

 

[Richard]

Sorry for perpetuating the OT some were having but... Windows Graphics Foundation whilst DirectX is more than just graphics thus WGF was never supposed to replace DX, only DDraw/D3D. I think that's why there was all the confusion about what MS was doing with the name.

 

[KimB]

What really pisses me off about that guy is that he seems to be insinuating that Microsoft has been the primary driver of games technology over the past 20 years.

But the demo was cool.

 

[Richard]

Just saw the movie. Very nice. I especially liked how the leaves were affected by the player, the destructable werehouse and the volumetric clouds. Rendering-wise, not really blown away.

 

[Geo]

Ail's post implies there isn't anything there that can't be done today. Agree/disagree?

And if there was, again I have to ask: software rendered?

Nice video tho. I agree with most of the nits picked upstream tho.

 

[Ailuros]

Ail's post implies there isn't anything there that can't be done today. Agree/disagree?

And if there was, again I have to ask: software rendered?

Nice video tho. I agree with most of the nits picked upstream tho.

Unless I overlooked something I didn't notice anything that today's hardware couldn't handle; performance of course aside

 

[JHoxley]

Ail's post implies there isn't anything there that can't be done today. Agree/disagree?

I can't see anything in that video that absolutely could not be done today. Which I suppose is fairly obvious, as CryTek were showing it yesterday - and unless they have a time machine (they are a clever bunch though... ) it has to be possible today...

And if there was, again I have to ask: software rendered?

Yes, unless (which is possible) they have access to some seriously hot hardware that I've not seen. I'd make that assertion based as much on the draw-depths... that level of detail/effects, that resolution, that draw depth - all looks a bit much for current hardware.

Then again, that's not to say there's anything "fake" about it. It's quite possible it's DX10 level technology - just running via the REFRAST until the hardware is available

Just my thoughts though, any information I might have access to I'd probably get shot for mentioning in public...

hth
Jack

 

[KimB]

Most likely this is just their next-gen game and they've signed a marketting agreement with Microsoft about it.

 

[Intel17]

I can't see anything in that video that absolutely could not be done today. Which I suppose is fairly obvious, as CryTek were showing it yesterday - and unless they have a time machine (they are a clever bunch though... ) it has to be possible today...


Yes, unless (which is possible) they have access to some seriously hot hardware that I've not seen. I'd make that assertion based as much on the draw-depths... that level of detail/effects, that resolution, that draw depth - all looks a bit much for current hardware.

Then again, that's not to say there's anything "fake" about it. It's quite possible it's DX10 level technology - just running via the REFRAST until the hardware is available

Just my thoughts though, any information I might have access to I'd probably get shot for mentioning in public...

hth
Jack

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!

 

[Ailuros]

Seconds per frame are even purtier

 

[KimB]

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!

I think it's more likely that it's just running with DX9-level tech at the moment. There was nothing there that would require DX10.

 

[Geo]

I can't see anything in that video that absolutely could not be done today. Which I suppose is fairly obvious, as CryTek were showing it yesterday - and unless they have a time machine (they are a clever bunch though... ) it has to be possible today...

Thanks. What I meant by "today" was on a publicly available OS, publicly available API (DX9), and almost-publicly available hardware (i.e. I'll give you R520XT if you want it claim it for this purpose).

Tho, as Ail said, "performance aside."

Software rendering simulating hardware is not what I was after, tho I would guess if the claim is true that it is "DX10-level", then that must be what they did for the purposes of the demo roll.

And what I meant by asking, is the beginning of this thread claimed this as "DX10" stuff, and I'm wondering if it is really true that this would _require_ DX10 to pull off commercially, or just significantly faster DX9-class hardware (because when we get to "commercially" we can no longer put performance aside. ).

 

[Ailuros]

Just more powerful hardware; UE3 will have SM2.0 as a minimum requirement (SM3.0 is merely to raise performance) afaik, but does it really mean that you'll get adequate performance with a R3xx?

IMHO it's way too painful and risky to code for a future API when:

1. It hasn't been released yet.
2. No relevant hardware is available.

And no afaik IHVs don't hand out simulators either.

 

[Tim]

Just more powerful hardware; UE3 will have SM2.0 as a minimum requirement (SM3.0 is merely to raise performance) afaik, but does it really mean that you'll get adequate performance with a R3xx?

Yes UE3 will be targeted at DX9, but epic has already been working on UE4 for some time now, and that is a engine targeted at hardware that is not availble yet. Also epic started working on UE3 long before DX9 hardware was availeble.

 

[JHoxley]

What I meant by "today" was on a publicly available OS, publicly available API (DX9), and almost-publicly available hardware

Yeah, I assumed that's what you meant... but I was just having a bit of fun (a.k.a. being silly )

I doubt that it's running using the reference rasterizer unless they've got some very fast CPUs!

Seconds per frame are even purtier

Hehe, yeah - it would hardly be realtime unless they had some as-yet unheard of super computer

I was more thinking that they'd of rendered it "offline" with the REFRAST and played back the movie at the PDC.. What I saw of that video it didn't look like it was actually being played by anyone there - very much a rolling demo. If it was just a video file being played, there is no guarantee that it was ever real-time...

IMHO it's way too painful and risky to code for a future API when:

1. It hasn't been released yet.
2. No relevant hardware is available.

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

And no afaik IHVs don't hand out simulators either.

Agreed, but we do have the DX REFRAST - which can be a bit tedious to work with, but you can develop with it.

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.

Cheers,
Jack