Martin Slater, lead programmer at 2K Australia which worked on the PC version of Bioshock, has been speaking about DirectX 10 and how it "offers your gameplay nothing".
Reported on Kotaku, Slater spoke about DX10 while conducting a post-mortem of Bioshock at the recent GameConnect 07.
"DirectX 10," he said, "probably for the next three, four, five years is not important to you. Microsoft are going to tell you everything under the sun differently. Everybody under the sun is going to tell you differently."
Slater's comment reminds us of Mark Rein's thoughts on DirectX 10, when the Epic boss told us earlier in the year he reckons we won't see it fully utilised in PC games until the next console generation.
"Consoles will pretty much define what the next five years of games look like on the PC", Rein said in July.
Slater, on a more positive note, went on to call DirectX 10 a beautiful place "for all your game programmers".
"DirectX 10," he said, "probably for the next three, four, five years is not important to you. Microsoft are going to tell you everything under the sun differently. Everybody under the sun is going to tell you differently."
So, he is the only one saying it's not important? Maybe he's wrong. Given that DX10 is still (I think) a Vista exclusive, it's no skin off my nose as I'll only move to Vista when they cram it into my COLD DEAD HANDS!
I think we will start seeing DX10 games in a year or 2, but it wont be fully utilised for a long time. Just like DX9, it is now being fully utilised, compare crysis to doom3, both are directx9 games but crysis looks vastly superior.
What he says is a no brainer basically "DX10 brings nothing to gameplay", well graphics dont make gameply, thats why, DX6-DX10 bring nothing to gameplay. It may enable you to make better looking environments as we all know, but it doesnt make it a better game. Give me C&C 1 from 1995 over EAs PoS C&C from 2007 any day.
Well obviously it doesn't add anything to gameplay! it's basically an interface for devs. All it does is improve the visuals and hopefully the overall experience but it's up to the devs to perfect the gameplay. It makes it easier for them to code something that works with most peripherals out there.
Well seeing as Vista is a resource hog and DX10 is vista only and will remain so( simply because of the HAL rewrite to prevent driver crashing the PC ) i doubt DX10 will even take off. I ran Crysis in DX10 for a laugh last night, with the same settings on Vista as XP and the framerates were reduced by a third, from 40FPS acg in the benchmark tool to 26FPS. DX10 was supposed to provide vast improvements in performance whereby code could be written to execute standalone in the shaders( allowing modifications to models on the fly so e.g. trees would look different using geometry instancing ) and shadow improvements etc. I doubt that every programmer that has written DX10 code in their game has got their code implementation wrong and uses it inefficiently, i would be more sure that it provides 0 performance improvement and in fact slows everything down
Even if gpu's are 6 times faster in 2 years, why sacrifice 33% performance when we're all tring to get our FPS up and spend a fortune on our rigs to do so, especially considering the very high hack for XP in Crysis makes it look identical to the one on Vista but with vastly improved FPS
I think M$ made a huge blunder with DX10, most devs know DX9, its whats used in the 360 and why spend cash reimplementing the same things on the PC version but in DX10 when you can just direct port and mabye just increase texture res if need be
Microsoft managed to get Vista and DX10 so wrong, it's unbelieveable.
If microsoft are serious about 'games for windows' and windows as a 'gaming platform' then they need a serious rethink.
At the moment, both XP and Vista have pro's and con's to gaming, making a dual boot OS system the only viable solution.
Actually, ignore that, Vista just doesn't offer enough as I've got a s**tload of expensive software that vista doesn't support.
But back to the 'gaming platform'. Why on earth would a gaming platform automatically set windows up to have so many pointless programs running in the background. What is the point of windows aero. Why so many variations (that are all too expensive) both 32-bit and 64 bit.
How hard can it be for microsoft to come up with an OS that lets games use all of the PC potential? After all, in this day and age of 500Gb HDD's and Dual Core CPU's, in built emulation for the PC's back catalogue shouldn't be too hard.
Therefore no problems with running older games, current games and future games built specifically for the new OS.
With the pathetic dribble that is DX10 (as Crysis so wonderfully points out now that most people know how to get most of the lovely FX and a good framerate using DX9), it will be interesting to see what happens to the next iteration of GFX hardware.
Unless the new hardware offers superior performance and visuals with DX10/Vista over XP/DX9, then people are still going to stick with XP/DX9.
The only alternative is for the hardware manufacturers to 'gimp' the DX9 performance to make DX10 look more attractive, and I can't see any reason for them to do so.
Meanwhile then, I expect the next iteration of GFX cards to get more out of DX10, but at the same time, provide a quantative increase in DX9 performance as well.
The bottom line is. DX10 offers nothing as of yet, and is most likely to be superceded by DX11 before it does. As for Vista, that will only become the OS of choice due to pre-installed sales and eventual lack of support.
Microsoft's Vista + "Games for Windows" are a bit of a waste of money at the moment.
Games for Windows has 48 titles. Microsoft expects people to pay a subscription fee for those as well as the cost of the games, as per their Xbox 360 model.
Add to that gamers would need to buy Vista and possibly a new PC.
I hope games developers take note and start supporting Linux distributions like Ubuntu more. If Introversion (http://www.introversion.co.uk/) can do it, so should others.
Unfortunately it's already began, if you venture into any high street retailer now 95% of the computers on the shelves are Vista. A lot of companies won't even give you the option of selecting XP any more like they did when Vista was just released.
I read about the service pack for Vista and 2GB just seems like a joke for an OS update. Never seen a Windows update that big before.
DX10 will take a while to be the norm. DX9 quickly phased out DX8 because the advantages were much clearer. Likewise with the jump from DX6-DX7.
Vista is just too much of a resource hog. I saw a PC in the shop that came with a 1.6Ghz Celeron, 512MB of RAM and onboard S3 graphics (leeching 64MB) running Vista, it was a tad slow to say the least and the buyer was frustrated. I formatted it for him and placed a copy of XP on and he's been so happy with how it moves.
Like I said before however it won't do anything to add to gameplay. Apart from visuals we're not going to see anything new because of DX10. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm open to all suggestions!
The guy speaks the truth. Console gaming shapes how PC games look these days so like he said, DX10 won't be mainstream until next-gen. The only people that seem to think DX10 can benefit games are the PC-only tech geeks that pack their PC to the brim with all the latest hardware each year even though there are very little quality games on the PC to take advantage of it. As for Vista as a gaming platform, you need at least 2GB RAM to even consider using it as one, otherwise you will see a noticable drop in performance.
dont forget that directx is not only to do with graphics, the graphics part is direct 3d.
there could be improvements in sound, networking, etc
Dont get me started with the sound on Vista, it makes my XFi utterly useless in games, i dont blame creative, i blame M$ because they decided to make mixing software only( so they have more control over DRM music files and to prevent playing, grrrrrrr. I only try games on Vista for the laugh - Bioshock DX10, Lost Planet DX10, Crysis DX10, play for 5 mins, get annoyed and go back to my dreamy XP
That's why I've given up on PC gaming - I'm fed up with DirectX 9 vs DirectX10, new hardware every week, millions of patches, millions of settings,etc.
I'm very happy with my consoles - Xbox 360, Wii and PS3.
dont forget that directx is not only to do with graphics, the graphics part is direct 3d.
there could be improvements in sound, networking, etc
Oh yeah. I forgot about the improvements to the sound in Vista which would prevent me from using EAX on my Audigy soundcard. And as it's a 'bells & whistles' soundcard used as part of a DAW and home studio, I'll be buggered if I'll be buying a new one just for Vista.
That's why I've given up on PC gaming - I'm fed up with DirectX 9 vs DirectX10, new hardware every week, millions of patches, millions of settings,etc.
I'm very happy with my consoles - Xbox 360, Wii and PS3.
meh, im not getting into this debate again, suffice to say i prefer to have consoles and a pc
I have a dual-booting PC with 2 GB of RAM and a 512 MB graphics card running XP SP2 and Vista. I absolutely hate Vista for gaming though, it's such a resource hog and the graphics and sound drivers are still poor in my opinion after nearly a year. I choose to play all my games from XP and only have a DX9 graphics card anyway so I've yet to see what all the fuss is about DX10. I dread the day I'll be forced to play games from Vista as I believe it is a poor operating system for games.
My current machine has only 1GB of RAM (never thought I'd be saying that to that much mem), a 512MB vid card and a single core CPU. Vista was okay on it but I just didn't like the performance in games.
When XP came out ME was the faster performer ironically. I remember there was an 8-15% slow down detected on most games in XP over 98/ME on launch. Hopefully in a few years I'll be able to say that Vista is a good OS.
When I tried it I never had any driver issues, my cuz however made the leap and now he can't use his studio software. The software works yes and the Mic records, but he cannot hear it in real time causing him some grief.
well my rig is pretty beefy, E6400@3.3Ghz,4gig Corsair XMS2 6400C4, 8800GT@810/1750/1769( it changes lol ),XFi Xtrememusic, 400Gig & 500Gig Sata 2 drives, EVGA 680i, G5, and some other stuff, but i never use Vista for games except where Vista ate my XP install and as i have no net access, some of my activated games are on Vista, but thats it. The performance drop simply isint worth it and as was said, sound is junk. Ive even tuned it loads, switchign off the scheduled tasks,auto defrag, and a load of other stuff and it runs crap( at least i got it to stop chewing my harddrive )
How many people have good DX10 compatable computers? How much do they cost? Where do you go to buy them? and are they any better than a PS3 or Xbox360 hooked up to a decent 36"+HDTV and suround sound system?
Oh, and are there any other DX10 games worth buying?
I had a PC built recently (Core 2 Quad, 2GB, 368MB 8800GTS etc) and frankly Vista is poor for gaming. I do not have a copy of XP and do not wish to buy one so am stuck playing games on Vista. I can play the Orange Box and Quake Wars on full settings, but most games suffer performance. I am not a sound buff and use the built in sound board on my motherboard and it sounds okay to me. DX10 is a joke, I can barely play Crysis on medium settings using DX. I can play it consistenly smoothly on medium using DX9, with maybe one or two parameters on high, but I would have thought with my PC I could get a little more out of the game, but Vista just slows it down.
How many people have good DX10 compatable computers? How much do they cost? Where do you go to buy them? and are they any better than a PS3 or Xbox360 hooked up to a decent 36"+HDTV and suround sound system?
Oh, and are there any other DX10 games worth buying?
There are no DX10 games worth buying as they will only look marginly better than the DX9 versions. DX10 is not worth s**t right now, neither is Vista. The sound problem on Vista alone is enough to put me off (But creative have drivers now to get round the fact that MS emiliated the HEL for sound)
Only use Vista when: A. It actually becomes a decent operating system B. You can dual boot with XP as well, which is what I do and 99% of the time I'm on XP C. you can get it for free D. You are forced to use Vista, IE when games stop suppoting XP, like when they stopped supporting 98, but that only happened recently.
Oh and lastly, MS say they want to be on a 2 year development cycle for OS's and a new one is due out in 2009, so everyone just forget Vista, forget it ever existed and forget they spent 4-5 years trying to make it. I hope XP isn't the last good OS which allows us freedom to use our comps (IE no DRM, no UAC or bloody indexing or other things which slow the comp down)
f**k Vista, long live XP and DX9. We need innovative games with good gameplay, not DX10.
Am I the only person on the planet having little to no problem with Vista? I think I've received about a 5% performance dip since I took the plunge this summer, and have seen none of the driver clashes and instability that are putting some people off upgrading. Personally I think it's a nice update to a good OS, although as my work paid for it that takes the edge off the upgrade a bit
One thing I have noticed in building about 5 different Vista systems with various hardware configs from budget to 3 grand monsters- It would appear AMD systems are that little bit more stable. May that'd just pot luck with motherboards and chipset drivers but it seems to be a bit of a trend.
That's the thing - there should be NO performance dip with Vista. I had a significant boost when moving from 98/ME to XP...so why is it worse to "upgrade" to Vista? Microsoft are a bunch of complete jokers
That's the thing - there should be NO performance dip with Vista. I had a significant boost when moving from 98/ME to XP...so why is it worse to "upgrade" to Vista? Microsoft are a bunch of complete jokers
You did? XP was slower than 98/ME at 3D rendering during launch. Around 5%. Not as major as the dip between XP/Vista but there was a dip.
That's why I've given up on PC gaming - I'm fed up with DirectX 9 vs DirectX10, new hardware every week, millions of patches, millions of settings,etc.
I'm very happy with my consoles - Xbox 360, Wii and PS3.
and thats why you realy shouldn't be commenting. consoles gamers, are by definition, less equipped to deal with intelligent discussion on games than their PC peers
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