DirectX 10 working specs?

[JasonCG]

OpenGL will be able to use em.

UGH.. yeah, with different interfaces from each vendor. Yay. Maybe OpenGL 2.0 will unify all the extensions for fragments/shaders/primitive control/etc., but I wouldn't hold my breath on the OpenGL ARB getting anything done in a timely fashion.

At this point nothing is set in stone for DX10. It's certainly possible that if the hardware is out there with a few extra features (like hardware primitave control) and there's need for it, they might do a DX9.1 release. There are no "plans" for this stuff yet becuase there's no hardware, there's no consensus from developers that they need to interface with it, that the hardware implementations are going to be robust enough, and so on. Simply put, it's not prudent to start carving out a spec just yet. MS expressed to me that they're of the opinion that it's wise to keep things pretty fluid until they have more concrete info on the hardware and more concrete experience-based developer feedback. If you ask me, it makes sense, given that there's a *LOT* of headroom left in DX9, compared to the titles shipping this year.

I know we all like to know what's going to happen in a year or two when it comes to graphics, but sometimes we have to accept that the answer is simply "they haven't made up their mind yet."

 

[Arun]

So where does this leave rumours of programmable primitive processors in not so distant hardware? Will they stayed unused till DX 10, or will MS be kind of forced to make a "DX 9.1" runtime update after all?

As JasonC said, it's hard to guess.
But I'd guess ( yeah, yeah, I know... ) that you could do things like TruForm with it, and maybe some other stuff too. So I think it's unlikely it's really going to stay idle. Although it likely won't be used to its full potential.

BTW, I've asked this before, but there were no real good answers...
NV4x/R4xx got an unified PS/VS model AFAIK ( that means it shares transistors ) . And they got a PPP. But does the PPP share transistors with the PS & VS?


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