The People Behind DirectX 10: Part 4 - Game Developers

[Hanners]

I think I said this last time, but ExtremeTech really have posted the last part of their look at DirectX 10 this time around, chatting with a handful of game developers about what this latest iteration of the API will mean for them.

Today we bring it all home with the final piece of the puzzle—game developers. Without support from the game development community, DirectX 10 could never get off the ground. We spoke with several developers creating some of the first games to offer DirectX 10 support to find out how their games will be different when played on a DX10-capable PC, and what the new API means for them. Read on to find out more from the people behind Age of Conan, Hellgate: London, Crysis, and Flight Simulator X.

Of immediate interest is said developers comments regarding whether they actually have DirectX 10 capable hardware in their hands, which seems to vary from a couple of definitive "no DirectX 10 hardware here" answers to "we can't tell you what we do and don't have".

Anyhow, check out the piece here.

 

[jb]

Cool beans, thanks for the info Hanners!

 

[Demirug]

The rasterizer is actually surprisingly fast, so it is quite doable getting a lot of work done on it.

refrast and fast in one sentence? This piece of software is slow like hell.

 

[Jawed]

It's a pity that the interviewer didn't ask: "what range of platforms will you be targetting, for games that are DX9/10? Will you also include DX8 or are you moving up to a DX9 (SM2) minimum?"

Jawed

 

[trinibwoy]

Hmmm I wonder if we'll see the same bias for earlier hardware that we saw with SM3.0.

 

[Demirug]

That’s highly possible. Every developer can learn how D3D10 works today but they all don’t know which way is the fastest. Even Microsoft has not written the performances guidelines yet.

 

[Demirug]

It's a pity that the interviewer didn't ask: "what range of platforms will you be targetting, for games that are DX9/10? Will you also include DX8 or are you moving up to a DX9 (SM2) minimum?"

Jawed

Please be Careful. You mixed names in a bad way here.

Direct3D (or DirectX) are API names. Shader Models are technologies levels that bind to APIs but in a complex way.

Direct3D 8 = SM 1.1
Direct3D 8.1 SM 1.1 – 1.4
Direct3D 9 SM 1.1 -3.0 (3.0 needs a 9.0c runtime)
Direct3D 10 SM 4.0 (only)

The better question would be which shader models are supported.

 

[RejZoR]

Actually Shader Model tag was first used with SM2.0. There were no 1.1 and 1.4. These are just Pixel Shader version tags, not Shader Model.

 

[Demirug]

Actually Shader Model tag was first used with SM2.0. There were no 1.1 and 1.4. These are just Pixel Shader version tags, not Shader Model.

It depends. Some developers use the Shader Model tag for the older shader versions too.