DirectX 12 API Preview

[liquidboy]

Voxel cone tracing is currently the most promising real time GI algorithm. It beats LPV (by quality) and virtual point light based alternatives (by performance). Epic has been researching voxel cone tracing for years. Unfortunately it seems that they couldn't make it run at real time performance (30 fps) on current gen consoles. I am pretty sure that NVIDIAs solution reaches 30 fps, since the PC high end hardware is faster than consoles and Maxwell feature set is slightly better suited for that algorithm.

Voxel cone tracing is a bad approximation, but so are all the other real time GI algorithms. At least is scales much better compared to LPV (light propagation volume). LVP requires n^3 storage and the propagation pass requires n^3 processing (where N is quality = texels per meter). I don't know if anyone has tried to implement sparse LPV (more density near the surfaces). That should at least solve the light leaking issues.

Yeah the Nvidia Maxwell2 announcement totally confused me when they brought out Microsoft and they intern demoed Lionhead studios "Fable Legends" running on the new GPU + DX12/11.3 ... I can only guess it was trying to showcase the GI stuff ....

BUT we already saw a similar demo months ago, the XB1s' version of fable legends ?!

Totally confusing?! Was the Maxwell demo meant to be better cause it didn't look considerably better?!

If it was meant to be LPV vs VCT for GI I didn't see much difference ...

Fable Legends (2mths ago xbox one - LPV method) here was the article from Lionhead studios with video of the GI in Fable Legends a while ago

Fable Legends (last week ported to PC on DX12 - VCT method) heres the Nvidia/MS announcement and vid of Fable Legends

edit: this post probably belongs in the Fable Legends thread, sorry so if you want to move it go for it...

edit: btw I thought Fable Legends looked great on xb1, and also great on pc.. kudos to Lionhead studios, world looks beautiful!

 

[Osamar]

I think the Fable Legends affair is more like "Heyyy. We have an Alfa Unreal Engine 4 for an Alfa DX12 on top of an Alpha driver for a new GPU and it's running O.K.!"

 

[Newguy]

"Dx12 is not coming to Windows 7"

According to AMD's Richard Huddy

Apologies if this isn't in the right place.

 

[Kaotik]

Could you point to (about) the time he's discussing DX12?

 

[iroboto]

"Dx12 is not coming to Windows 7"

According to AMD's Richard Huddy

Apologies if this isn't in the right place.

It's the right place; though I'm not overly concerned about such an announcement. This may not be a big deal if windows 10 is dirt cheap. IIRC they had intents to make the OS model operate like OSX. Where it was free to upgrade.

 

[Newguy]

Could you point to (about) the time he's discussing DX12?

20:50, apologies thought it was linked but obviously I messed it up.

 

[Jawed]

Windows 7 support ends 13 January 2015, so one would expect it not to get D3D12. Video has gone private, by the way.

 

[pjbliverpool]

It's the right place; though I'm not overly concerned about such an announcement. This may not be a big deal if windows 10 is dirt cheap.

Yeah at first I thought, " crap this is bad news" but from what I've been hearing of Win10 it's actually worth the upgrade from Win7 as opposed to 8. So while this will probably hurt PC gaming in that DX12 won't have as high an adoption rate as it could, it should also benefit PC gaming by encouraging users to move to Win10. I'll certainly be one of them.

 

[eastmen]

pc gaming will be fine. This isn't like vista. 12 will be avalible on windows 8 and 10 . Windows 8 has a 20% or so market share on windows pcs. There are also rumors of attractive pricing on windows 10 so if its like windows 8 you might be able to get it for $40

 

[Arwin]

Still puts Mantle ahead of DirectX in terms of potential market share for quite a long time, exactly as I expected.

 

[Davros]

AMD "Misspoke" Saying DirectX 12 Won't Work With Windows 7
doesnt mean amd are saying it will
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/amd-misspoke-saying-directx-12-won-t-work-with-win/1100-6423617/

 

[iroboto]

Lol. In any event while dx12 is one factor it may be important to also know where dx11.3 will also go. Will it be paired in release platforms with dx12 or will it be released independently.

With Xbox going dx11.3 and dx12 I think developers will help adopt dx12 fairly quicker unlike how dx11 was generally under utilized until now.

 

[WaltC]

Lol. In any event while dx12 is one factor it may be important to also know where dx11.3 will also go. Will it be paired in release platforms with dx12 or will it be released independently.

With Xbox going dx11.3 and dx12 I think developers will help adopt dx12 fairly quicker unlike how dx11 was generally under utilized until now.

The only time it made sense for Microsoft to skip from D3d 9.0c to D3d10 was in the XP-to-Vista versions change, because the D3d driver models were all drastically revamped for Vista--made incompatible with XP and <. This will not be true of Win10 in the slightest--I'm running Win10TPx64 (very solid, sort of--it's a beta) & anything supported by Win10TP should also run fine in Win7--although 10 is going to be so much better I don't know why anyone would want to keep running 7. I actually much prefer 8.x to 7, but with 8 I had to do a tiny bit of work to knock Metro out of the way... But once you get rid of Metro, 8.x is much stronger than 7, imo.

AMD pushed Microsoft into DX12, as you probably know, with Mantle. Heck...before Mantle we didn't even think there *would* be a DX12, considering Microsoft's Metro-craziness--which has now passed, glad to say. Desktops aren't going anywhere but up, up, up...'course, everyone in *these* forums already knew that, I'm sure...

 

[WaltC]

Windows 7 support ends 13 January 2015, so one would expect it not to get D3D12. Video has gone private, by the way.

Common misconception, actually...What ends next year is the gratis extra support Microsoft offers...updates and bug fixes for consumers, through the Windows Update site, as well as for paid service contracts, will continue until 2020--2020 is the actual "drop-dead" date for Win7. I had a Microsoft link to that end, but can't find it at the moment...please don't make me go hunt it down...

It's true...I swear, it is...cross my heart and hope to eat pie!... (This isn't the first forum where I've had to address this little bit of understandable misinformation. It's interesting because it wouldn't affect me...but a friend of an acquaintance asked me to peruse his Vista machine (*shudder*) and it was interesting to note that I was able to still at this late date connect to Windows Update and get updates for it!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle

Ah, heck...found it... What happens in 2015 is that Windows moves from mainstream support to extended support and does not EoL until 2020. Extended support includes consumer support, although that notion is counter intuitive and Microsoft should simply say it up front... If you'll notice by these charts further down, Microsoft has yet to even set a date on EoL/sales for Win7 Professional, which I think is kind of amusing.

 

[Kaotik]

As far as I can remember, no MS operating system has ever gotten new features after the end of mainstream support, only bugfixes and security patches

 

[willardjuice]

anything supported by Win10TP should also run fine in Win7-

No this isn't true. The wddm in Windows 8 has never been added to Windows 7. That's why Windows 7 only supports a subset of d3d 11.1. The best case scenario we can hope for is the "feature level 11.0 version" of DirectX 12 for Windows 7. I doubt we'll even get that.

 

[Rodéric]

That will once again be seen as a forced update by consumers, and it will slow down adoption of D3D12, in the meantime AMD doesn't make Mantle public which would help its dominance a lot and OpenGL doesn't say a word about its next revision...

I'm sure a Windows every 3 years is good for MS but I'm not sure it is for consumers, maybe 4 or 5 years would be better, it's even harder to justify it when the version only change by a tenth...

 

[eastmen]

That will once again be seen as a forced update by consumers, and it will slow down adoption of D3D12, in the meantime AMD doesn't make Mantle public which would help its dominance a lot and OpenGL doesn't say a word about its next revision...

I'm sure a Windows every 3 years is good for MS but I'm not sure it is for consumers, maybe 4 or 5 years would be better, it's even harder to justify it when the version only change by a tenth...

I'm not following.

Windows 7 came out in 2009. So that OS will be 5 years old when windows 10 launches. Thats not 3 years. If you bought windows 8 then you can run dx 12.

As for upgrade time frames , andriod has new OS's every year sometimes multiple times a year and IOS also has a new OS every year and yes they support newer features and hardware than previous ones. I don't see complaining there.

 

[Kaotik]

Windows 7 came out in 2009. So that OS will be 5 years old when windows 10 launches. Thats not 3 years. If you bought windows 8 then you can run dx 12.

Wait what? This was confirmed where? I understood the whole point of DX11.3 etc would be to bring DX12 features to older OSes, including 8 (especially considering 7 doesn't even support full 11.1, i doubt it would get 11.3 either)?

 

[lanek]

That will once again be seen as a forced update by consumers, and it will slow down adoption of D3D12, in the meantime AMD doesn't make Mantle public which would help its dominance a lot and OpenGL doesn't say a word about its next revision...

I'm sure a Windows every 3 years is good for MS but I'm not sure it is for consumers, maybe 4 or 5 years would be better, it's even harder to justify it when the version only change by a tenth...

First, the problem with windows ( or whatever OS ); is peoples dont like the change.. whatever you do, you will got half who say: "it was time" and the second half who will say: " i want it like it was before, i like better my XP version " .

If they include everything backward compatible, they are good to go with a second XP who will stay there for 10years more.

Mantle will be published publicy somewhere in the start of 2015 ( i will bet for february ). This said, i dont see what the public can do with it. its an API, if you dont developp your own graphic engine, i dont see what peoples can do with it. If you are a game developper, or working on it, you can just sign in and be part of the program. This said, many things have evolve since it was announced, i can understand they dont want publish something who is not up to date. ( and i still believe that the beta sdk will still be more advanced that the release public 1.0 )

OpenGL next have been announced some months ago ( and its a big change in comparaison of the old OpenGL developpement system, and this is not bringing happy all old OpenGL mafia guys, So you will surely not heard many thing about it before it is in a good shape of achievement.